Upper Street is the main street of the Islington district of inner north London, and carries the A1 road. It begins at the junction of the A1 and Liverpool Road, continuing on from Islington High Street which runs from the crossroads at Pentonville Road/City Road and runs roughly northwards from outside the main entrance to Angel Underground station, then past the Business Design Centre, then splits at Islington Green (where Essex Road, formerly named Lower Street, branches off), then past The Screen On The Green cinema, past Islington Town Hall, ending at Highbury & Islington tube station on Highbury corner, where the A1 carries on as Holloway Road. It contains many fashionable shops, pubs, restaurants and theatres. History The hilltop village of Islington originally consisted of two streets in addition to the High Street: Upper Street and Lower Street, which diverged from the High Street at Islington Green. Both date back to at least the 12th century. Henry VIII hunted duck in the ponds off Upper Street, while Walter Raleigh lived in Upper Street and owned a pub in Lower Street. Lower Street has since been renamed Essex Road. The fields around Upper Street, with their close proximity to the growing city of London, were a major farming area. Islington was the home of the Royal Agricultural Hall, and a number of pubs and shops existed along the street to serve farmers and visitors to the hall. In the 18th century Upper Street began to be redeveloped from an agricultural to a residential area. Ten houses were built in 1768 (later named Hornsey Row), and a further group built immediately south of Hornsey Row in 1792. A William Beverley (identified with William Roxby Beverley), the first to solve the problem of a "magic knight's tour" in chess (a variant on the knight's tour in which the numbered steps form a magic square) resided in these buildings, now replaced by Islington Town Hall. In the late nineteenth century, the Upper Street area became notorious for its night-time entertainments. In 1870, Charles Dickens described the area as "amongst the noisiest and most disagreeable thoroughfares in London." and in 1885, it was widely known as "The Devil's Mile" on account of its prostitution, crime and the level of drunkenness. Between 1936 and 1939, the former Methodist chapel in Providence Place, just off Upper Street, was the home of a drama school, the London