An Islington pub kept charging in shillings for twenty years after decimalisation
Britain switched to decimal coins on 15 February 1971, but the King's Head in Islington did not. Its theatre founder, Dan Crawford, disliked the change, so for more than twenty years the bar went on pricing drinks in pounds, shillings and pence. The tavern has occupied that spot opposite the parish church since 1543.
Islington began as a Saxon manor recorded as Giseldone in 1005, a name meaning the hill of a man called Gisla. It later became Isledon before settling into its modern form in the 17th century. The Great North Road ran through it from the 14th century, heading from the City of London toward York and Edinburgh, and the parallel Back Road served drovers, who rested cattle in pens there before the last stretch to Smithfield market.
Water shaped the district. Springs at the foot of its hill fed the City, and when those ran short, Sir Hugh Myddelton built the New River, an artificial channel bringing fresh water from Hertfordshire, which opened on 29 September 1613. A statue of him marks the junction of Upper Street and Essex Road. Plentiful water also made the area a market garden for London, and its rural feel drew day-trippers: by 1716 there were 56 ale-house keepers on Upper Street alone, offering tea gardens, skittles and archery, later joined by fireworks and balloon ascents. The Regent's Canal of 1820 slips beneath it through a tunnel 886 metres long; with no towpath inside, bargemen had to walk their boats through, pushing against the roof.
Entertainment boomed in the Victorian era. Collins's Music Hall, which began in 1862 as a singing room behind a tavern, grew into a 1,800-seat theatre where Marie Lloyd, Gracie Fields and Norman Wisdom performed. A literary institute from 1837, later a Salvation Army barracks and a novelty factory, eventually became the Almeida Theatre.
Fortunes swung sharply. The population soared from 10,212 in 1801 to 319,143 by 1891, helped by horse-drawn buses, but railway clearances elsewhere crowded poor families in, and by the mid-twentieth century the area was a byword for poverty. From the 1960s, middle-class buyers restored its Georgian terraces, making it an early example of what came to be called gentrification.
Source: Islington
