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Islington Leasing

Did You Know?

Islington is home to more restaurants than there are days in a year, if you were to eat in a different restaurant each day you wouldn’t quite have tried them all by the end of the year. Offering everything from tasty Mediterranean to traditional Ecuadorian, Islington has everything to satisfy any craving.

The famous Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix feature its headquarters at 12 Grimmauld Place, a fictitious street in Islington.

Islington was one of the first London Boroughs to receive fresh water which came via a 40 mile canal from Hertfordshire until 1990 when it was replaced with deep mains.

Islington has been home to two major ethnic groups, in the 1850s part of the area became home to a large amount of Italian immigrants, although not as many may live there now, a strong presence can still be felt with the famous St. Peter’s Italian Church located here. There are also many Irish immigrants here, boasting the second highest Irish population after the Borough of Brent.

Douglas Adams actually based some of the characters in his Hitchhiker’s Guide series on people that he knew in the borough.  Adams had lived in the area on Arlington Avenue and the character Hotblack Desiato was named after a well-known real estate agent.  Islington is also the location of the flat where Arthur Dent meets Trillian at a party before she’s whisked off by Zaphod Beeblebrox.

Besides Mr. Adams, a great number of other well-known individuals have called Islington home over the years.  These persons include Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn, actress Minnie Driver, Thomas Cromwell, Gillian Anderson, Daniel DeFoe, Naomi Harris, George Orwell, and more.

In 1959, playwright Joe Orton and his partner Kenneth Halliwell moved into 25 Noel Road, Islington, and spent three years sneaking books from Islington library, cutting out pictures, and creating bizarre photo collages on their covers before returning the tomes to the library shelves.

The 500-year-old Coventry Tapestry, on the north wall of the city’s medieval guildhall of St Mary, is the oldest in the country still hanging on the wall for which it was made. It features King Henry VI and his wife Margaret of Anjou, surrounded by many of the people they knew in life.

Islington born and bred Jane Taylor writes Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in 1806. Nelson Mandela later sang it to children at his retirement party