About 1852 the Corporation of London purchased Copenhagen House with its grounds and adjacent fields to the extent of about seventy-five acres, and began to build there the present Metropolitan Cattle Market, between the York and Caledonian Roads, which was opened in 1855. The old tavern (pulled down in 1853[170]) and tea-gardens were thus swept away, and their site is approximately marked by the Great Clock Tower in the market.[171] [Hone’s _Every Day Book_, i. 858, ff.; Nelson’s _Islington_; Lewis’s _Islington_; Larwood and Hotten, _Signboards_, 435, 436; Walford, ii. 275, 276, 283; v. 374; Tomlins’s _Perambulation of Islington_, 204, 205.] VIEWS. 1. Copenhagen House, Islington, as it appeared in 1737, sepia drawing by Bernard Lens. Crace, _Cat._ p. 604, No. 191. 2. South-east view of Copenhagen House, printed for R. Sayer and J. Bennett, 20 March, 1783 (W. Coll.); the woodcut in Lewis’s _Islington_, p. 283, is derived from this. 3. Copenhagen House, Islington. J. Swaine del. 1793; J. Swaine, sculp. 1854. Woodcut (W. Coll.). 4. There are several views of Copenhagen House in the nineteenth century, see _e.g._ Hone’s _Every Day Book_, i. 858; Cromwell’s _Islington_, p. 204; Crace, _Cat._ p. 605, Nos. 194, 196 (views of 1853). 5. “The Grand Meeting of the Metropolitan Trades’ Unions in the Copenhagen Fields on Monday, April 21, 1834.” Coloured engraving by Geo. Dorrington (W. Coll.). This shows Copenhagen House and an enormous concourse in the fields. HIGHBURY BARN Highbury Barn Tavern with its gardens is, like the Canonbury House Tavern and gardens, rooted in a respectable antiquity, for it stood on the site of Highbury Barn[172] which formed part of the farm attached to the old country seat[173] of the Prior of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. Highbury Barn (the tavern) was originally a small cake and ale house which was in existence at least as early as 1740[174]. It was occasionally (about 1768) honoured by a visit from Oliver Goldsmith on one of his Shoemaker’s holidays. Goldsmith and three or four of his friends would leave his Temple chambers in the morning and proceed by the City Road and through the fields to Highbury Barn, where at one o’clock they enjoyed a dinner of two courses and pastry, at the cost of tenpence a head including the waiter’s penny. The company then to be met with at the inn consisted of Templars and literary men, and a citizen or two retired from business. At about six, Goldsmith and his party adjourned to the White Conduit House for tea, and ended the day with supper at the Globe or Grecian.