Upper Street, Islington, London

In the 1970s, Upper Street in Islington was a gritty, transitional thoroughfare far removed from its modern polish, caught between post-war working-class decline and the first distinct ripples of inner-London gentrification. Soot-blackened Georgian and Victorian terraces, some still showing scars or infill from wartime bomb damage, housed traditional trades, greasy-spoon cafes, secondhand junk shops, and hardware merchants alongside a burgeoning counterculture. Amid the rumble of traffic along the A1, radical politics, squatters’ movements, and artistic reinvention took root—anchored by pioneers like Dan Crawford’s King’s Head Theatre pub (founded in 1970), the seminal pub-rock and punk gigs at the Hope and Anchor, and feminist collectives such as Sisterwrite. It was an unvarnished, bohemian stretch defined by faded grandeur, cheap bedsits, local characters, and the lively overlap of traditional North London community life with an emerging wave of middle-class pioneers, artists, and political activists.

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