In 1523, a resident of the north side of the Green, the future 6th Earl of Northumberland, Henry Percy (at that time a page of Cardinal Wolsey), became engaged to Anne Boleyn.

Other Canonbury Tower residents included: The 17th-century diarist Samuel Pepys was sent to Newington Green and Kingsland by his mother in order to benefit from the fresh air and open spaces of what was then a rural area.

After the Restoration Henry was arrested for his part in the regicide, but granted leniency because he had refused to sign the king's death warrant.

Following the religious upheavals after the Restoration, some Protestants chose to remain in England and maintain their faith openly, but they had to live with the restrictions the state placed upon them.

They moved to places tolerant of them; often they set up educational establishments, known in general as dissenting academies, which were intellectually and morally more rigorous than the universities.

[14] Not all of these free-thinkers were Unitarians: other notables include the Quaker physician John Coakley Lettsome and the Anglican pacifist Vicesimus Knox.

James Burgh, author of The Dignity of Human Nature and Thoughts on Education, who opened his Dissenting Academy on the green in 1750 and sent his pupils to the church there.

The minister whose name is still remembered centuries later is Dr Richard Price, a libertarian and republican who cemented the village's "reputation as a centre for radical thinkers and social reformers".

James Burgh, author of The Dignity of Human Nature and Thoughts on Education, who opened his Dissenting Academy on the green in 1750 and sent his pupils to Price's sermons.

[18] When Joseph Priestley's support of dissent led to the riots named after him, he fled Birmingham and headed for the sanctuary of Newington Green, where Rogers took him in.

[20] The flavour of the village and the approach of these Rational Dissenters appealed to Wollstonecraft: they were hard-working, humane, critical but uncynical, and respectful towards women.

[22] A couple of years after she left Newington Green, these seeds germinated into A Vindication of the Rights of Men, a response to Burke's denunciation of the French Revolution and attack on Price.

In 1792 she published the work for which she is best remembered, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, in the spirit of rationalism extending Price's arguments about equality to women.

[26] She enjoyed a long friendship with Joseph Priestley and William Enfield, starting from their years together at the Warrington Academy in the 1760s, where her father was a tutor.

Jews fleeing the pogroms of the Russian Empire established a congregation by 1876, and built the Dalston Synagogue in adjoining Poets Road in 1885.

The original Adath Israel orthodox congregation was founded in 1911 and its first permanent building was in Alma Road, off Green Lanes, before moving on towards Stoke Newington and the other side of Clissold Park in the 1950s.

After a patient struggle of 150 years, the English Dissenters were finally freed from their civil disabilities with the passage of the Doctrine of the Trinity Act 1813.

With, it seemed, nothing left to fight for on that front, Nonconformists no longer needed the security of the Newington Green, and the area lost some of its intellectual cohesiveness.

The nature of Newington Green had changed—the fresh bucolic village had been swallowed up by London's relentless growth, and had become a "thriving and expanding suburb".

A hundred years before, the ethos had been one of almost Puritan self-reliance, but now the Dickensian poverty, evident in cholera epidemics and rampant malnutrition, made social responsibility an urgent necessity.

The London Sunday School Society recognised the one at Newington Green as the best in its class, educating up to 200 children and necessitating the construction in 1887 of the schoolhouse immediately behind the main church building.

The outbreak of World War II meant that children were evacuated temporarily from London, so the Sunday Schools and Young People's Leagues ceased for a time.

NGAG worked with Islington Council on this project and traffic calming measures were installed to ease the notorious local congestion, with additional pedestrian crossings providing easier and safer access to the Green on foot.

Cathal (Cal) Courtney, characterised as a "radical spirit" who had made a "remarkable spiritual journey",[41] opened the church for a multi-faith silent protest vigil through the night before the huge march against the Iraq War.

[47] Newington Green Unitarian Church made history when it became the first religious establishment in Britain to refuse to carry out any weddings at all until same-sex couples have the right to full legal marriage.

[49] NGUC celebrated its tercentenary in 2008 under the slogan "300 years of dissent", marking this with events such as planting a crab apple tree,[50] organising a picnic in conjunction with the Newington Green Action Group, and hosting a concert of Ottoman classical music.

[52][53] NGUC sponsored a series of events, including a return visit and lecture by biographer Barbara Taylor; a panel discussion about women and power, between female politicians Diane Abbott MP, Jean Lambert MEP, and Emily Thornberry MP; an art exhibition entitled Mother of Feminism; a concert featuring Carol Grimes and Adey Grummet to raise money for Stop the Traffik, an anti-trafficking charity; a tombstone tribute at St Pancras Old Church; a birthday cake baked by men; and other activities.

Over the subsequent centuries many changes were made, internally and externally, in particular adding an extra storey to one of the middle houses and replacing its narrow staircase with a wider one with mid-Georgian detailing.

[61] "Historic views show that the original façade had a small pediment against a large hipped roof, with a central oval window below.

[64] Angel Chiropody is a post-60's example of Brutalist Architecture To the west is its neighbour, the former headquarters of the China Inland Mission, an organisation founded by James Hudson Taylor in 1865 and responsible for 18,000 converts to Christianity.