Located in Islington North and sandwiched between Holloway Road and Hornsey Road, with Seven Sisters Road running through the middle, this neighbourhood is perfectly positioned amongst the bustling transport and retail hub of Holloway. All three main roads in the area provide a huge range of cafes, bars and other amenities, as well as a multitude of bus routes throughout the city, both north and south, and Holloway Road Underground offers Piccadilly Line services all the way to Cockfosters, Uxbridge and even to Heathrow Airport. The Nag’s Head, despite no longer being a pub, still performs an important community role as a contemporary shopping centre. The energetic Holloway and Hornsey Roads give way to some surprisingly quaint and leafy residential streets lined by a mixture of Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian terraces, most of which have been split up into reasonably affordable rented flats that provide homes for the area’s extremely diverse and dense population. With London Metropolitan University nearby, the student friendly area has, over the last few years, become a popular rental location for undergraduates at a range of London universities that can be reached by the many transport links, as well as young families priced out of nearby Camden and Islington. Despite its constantly shifting population and the rapid gentrification of nearby areas particularly to the south of Holloway Road, the area maintains a strong and tangible community spirit felt by many who live here.

While no consensus can be agreed upon by historians, it is believed that the name Holloway derives from either the ‘Hollow’ or dip in the road caused by the cattle driving route from the North into Smithfield, or ‘Hallow’, referring to the road’s significance as part of the pilgrimage route to Walsingham. The road was in such a poor state by the 14th century that the Bishop of London commissioned a new toll road up Highgate Hill, which was the origin of the Great North Road that reaches from London to Edinburgh, now known as the A1. Predominantly rural until the 19th century, Holloway, like much of North London, experienced rapid residential and commercial growth around the turn of the 20th century with the introduction of the railways, and became an important shopping centre, aided by the Nag’s Head junction which was a hub for trolleybus services. In the 1930s Holloway developed into something of a cinema district and was once home to ten different theatres including a Grade II-listed Art Deco Gaumont Picturehouse, and the beautiful 1940s Savoy Cinema. The area took significant damage during the Blitz due to its proximity to King’s Cross, and many of the cinemas were destroyed or damaged, including the Grade II-listed Odeon, which was restored in 1958 to its former glory.

Football fans will be excited to know that one of the best defenders in the world according to some, Ashley Cole, grew up in an apartment at 69 Tollington Road. A boyhood Arsenal fan, he joined the local side in 1999, making almost 400 Premier League appearances for both Arsenal and Chelsea, as well as 107 for England.

The famous record producer Joe Meek (1929-1967) also lived in the area at 304 Holloway Road from 1960 until his death in 1967. He is best known for producing the first ever US Top 100 No. 1 by a British group – ‘Telstar’ by The Tornados – and also worked with Lonnie Donegan and The Honeycombs. Sadly Meek’s paranoia and depression eventually got the better of his career, and his homosexuality (illegal at the time) got him in trouble with the police. His financial situation deteriorated and in February 1967, during a fit of rage, he killed his landlady and himself with a shotgun borrowed from The Tornados’ bassist Heinz Burt.

The now legendary music pub, Nambucca, is located in the area up Holloway Road towards Archway. In the mid-2000s it provided a platform for acts such as Frank Turner, Mumford & Sons, and Laura Marling and was a staple of the emerging indie scene led by The Libertines. Unfortunately destroyed by a fire in 2008, the venue reopened properly in 2014 after huge renovations and has since become a 300 capacity venue and host to acts such as Wolf Alice, Fat White Family and The Enemy.

The unassuming Leslie Green designed Holloway Road Underground station was once home to a unique feat of engineering! American inventor Jesse Reno, who created the escalator, picked out Holloway Road tube station as the site of the world’s first spiral escalator to coincide with the opening of the Piccadilly Line. The escalator’s safety was highly questionable, however, especially considering no underground station even had a straight escalator at this time, and the contraption, set to take passengers 10 metres below ground, was abandoned. It was discovered at the bottom of an old lift shaft in 1988 and is now housed at the London Transport Museum Depot in Acton.

Holloway doesn’t possess the quality sheen of some of the higher value areas of London, and has been described in the past as dirty and noisy. One local barman argued in favour of this, however, suggesting that Holloway’s slightly dog-eared reputation tends to keep the big luxury housing investors out and the local community in.

The affordable housing developments at 317-321 Holloway Road, means that the population of the area has recently increased, bringing even more diversity to Holloway, and more custom to the many small businesses on the road. Slightly further east, Peabody Developers have recently acquired the site of the former HM Prison Holloway as it stands on 10 acres of land prime for regeneration. In 2019 it was agreed that 985 new homes will be built on the site as well as a 1.4 acre public park, retail space, and a Women’s Centre. These added facilities, as well as a provision stipulating that over 50% of housing should be affordable, were secured by Islington Council. The building between 457 and 463 Holloway Road is also being transformed from office space into a selection of new residential properties.