Spa Fields

Spa Fields is a park and its surrounding area in the London Borough of Islington, bordering Finsbury and Clerkenwell.^[1] Historically it is known for the Spa Fields riots of 1816 and an Owenite community which existed there between 1821 and 1824. The park, or open common, was once of 14 hectares but was mostly built over in the 19th century, beginning in the 1830s, and is now a small park, popular with office workers at lunchtime, and as a children's playground.

A large surrounding area was once called by the name, but this is now less common. In the 18th century it was a disreputable area, known for "the rude sports that were in vogue, such as duck-hunting, prize-fighting, bull-baiting, and others of an equally demoralising character", and "seems to have been much infected by sneaking footpads, who knocked down pedestrians passing to and from London, and despoiled them of hats, wigs, silver buckles, and money",^[2][3] The moral tone gradually improved after the Spa Fields Chapel was erected in 1777 by the Countess of Huntingdon, a famous Evangelical.