A row of grandiose city buildings on the south side of the historic London Wall road are the principal constituents of this neighbourhood area. Businesses like Hawes and Curtis, a clothing brand, and Dr Kelly and Associates, private healthcare consultants, occupy the office space here. To the north of the road is one of London’s oldest public parks – Finsbury Circus Gardens, lined with towering plane trees, a bandstand and an old drinking fountain, lends this locale a unique character. This tranquil escape is surrounded on all sides by listed buildings and during the summer season its lawns are filled up by city workers and tourists trying to catch a tan. In the south-eastern part of the area, All Hallows-On-The-Wall is a grade I listed church where Christian Aid and other charitable organisations like the urban youth charity, XLP, meet and hold community events.

Prior to the sixteenth century, the area was mostly moorland – giving rise to nearby ‘Moorgate’. These ‘Moor Fields’ were drained in 1527 and walks were laid out for the private residents of the area. The notorious Bethlem psychiatric hospital (or Bedlam) once stood at this location after its old location at Bishopsgate (Shoreditch) could no longer serve its purpose. Bedlam – which has become synonymous with ‘insanity’ – is considered one of Europe’s earliest mental asylums. It stood here until 1815, when George Dance the Younger designed an oval ‘amphitheatre’ that would be central to the Moorfields Estate’s redevelopment. It was not until the 1900s that the new Finsbury Circus would become open to the public, serving previously as an open space for the private owners of the surrounding buildings. There has been a church at the location of All-Hallows since the twelfth century. In the eighteenth century, it was rebuilt by the very same George Dance the Younger, after his extensive studies of classical buildings in Italy.

Samuel John Stone was a Rector of All Hallows-on-the-wall between the years 1890 and 1900. Stone was a poet and hymn writer, as well as a priest, and is perhaps most famous for the hymn The Church’s One Foundation. Born in Staffordshire and educated at Pembroke College, Oxford, Stone became Curate of St Pauls, Haggerston in 1870. His poetry has been described as “varying considerably in metre and subject and thus [presenting] a pleasing variety, not always found in compositions of popular hymn-writers.” Along with religiously inspired works, Stone wrote many songs, sonnets, and descriptive poetry which, though mostly rooted in his faith, also took on lighter tones. One example is his Soliloquy to the Rationalistic Chicken.

The capital’s only Chinese pagoda tree stands at Finsbury circus. Its white flowers bloom in late summer, long after most other trees have done so.

The Miglia Quadrato is a treasure hunt run by the University of London Motor Club. Participants in a team of up to five people have from midnight until 5am to drive around the Square Mile looking for clues. Finsbury Circus has served as a start and end point for the competition.

Nearby Liverpool Street station has recently expanded, adding the Elizabeth line to its already expansive repertoire of transport links. Passengers are now just six minutes from Canary Wharf in the east and are directly connected to Heathrow and the Thames Valley commuter belt to the west. Further work is scheduled for the station in the coming years, with 1.5 billion set to be spent on a regeneration of the grade-II listed building. Just south of Finsbury Circus a mixed use commercial development at 60 London Wall was recently completed, featuring curved glass architecture which Londoners will recognise as typical of the City of London.