NLA Walking Tour: From horizontal to vertical, Housing in Islington

For centuries, the townscape around Angel, Islington has been associated with its well-preserved, genteel Georgian and Victorian buildings, streets and terraces. In the twentieth century, whilst some notable post-war housing at a mix of low and high-rise scales was built in Finsbury, just to the south of the Angel, the urban environment here has remained predominantly low-rise.

However, after a change in attitude towards tall buildings, in recent years there has been an explosion of sky-scraping residential blocks built along City Road towards Old Street. Do these taller blocks destroy the original character of this neighbourhood or are they simply a new form of the traditional terrace, albeit rising into the sky? This tour will look at these contrasting housing typologies and how they came about.

Highlights include Bunhill 2 Energy Centre, Duncan Terrace/Colebrooke Row Conservation Area and The Atlas Building.

This tour connects to our Homes for Londoners research. Find out more here.