Newington Green - Newington Green Today

Newington Green Today

The Green, far from being a pleasant and well-manicured garden square, was for many years just a run-down green space that straddled the border between Islington N1 and Hackney N16. However, in 1979 the Newington Green Action Group (NGAG) was formed with the aim of regenerating the area. NGAG worked with Islington Council on this project and traffic calming measures were installed to ease the notorious local congestion, with additional pedestrian crossings providing easier and safer access to the Green on foot. The Green itself was regenerated to include more lawn space, a play area and a café. New planting has enhanced the Green and was chosen to encourage biodiversity.

Newington Green has grown in popularity with the local community, evinced by the children that now play in the formerly deserted park, which is once more being used like a village green. Community groups hold fairs on the Green and NGAG has organised many events including the annual Jazz on the Green and Open Garden Squares day. These improvements are such that in 2006, Newington Green won the first of many Green Flag Awards (the national standard for parks and green spaces in England and Wales, sponsored by Keep Britain Tidy). It has also won the Green Heritage Site Award for several years running, which is sponsored by English Heritage. In 2010 NGAG teamed up with the Mayville Gardening Club and the King Henry's Walk Community Garden; the Newington Green area was awarded a High Silver Gilt Royal Horticultural Society Urban Communities Award, as part of the London in Bloom Scheme.

The Newington Green Action Group also published a local history book The Village That Changed the World: A History of Newington Green London N16 by Alex Allardyce in 2008, which won the Walter Bor Award the following year.

Newington Green and Newington Green Road to the south constitute the commercial and cultural centre of the district. This area shares in the gentrification of Islington and Stoke Newington, so the old shopping area has now been supplemented by a number of new and trendy shops, bars and restaurants. However, there is a substantial Turkish Cypriot community in the area, members of whom run many of the local grocery stores.

Since the millennium, two new ministers at the Unitarian Church have injected energy into the Green and added to its events and publicity. Cathal (Cal) Courtney, characterised as a "radical spirit" who had made a "remarkable spiritual journey", opened the church for a multi-faith silent protest vigil through the night before the huge march against the Iraq War. He used his inaugural column in the N16 magazine to address the international furore around Gene Robinson's election as bishop. He was written about as the Right-On Reverend in The Oldie's monthly "East of Islington" column. Courtney revived the Richard Price Memorial Lecture, which had last been given in 1981. NGUC now sponsors it annually, to "(address) a topical or important aspect of liberty, reason and ethics."

The current minister is Andrew (Andy) Pakula, an American who grew up in a Jewish family in New York. Newington Green Unitarian Church made history when it became the first religious establishment in Britain to refuse to carry out any weddings at all until same-sex couples have the right to full legal marriage. The BBC called it a "gay rights church" for its unanimous committee vote suspending full wedding services.

NGUC celebrated its tercentenary in 2008 under the slogan "300 years of dissent", marking this with events such as planting a crab apple tree, organising a picnic in conjunction with the Newington Green Action Group, and hosting a concert of Ottoman classical music. (Newington Green has a strong Turkish population.) The following year it commemorated the 250th anniversary of the birth of Mary Wollstonecraft, attaching a large banner to the railings outside the building, proclaiming it the "birthplace of feminism", in a nod to the formative years that she spent worshipping there. NGUC sponsored a series of events, including a return visit and lecture by biographer Barbara Taylor; a panel discussion about women and power, between female politicians Diane Abbott MP, Jean Lambert MEP, and Emily Thornberry MP; an art exhibition entitled Mother of Feminism; a concert featuring Carol Grimes and Adey Grummet to raise money for Stop the Traffik, an anti-trafficking charity; a tombstone tribute at St Pancras Old Church; a birthday cake baked by men; and other activities.

Weekly poetry readings are held at NGUC. It participates in the annual festival of architecture, Open House London. It hosts occasional concerts, such as that given by the London Gallery Quire, and the Psallite Women's Choir.