Looking across Waterloo Terrace towards Premier House

The Metropolitan Street Improvements Act of 1883 (inter alia authorising the widening of Upper Street from Islington Green to the Unitarian Chapel on the east side and from Waterloo Terrace to Barnsbury Street on the west side) required the rehousing of “the number of persons of the working classes displaced by the improvements”. That number was fixed by the Home Secretary at 140 persons and the Metropolitan Board of Works set apart a site in Waterloo Terrace to accommodate this number. The site, coloured blue in the plan, included No. 1 Waterloo Terrace and various stables and outbuildings behind the properties in Upper Street.

The site was sold for £950 on a 999 year lease at one shilling per annum ground rent, with the purchaser bound to erect dwellings for 140 persons within 9 months and to expend £4,000 on the buildings. They were completed in October 1887 permitting the widened street to be opened for traffic early in 1888.