On the way home from work we stopped off at Jusaka for a coffee break.

Tigger’s latte is very prettily decorated. (Photo by Tigger)

Mine, on the other hand, is rather dull. Well, there’s not much you can do to a black Americano, is there?

Following an exchange of comments with Maristravels on my post St Stephen’s and Canonbury, I looked further into the history of Canonbury. Today, the district is known particularly for Canonbury Tower, a structure remaining from the manor that was rebuilt by William Bolton in the early 1500s.

The name of the estate, which is mentioned in Domesday Book (1086) as belonging to a man caled Derman, seems not to be known. The estate appears to have consisted of a manor house and a spread of good agricultural land.

The estate was eventually acquired by the Berners family who also held a neighbouring estate. Sometime between 1242 and 1253, Ralph de Berners donated the estate to the Priory of St Bartholomew in Smithfield. The prior and his canons probably occupied the manor, at least some of the time, hence the name Canonbury.

William Bolton became Prior in the early 16th century and rebuilt the manor, including the tower that still stands and can be visited. The manor house was rebuilt again in the Elizabethan period but most of it has been replaced by a line of terrace houses in Canonbury Place.

The above facts have been gleaned from a paper by Peter Dawkins, entitled Canonbury Place & Tower. (Note that this is a PDF file.) This paper gives a more detailed account of the history of Canonbury.

The exact etymology of the name Canonbury is hard to track down. A clue is given by the fact that the Berners manor was known as Bernersbury, giving the modern name Barnsbury. Reading between the lines of various sources that I have perused, I suggest the following. Manor houses were often, though not always, fortified, at least partially, perhaps with stout walls and a moat. Thus the term bury from the Anglo-Saxon burh, meaning a fort or fortified town, became attached to their name. In later times it would probably have meant little more than “manor”.

Thus Canonbury was the “Canoun bury”, the manor of the canons and Barnsbury was the “Berners bury”, the manor of the Berners family.

I emphasise that this is speculation on my part derived from thin evidence and subject to future correction.