Newington Green - The New River

The New River

In 1602 it was proposed that a new river should be constructed to provide London with its first clean, fresh water. Sir Hugh Myddleton, a Welsh goldsmith and philanthropist, was given the responsibility, and in 1609 he built a canal from the Hertfordshire rivers of Chadwell and Amwell, 38 miles to the New River Head Reservoir at Amwell Street in Clerkenwell. Originally open to the air, the aqueduct flowed down the centre of the present day Petherton Road. It was later covered for sanitary reasons.

In 1808, Rochemont Barbauld was appointed minister to Newington Green Unitarian Church. His wife, Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743–1825), was a prolific writer, admired by Samuel Johnson and William Wordsworth. She enjoyed a long friendship with Joseph Priestley and William Enfield, starting from their years together at the Warrington Academy in the 1760s, where her father was tutor. She wrote poems (including a tribute to Priestley), hymns, children's literature, and political and religious tracts. She was an abolitionist, addressing one of her works to William Wilberforce. 1793 saw her contribution to the Pamphlet War, "Sins of the Government, Sins of the Nation". Two years later she wrote The Rights of Women, but this was not published until her death thirty years later. Rochemont eventually went violently insane, attacked his wife and committed suicide by drowning himself in the river.

In 1946 the supply was redirected at Stoke Newington and in 1990 the New River was replaced by deep mains. Part of the New River’s original course through Canonbury has now been turned into an ornamental walk.