Qualla: Canonbury House and Canonbury Tower

Canonbury House and Canonbury Tower: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jim Osley, CC BY-SA 2.0. She was lowered out of a window in a baker's basket. The legend, repeated by every Islington historian since, says Elizabeth Spencer's lover disguised himself as a baker's boy, drove his cart through the fields to Canonbury, and rescued her from the Tower where her father had confined her. The year was 1599. The father, Sir John Spencer, was one of the richest men in Elizabethan London. The young man with the cart was William Compton, 2nd Baron Compton, who had borrowed extensively from Spencer and then fallen in love with his only daughter. Spencer did not consider marriage to Elizabeth an appropriate way to settle the debt. The couple eloped anyway, the inheritance eventually arrived, and Lord Compton spent £72,000 in eight weeks - mostly on horses, saddles, and gambling. Some of this happened in the six-storey Tudor tower that still stands in Islington as the oldest building in the borough.

Image: Jim Osley | CC BY-SA 2.0

Canonbury House and Canonbury Tower: From Canons' Burgh to Country Seat

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. The land was originally Anglo-Saxon, then Norman, then granted by Ralph de Berners in 1253 to the Augustinian Canons of St Bartholomew's Priory in Smithfield. The area was called the Canons' Burgh - hence Canonbury. In 1509 William Bolton became Prior of St Bartholomew's, and bes...

Image: Public domain

Canonbury House and Canonbury Tower: Rich Spencer's House

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The wub, CC BY-SA 4.0. John Spencer first leased the property from Thomas Wentworth in 1570 for £21.11s.4d, then bought it outright for £2,000. "Rich Spencer" was Lord Mayor of London in 1594 and possessed one of the great private fortunes of his day; Queen Elizabeth is said to have visited him at Cano...

Image: The wub | CC BY-SA 4.0

Canonbury House and Canonbury Tower: The Tenants Who Made the Place Famous

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Masato.harada, CC BY-SA 4.0. From 1616 to 1625 Canonbury House was leased to Sir Francis Bacon, then at the height of his career as Attorney General and Lord Keeper. The Tower's first-floor Spencer Room still bears decorative details - Tudor roses set within what might be garters, strapwork ornament running ...

Image: User:Masato.harada | CC BY-SA 4.0

Canonbury House and Canonbury Tower: The Tower's Strange Architecture

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Masato.harada, CC BY-SA 4.0. Canonbury Tower is 66 feet high and roughly 17 feet square. The brick walls vary in thickness from 4 feet to 2 feet - thicker at the base, tapering as they rise. The central staircase, in short straight flights with quarter landings, was built around a core of timber and plaster ...

Image: User:Masato.harada | CC BY-SA 4.0

Canonbury House and Canonbury Tower: What Canonbury Became

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit 14wesley, CC BY-SA 3.0. The buildings around the old courtyard survive in scattered pieces. Nos. 6-9 Canonbury Place, on the site of the east range, retain genuine 16th-century stuccoed ceilings and oak carvings - significant enough that they were listed for the quality and rarity of the plasterwork alo...

Image: 14wesley | CC BY-SA 3.0