Some Highbury map history - I've been trying to establish how and when a once semi-rural area full of country houses with large gardens became densely urbanised. Best way to do this is to compare 1871 and 1913 Ordnance survey maps. Thread:

What's interesting here? Holloway Road area developed way faster in the mid-19th century than Highbury. There's a really notable gap that lasts well into the 1870s and 1880s between the King's Cross railway line and Blackstock Road

I am genuinely baffled by some of the land-use patterns on the leading edge of London's growth in the late 19th century - massive open fields right next to incredibly densely packed row terraces, sometimes grand country houses or farms inundated by industrial growth

The other thing that is slightly wild is the sheer number of mansion blocks being developed for presumably pretty wealthy buyers - even along main arterial roads such as Holloway Road. Why do these have such massive gardens???

Anyway the thing I am really interested in his how and when country houses were replaced by terraces. Here's a first example - Highbury Lodge. This came under immense development pressures as Highbury was engulfed by London's expansion

In many cases you are seeing a single large country house with gardens and other ancillary buildings replaced by up to 50 dwellings in one fell swoop

The famous Highbury House was increasingly hemmed in from its once vast gardens to an ever dwindling rump. It didn't survive much long after 1913

Highbury is named after Highbury Manor, built in 1271 for the Priory of St John of Jerusalem, the 1781 house was demolished for flats in 1938

Highbury changed socio-economically between the mid-19th and early 20th century - becoming less of a wealthy rural retreat, and far more industrial. Railways and factories brought soot and smoke, trams and omnibuses brought the area into easy reach of the capital

The market gardens, informal smallholdings and stables which supported the grand houses, such as the Georgian terraces on Highbury Fields made way for terraced housing at an accelerating rate. Highbury Fields was also made into an actual park - it was just fields until the 1880s

The divergence in the style of suburban development had been marked by extraordinary differences in density between Holloway and Highbury. Highbury Quadrant and Hornsea at the same scale from 1871

Yet by the 1890s, Highbury was no longer nearly as desirable or fashionable as it had once been, and there was an increasing incongruity between the pressure on land and these grand homes with large gardens - at some point in the 1880s mansions stopped being built

Highbury used to have many more entertainment venues for the wealthy - these were also demolished for tightly packed terraced housing - such as the Highbury Barn Tavern, its ballroom and theatre - unceremoniously wiped out for Kelvin Road likely in the 1890s

Country houses with their particularly large grounds could not survive the demand for land. However, the pressure on infill for terraced homes had its limits because many mansion block homes survive, such as along Highbury New Park, across much of Canonbury and Tufnell Park.

I think one thing that should really be appreciated is that Victorian and Edwardian London's suburban growth was not clean or gradual - it was often violently chaotic, and involved the alteration of what had already been built behind the front as it cascaded outwards

The most interesting parts of London are often what got left behind or missed out - the parks formed out of country estate grounds, the pockets of medieval villages that survived the onslaught and the other evidence of the earlier coaching inns, market gardens and grand houses

The swathes of pattern book Victorian and Edwardian terraced homes that swept across London's hinterlands from 1870 to 1914 were sort of ahistorical - so radically modern in their vastness and conformity - but also left traces or fragments of what came before. Ends.