Rheidol Rooms, London N1

Rheidol Rooms is a café in Islington, just North of the Regent’s Canal. I sketched it on a bright cold day.

The tree cast its image onto the café. The twigs is the shadow were so sharply defined that it was hard to distinguish the shadow from the tree.

Despite that bright blue sky, the temperature was 2 degrees C and there was a wind. I froze, and walked across to the café. Sadly, it was closed, but it looked like a really good café and I will go back. I finished the drawing at my desk.

The colours in the picture are:

• Mars Yellow
• Ultramarine Blue
• Burnt Umber
• Serpentine Genuine (green, for the window frames)
• The grey and black is made from a mix of Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Umber

The café is at the junction of St Peter’s Street and Rheidol Terrace. It is in a 19th century row of terraced houses. “British History Online” indicates that this terrace was constructed in 1848-52.

Reference: British History Online: the history of this area is here: A P Baggs, Diane K Bolton and Patricia E C Croot, ‘Islington: Growth, South-east Islington’, in A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 8, Islington and Stoke Newington Parishes, ed. T F T Baker and C R Elrington (London, 1985), pp. 20-24. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/middx/vol8/pp20-24 [accessed 11 January 2024].

“….the block bounded by St. Peter’s Street, Rheidol Terrace, and Cruden Street as far as the backs of houses in Queen’s Head Lane, with provision for 14 semi-detached and 74 terraced houses, was taken by James and Thomas Ward and built up by James Ward and sublessees. Leases for nos. 7-21 St. Peter’s Street, pairs of stuccoed villas originally called Angell Terrace after the Clothworkers’ surveyor, Samuel Angell, who probably laid out the estate, were granted in 1848 and for the rest of the block from 1848 to 1852.”