The area is named after Henry Penton, who developed a number of streets in the 1770s in what was open countryside adjacent to the New Road.

[1] Pentonville was part of the ancient parish of Clerkenwell, and was incorporated into the Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury by the London Government Act 1899.

There was a Pentonville ward from 1965 to 1978, electing three councillors to Islington London Borough Council.

Pentonville is the birthplace of John Stuart Mill (1806) and Forbes Benignus Winslow (1810), the noted psychiatrist.

In 1902 Vladimir Lenin and his wife lived just off Pentonville Road, and it was at this time that he first met his fellow exile Leon Trotsky.