THE ANGEL, ISLINGTON

    The Angel, Islington, was originally a coaching inn. In 1933, when the London Monopoly board was conceived, it was a Lyons restaurant. Now it’s a Co-operative Bank. Wetherspoons have named their pub next door The Angel which is partly on the site of the original inn. It is currently up for sale but Wetherspoons say the pub will continue to trade until a buyer is found. The white tower (now Starbucks) was once the Angel cinema (1911-1972).

    Tube Trivia (1): There are six stations on the Underground named after pubs: Angel, Elephant and Castle, Royal Oak, Maida Vale, Swiss Cottage and Manor House. Of those only two original buildings remain: Swiss Cottage, which has been extensively redeveloped, and Royal Oak which hasn’t changed much apart from the fact it’s now called The Porchester. There would be seven but the Bull and Bush station in Hampstead was never completed. The pub is still going strong.

    Angel Underground boasts the longest escalator in the UK and the third longest in Europe. A shorter escalator beyond this takes you down to platform level. 

    Hampstead, however, has the deepest platforms. It uses lifts not escalators.  

    Tube Trivia (2) The first escalator on the Underground was opened at Earl’s Court in 1910. In order to reassure passengers it was safe Bumper Harris, who had a wooden leg, was employed to go up and down the escalator. It remained Bumper’s job for several years.

 

    “Our Gracie” lived above a sweet shop at 72a Upper Street, Islington from 1926 until 1929. She was the Adele of her day. Her greatest hits were ‘Sally’, ‘The Biggest Aspidistra in the World’ and ‘Wish Me Luck as You Wave Me Goodbye’. She also enjoyed box office success, notably the film “Sally In Our Alley”. In 1937 the canny Rochdale lass signed a £200,000 contract with Twentieth Century Fox. At the time it was reported as ‘the highest salary ever paid to a human being’.

     The green plaque is outside 58 Liverpool Road. The more traditional blue plaque is in Southwark. I think Derek Jarman would have approved of both. He was one of the first public figures to talk openly about having HIV and died of an AIDS-related illness in 1994.

    The former Carlton Cinema (and then Mecca Bingo) in Essex Road, Islington, was completed in 1930 as a cine-variety theatre. Influenced by the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922, architect George Coles opted for an Egyptian style facade dressed in multi-coloured Hathernware tiles (I can copy and paste Wikipedia). It was purchased by a church in 2013.

     On the left is a commission for the 2020 London Mural Festival. On the right, under the perspex, an original Banksy. It’s opposite the Carlton Cinema and known either as ‘In Tesco’s We Trust’ or ‘Every Little Helps’, no-one is quite sure.

    This is what it looked like before it was vandalised …

            

     I find a crisp new £10 note on the pavement. Thinking it might be a set up and I could be shamed on YouTube I donate it to a grateful Big Issue seller.

    Floyd Fact: Another Brick in the Wall was banned in South Africa after it became an anthem for students protesting against the apartheid education system.

       … but it had stopped raining and Mank is on Netflix. So instead I decided to walk around Islington some more, including the twee Camden Passage ….

 

     It's worth checking out The Bill Murray, at the very least for the fine Zabou portraits.