Place    From 1300 

White Conduit

Categories: Food & Drink

Originally part of the water supply to the Greyfriars Monastery, Newgate Street. See British History 1 and British History 2 for details. The same water was also used to supply Charterhouse from the 1400s to 1652 when Charterhouse decided to use the New River water instead.

The source of the water was a spring in Barnsbury, named for the white stone housing built in 1641. From the 1730s the site became a leisure resort with a tea-house and gardens, centred on the White Conduit House. This was rebuilt but finally demolished in 1849.

The image shows the water supply house in front of a distinctive round building which was part of the leisure complex and can be seen in a number of views from that time. The location of White Conduit House was the north-east corner of Barnsbury Road and Tolpuddle Street with the gardens stretching eastwards to what is now Cloudsley Road, though earlier they had reached all the way to what is now Liverpool Road. The Victorian pub building there now, Little Georgia (which keeps changing it's name so it's barely worth naming it), has "White Conduit House" in large lettering at the cornice.

The fields opposite the White Conduit House, to the west, were used for cricket from the 1770's. A club that formed here moved to Lord's cricket ground and went on to become the Marylebone Cricket Club.

An information board in Barnard Park gives: "Open fields covered the site of Barnard Park until the early 1800s. Just to the south lay White Conduit House, a thriving place of resort and entertainment with a pleasure garden and a sports field that extended over part of the present park. Here cricket and other sports were played - even hot air balloons were flown ..."

We are aware that most of this information has nothing to do with the Rugby Street area but it's interesting and there's no memorial at the site of the White Conduit House to which we could attach it.

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This section lists the memorials where the subject on this page is commemorated:
White Conduit

Commemorated ati

French's Dairy conduit

The nice lady in the shop told us that it is a 2 metre square white marble we...

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Other Subjects

First drinking fountain

First drinking fountain

The Picture Source website gives the story.

Event, Food & Drink

1 memorial
Fountain Tavern

Fountain Tavern

Here the political opponents of Sir Robert Walpole met, using the title of the Fountain Club. Since the Kit-Cat Club, Walpole's supporters, also met here, we have to trust that the landlord arrange...

Building, Commerce, Community / Clubs, Food & Drink, Politics & Administration

2 memorials
Rose and Crown, Wimbledon

Rose and Crown, Wimbledon

From Wimbledon Heritage Map: "part 17C, late 18C  early 19C public house, note multi pane sash  windows; recently sympathetically extended".

Building, Community / Clubs, Food & Drink

1 memorial
Smithfield Poultry Market

Smithfield Poultry Market

The original poultry market by Horace Jones was opened in 1875 but destroyed by fire in 1958. Our page for that fire has an image of the original building. The new building has a concrete elliptic...

Event, Commerce, Food & Drink

1 memorial

Previously viewed

R. P. Campion

R. P. Campion

A North London Railwayman who fell in the Great War.

Person

War dead, WW1
1 memorial
The Gatehouse

The Gatehouse

N6, North Road, 1

The original Gate House was erected here (circa 1386) at the entrance to the Bishop of London's Park.

1 subject commemorated
J. F. Addison Greene

J. F. Addison Greene

Hon. Secretary of Hornsey Council in 1911.

Person, Politics & Administration

1 memorial
Lindsay Anderson

Lindsay Anderson

Film and theatre director, critic and writer, ‘This sporting Life', ‘If', ‘The Whales of August', awarded the 1955 Oscar for Best Documentary Short. Born India, died France.

Person, Cinema, Theatre, France, India

1 memorial
Colin John Maher

Colin John Maher

W2, Westbourne Park Road

Lovely, heartfelt plaque.

1 subject commemorated