Upper Street

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 the drovers' road, channelling livestock from the Midlands and North of England towards Smithfield Market in the City of London.

[5] A William Beverley (identified with William Roxby Beverley), the first to solve the problem of a "magic knight's tour" in chess (a variant on the knight's tour in which the numbered steps form a magic square) resided in these buildings,[6][7] now replaced by Islington Town Hall.

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.

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 the Almeida Theatre in the 1970s.

In 1860 a Unitarian congregation decided to move out of the City (from Carter Lane near St Paul's Cathedral) and build a large church in the Dissenting Gothic style on Upper Street.

Half a century later its official history recalls: The spire and building were badly damaged in the Blitz, and demolished.

In 1862, a group of businessmen associated with the Smithfield Show opened the Royal Agricultural Hall on a large plot between Upper Street and Liverpool Road immediately to the west.

[13] Between 1936 and 1939, the former Methodist chapel in Providence Place, just off Upper Street, was the home of a drama school, the London Theatre Studio, directed by Michel Saint-Denis, with a conversion of the building designed by Marcel Breuer and F. R. S.

Further north is Islington Town Hall, where the joint first legal same-sex marriage in England took place on 29 March 2014.

Accessed from Upper Street through these gardens is Union Chapel, a working Congregational church, live-entertainment venue and charity drop-in centre for the homeless.

[26] Upper Street was one of the settings for local resident[27] Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series.