I USED TO COME TO THE NEWINGTON GREEN ROUNDABOUT every Friday. Opening my front door, I’d turn right past the chip shop, pause at the top of the road for a lull in traffic, and then cross into the center of the roundabout. Sitting on a wooden bench on the north side of the Green, surrounded by buses, chatter and bird song, connected me to the area. It was a method of rooting myself amid the displacement of the rental market, where every home is temporary and it’s difficult to feel fully situated. On a damp bench through changing weather, I thought a lot about the roundabout as metaphor for making common ground: Here in the middle of the metropolis, this junction deconstructed the solitary self and the fiction of non-dependence. At least, that’s how it seemed.
Now I live in a neighbourhood where the rent’s cheap(ish), but there are less roundabouts and no shared spaces within them. In a city like London, where so much of the urban landscape is locked-off, public spaces that facilitate connection feel precious, unlikely, extraordinary. What was once Middlesex Forest is now the built-up boroughs of: Barnet, Brent, Ealing, Enfield, Haringey, Harrow, Hillingdon and Hounslow, etc. A few scraps remain, and the center of this roundabout is one of them: a circle of common space that somehow survives; ancient oak trees stretching through the skyline.
From various benches in Newington Green Roundabout, Hackney/Islington Borough, North East London, I jotted the following notes in a softback A5 sketchbook between sunrise and sunset on Friday 18 October 2024.
7:30am on a damp bench.
Fresh pale sky, my nose so cold it feels wet.
Below the bench: a Lays Ready Salted crisp packet heavy with dew, two snails, a feather, two sweet wrappers, dandelions, yellow leaves. Already there’s a handful of people in the park. Around us the traffic loops.
A jogger follows a straight line through the center of the Green, sticking to the path, breathing heavy and loud.
7:48am.
A man cycles on a Lime Bike wearing a suit.
Four prams in quick succession: mother on phone; mother on phone; two mothers pushing in sync chatting to each other.
Another pram running for the bus using the middle of the roundabout as a short-cut: WAIT! WAIT!
List the trees: beech; plane; oak; wild cherry. More I don’t know the names of. Across their branches birds swoop and gather.
In 1480 this roundabout was part of Middlesex Forest. There were wild boars, deer, bulls. Later, King Henry VIII built a hunting lodge by the south side of the Green. Aristocrats resided here and carcasses were hung out to dry. By 1742 the Green was deemed too wild, so the residents fenced it in: They laid out grass plots and gravel walks, and measured a safe distance of forty-five feet between the houses and the newly-enclosed square. A century later the local council acquired the space. Among the beeches and oaks, they planted plane trees, shrubberies, circular flower beds.
Lizzie’s On The Green opens for the day. A leisurely queue congregates in front of the cafe: two young women, a person in builder’s overalls, an elderly woman wearing a red jumper with a small child trailing behind.
Someone has attached tiny bird feeders to several tree trunks.
10:00am walking the inner circumference.
My toes have gone to sleep so I walk the inner circumference of the roundabout in a slow circle. I try to measure the length in feet but after fifty steps I lose count. Buses keep pace just beyond the Green.
Blue birds in the trees! Parakeets? Hurry closer. Realize they are plastic shopping bags limply flapping.
In 1906 Newington Green was one of sixty-four London squares rescued from development by the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association. By 1931 they’d saved 461 squares for public use.
The clouds are shifting, the sun is coming through. Under my shoes: crushed conkers, orange leaves, the smell of damp earth.
10:20am on a bench in the middle of the Green.
The bench I’m sitting on bears an inscription: “Sun is shining the weather is sweet, along the road someday we’ll meet.” I notice the speed cameras facing out into the ring-road. Their poles look like tall thin trees.
A woman my mother’s age is breaking bread for the pigeons.
Someone dashes past with a tote bag on their shoulder. On the bag, in typed font: “Another world is possible.”
The roundabout organizes the park. Keeps it in check. But sound is omni-directional; can the birds above my head be heard from the bus stop just beyond?
Buses that circle my bench:
73 to Stoke Newington
141 to Palmers Green
236 to Hackney Wick
341 to Meridian Water, Glover Drive
476 to Northumberland Park
In 1964 Minister for Transport Ernest Marples introduced a new traffic experiment: a one-way system circling the Green. The experiment persisted and expanded. By 1997 access to the Green was cut-off by multiple lanes of traffic.
It’s always surprising how quickly rain dries.
1:00pm on a square wooden table.
Lunchtime at Lizzie’s on the Green—£1 tea for pensioners and everyone drinks oat milk flat whites. I eat a fried egg bap and the orange yolk spills down my chin. The man at a table next to mine is having the same issue, and we meet eyes and grin. He passes me a brown napkin, tells me he comes here most days, tells me his name is Jarvis and he’s not sure what birds are calling out above. We list the kinds we know: magpie; blackbird; larks. They definitely aren’t house sparrows, he says. House sparrows live in the corners of homes and there aren’t any corners near us. It is, after all, a roundabout. We both smile.
The poet Samuel Rogers lived a few streets from here: 56 Newington Green Road. Two centuries ago he wrote: “the lark has sung his carol in the sky.”
You should hear them first thing in the morning, she says, gesticulating with her Metro newspaper. It’s the elderly woman with the red jumper. I’m not sure where the small child has gone.
3:00pm on a bench on the west side of the Green, under tall dark trees.
A man sits down to share my bench, which has metal armrests to stop people sleeping. Slazenger backpack, blue trainers. He smiles when he catches my eye. How many times have you come to the roundabout? Oh, I’m here every day. Behind him the 141 bus is lapping us. I open a crisp packet to share. Salt and vinegar, salty air. I hope it won’t rain again.
Pigeons and schoolboys gather in the playground.
A young girl with a very high ponytail tries to climb up the metal slide.
The girl with the ponytail disagrees animatedly with everyone.
Just beyond the shorn grass are new “specialty” grocery stores that sell Perello Olives and Burford Brown eggs.
5:00pm
Surprisingly few people are on their phones. One person furiously underlines a paper document in their hand (a script? A letter? A recipe?). They have silver rings on each finger, smoothed and worn and shiny.
Bells chime but not from the Unitarian Church just outside the ring-road.
The weeds look like rocket.
A man in a heavy raincoat sits at the bench to my left. Strongbow fizzing in a plastic bag. I once sat there after therapy to re-apply blue mascara.
A group of four boys try to aim a football into the public bin. They wear the local primary school’s uniform: soft green collared shirt, dark green jumper, dark green trousers.
The football hits Mary Wollstonecraft firmly on her side. Inscribed below on her plinth: “I do not wish women to have power over men but over themselves.” The sun glints off the bronze.
A boy with a Ronaldo football top hangs back watching the game with his mum(?).
A woman crosses the Green carrying a cat’s litter tray.
A group of three teenagers sit on the grass behind me sucking sour sweets. One girl has a flashy pink jumper slung over her uniform like a cape. Her chatter is sloppy and slurred as she speaks with a lollipop between her teeth.
Ronaldo enters the game.
An ambulance whips past.
Ronaldo scores and fist pumps the air.
The teenager’s tongue is bright purple from the lollipop.
An elderly man has just assembled his own camping chair in the middle of the Green.
In 1997 local residents formed Newington Green Action Group. They campaigned for narrower roads; wider pavements; street lighting; toilets; the construction of a single kiosk cafe in the Green. Following a consultation, new traffic options were agreed. By 2004, six pedestrian crossings had been designed and constructed, opening-up the roundabout for the public.
6:00pm on a bench on the south side of the Green, nearest the 24hr Parcel Locker.
A couple sit quietly on a bench to my right. She has blonde wavy hair, a yellow knitted scarf, and leather boots. They drink negronis from smooth lowball glasses. She tells me they are renting just a street away, brought the glasses from home, etc. He looks out onto the Green while she talks.
The boys have moved behind the (now closed) café. They play hide and seek, their laughter rippling out from the bushes. Ronaldo’s still with them.
The sky darkens, growing heavier, closing in on us.
The flocks of pigeons seem to have grown.
On my bench, a woman in a gray tracksuit stands up to go home. She’s making lasagne for dinner. Asks me what I’m having. Recommends I boil the cauliflower before roasting.
A boy with a freshly tapered haircut leaves the Roundabout. In his hand he clutches a giant autumn leaf like a prize. If you love a space, it will love you back.
