There has been a pub in the centre of Archway for many years - the print on the right is from 1820, after the first Archway bridge was built.

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Below is a slightly later print in which the pub has been extended out and upwards.

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Eventually this was demolished in favour of the Archway Tavern which we know today, which stood next to a fine Victorian Methodist building, later demolished for the current 1930 development.

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The image black and white print shows the old toll gate on the Archway Road with the bridge in the distance. The tollgate features in Dickens’ Bleak House when Inspector Bucket is on the trail of Lady Dedlock, walking to St Albans and back in the snow.

 

Behind the gate lay brick fields, the clay from the land being used to create the bricks used to build the local houses – highly sustainable construction.

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Brickfields Terrace was a name given to the home of Mr Pooter in the comic novel Diary of a Nobody. With the railway behind the Holloway Road to one side, the setting appears to be Pemberton Gardens in Archway.

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For more history see other pages in this section, and maps on the maps page of this site.

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