Upper Street is the main street of theIslington district of innernorth London, and carries theA1 road. It begins at the junction of the A1 andLiverpool Road, continuing on from Islington High Street which runs from the crossroads atPentonville Road andCity Road and runs roughly northwards from outside the main entrance toAngel Underground station, then past theBusiness Design Centre, then splits atIslington Green (whereEssex Road, formerly named Lower Street, branches off), then pastThe Screen On The Green cinema, pastIslington Town Hall, ending atHighbury & Islington tube station on Highbury Corner, where the A1 carries on asHolloway Road, part of theGreat North Road.
Upper Street contains many fashionable shops, pubs, restaurants and theatres, concentrated on the west side of the street, while the east side has several notable churches and chapels.
The hilltop village of Islington originally consisted of two streets in addition to the High Street: Upper Street and Lower Street, which diverged from the High Street atIslington Green. Both date back to at least the 12th century.[1] Near the Green is theparish church,St Mary's.Henry VIII hunted duck in the ponds off Upper Street,[2] whileWalter Raleigh lived in Upper Street and owned a pub in Lower Street.[3] Lower Street has since been renamedEssex Road.
The fields around Upper Street, with their close proximity to the growing city of London, were a major farming area, mostly for dairying and market gardens. The street itself served as part of thedrovers' road, channelling livestock from the Midlands and North of England towardsSmithfield Market in theCity of London.
From the end of the 16th century, there was a significant inn at the bottom of what is now Islington High Street. It was known asthe Angel by 1614[4] and lends its name to that area. The 1837Charles Dickens novelOliver Twist states that the Angel is where "London began in earnest".
In the 18th century Upper Street began to be redeveloped from an agricultural to a residential area. Ten houses were built in 1768 (later named Hornsey Row), and a further group built immediately south of Hornsey Row in 1792.[5] A William Beverley (identified withWilliam Roxby Beverley), the first to solve the problem of a "magic knight's tour" in chess (a variant on theknight's tour in which the numbered steps form amagic square) resided in these buildings,[6][7] now replaced byIslington Town Hall.
By 1825 theChurch Missionary Society Training College had moved to Upper Street.[8] The impressive purpose-built construction provided classrooms and living accommodation for prospectiveAnglicanmissionaries and a professional staff.[9] The new premises was designed to teach around 20 students to pass bishops' ordination examinations, tutoring them in Latin, Greek, English composition, sermon writing, and Divinity.[10]
In 1837, the year of Queen Victoria's accession, Islington residents decided to create their own "lit & phil". The Islington Literary and Scientific Society included a library, reading room, museum, laboratory, and a lecture theatre seating 500.[11] The architects were the fashionable partnership ofRobert Lewis Roumieu andAlexander Dick Gough. The library was sold off in 1872 and the building was disposed of in 1874, running through various owners and purposes over the following century, before becoming the home of theAlmeida Theatre in the 1970s.
In 1860 aUnitarian congregation moved out of the City (fromCarter Lane nearSt Paul's Cathedral) and built a large church in theDissenting Gothic style on Upper Street. Half a century later its official history recalls:
The spire and building were badly damaged inthe Blitz, and demolished. Islingon Council purchased the land fronting onto Upper Street and built a fire station. Tucked away behind this, though still with an entry fronting onto the main street, is the 1950s rebuilding.
By the mid 19th century, the growth of London necessitated a bigger venue for agricultural and other shows. In 1862, a group of businessmen associated with theSmithfield Show opened the Royal Agricultural Hall on a large plot between Upper Street andLiverpool Road immediately to the west. Unusually for London, both roads were rebuilt with a highpavement - up to 1 m above the road surface for some of their length - to protect pedestrians from being splashed with mud and ordure created by the large numbers of animals walking along thedrover's road to the hall.[13] A number of pubs and shops existed along Upper Street to serve farmers and visitors to the hall.[14] In the 1980s the exhibition venue was revamped as theBusiness Design Centre.
In the late nineteenth century, the Upper Street area became notorious for its night-time entertainments. In 1870,Charles Dickens described the area as "amongst the noisiest and most disagreeable thoroughfares in London."[15] and in 1885, it was widely known as "The Devil's Mile" on account of its prostitution, crime and the level of drunkenness.[16]
Between 1936 and 1939, the former Methodist chapel in Providence Place, just off Upper Street, was the home of a drama school, theLondon Theatre Studio, directed byMichel Saint-Denis, with a conversion of the building designed byMarcel Breuer andF. R. S. Yorke.[17][18] The students taught there includedPeter Ustinov.[19]
In recent years Upper Street has become extremely fashionable, and contains numerous pubs and restaurants,[20] The pubs along the street are also popular meeting places for supporters going to the nearbyEmirates Stadium, home ofArsenal Football Club.
Starting from the south, the first significant venue is a formertram shed, built in 1850 for commuter service to the City. By the 1940s the service had ceased, and the building was converted to anelectricity substation, which was then closed by the 1970s. Following some years of lying derelict, it was reopened on 14 November 1979 as The Mall Antiques Arcade, and at its height housed over 35 dealers on its ground and lower ground floors.[21] The building also housed other businesses, such as a restaurant in its upper floors, but the mall closed in 2008.[22] Since 2013, the building has housed several chain shops. It is currently anAmazon Fresh store. The closure of the arcade reflects the reduction in the number of antique traders in the nearbyCamden Passage, though a weekend antiques market is still held there. Moving north, there is the Business Design Centre, mentioned above as the Royal Agricultural Hall.
Islington Green is a small, triangular public park containingan artistically distinctive war memorial. At this point Upper Street splits, continuing north and northwest as a narrower street whileEssex Road (formerly Lower Street) continues northeast. North of Islington Green, places of interest include the former Islington Chapel, nowAngel Recording Studios[23] and theChurch of England parish church.St. Mary's was rebuilt in 1754[24] and its spire dominates the Islington skyline. The church is a major venue for performances of traditionalreligious music.
TheLittle Angel Theatre is a children'spuppet theatre in a formerTemperance hall, behind the church. Directly opposite the church is theKing's Head Theatre, founded in 1970 as the firstpub theatre in the UK. TheAlmeida Theatre is an important independent theatre and producing house. The former Islington post office is now the entrance to the large scale mixed-use development "Islington Square", centred around a convertedRoyal Mail sorting office.
Further north isIslington Town Hall, where the joint first legalsame-sex marriage in England took place on 29 March 2014.[25] Adjacent to the town hall isIslington Museum.
Upper Street also contains theHope and Anchor, one of the most importantvenues of the 1970s and 1980spunk andnew wave scenes.The Stranglers' albumLive at the Hope and Anchor was recorded here. The building is still in use as a music venue today.[26] Further north, the eastern side of Upper Street is taken up by a long but narrow garden, Compton Terrace Gardens. Accessed from Upper Street through these gardens isUnion Chapel, a workingCongregational church, live-entertainment venue and charitydrop-in centre for the homeless. Built in the late 19th century in theGothic Revival style, the church is aGrade I-listed building.
In the 1970s and 1980s Upper Street was a focal point of theradical left. It was home toSisterwrite, Britain's firstfeministbookshop, as well as theTrotskyist Pioneer Books, theanarchist Rising Free shop (famous for stealing stock from other shops to sell in theirs[citation needed]) and the socialist Red Books.[27] In the 1980s, Upper Street was home to the Islington Action Group for the Unwaged, a majorfar left campaigning andactivist group, and to the squatter-run Molly's Cafe, a focal point for the anarchist andsquatting movement.[28] Upper Street made headlines on 23 July 1995, when theReclaim the Streets movement took over the street, barricaded it to traffic and held a long party in the street.[29]
Upper Street was one of the settings for local resident[30]Douglas Adams'sThe Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. The London-based sections of the later books are set in and around Upper Street, the home address of "Fenchurch".[31] In addition, the character ofHotblack Desiato is named after a localestate agent.[32]
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51°32′25″N0°6′9″W / 51.54028°N 0.10250°W /51.54028; -0.10250