Whitecross Street

Whitecross Street Prison was a debtors' prison in London, England. It was built between 1813–15 to ease overcrowding at Newgate Prison and closed in 1870, when all of the prisoners were transferred to the newly built Holloway Prison.Situated on Whitecross Street in Islington the prison was capable of holding up to 500 prisoners, although in normal circumstances less than half that number would be held there. The prisoners were held in six separate 'wards,' and included a 'Female ward.' Known both as 'Burdon's Hotel' (after one of Governors) and the 'Cripplegate Coffeehouse,' the prison seems to have had a worse reputation than the other London Debtors' prison of the time due to the fact that it had common wards rather than individual rooms: "[the] prison inspectors thought that 'the crying evil of Whitecross-Street Prison is that the well-disposed debtor when so inclined, had no means of protecting himself from association with the depraved.'" This was one of the prisons visited by Lydia Irving as part of Elizabeth Fry's British Ladies Society for promoting the reformation of female prisoners in the 1820s.A £20 payment known as 'Nell Gwynne's bounty' was given to inmates of Whitecross Street Prison each Christmas, a payment that could apparently be traced back to the long time mistress of King Charles II.

Finsbury is a district of Central London, forming the south-eastern part of the London Borough of Islington. It borders the City of London. The Manor of Finsbury is first recorded as Vinisbir (1231) and means "manor of a man called Finn". Finsbury lay just outside Cripplegate (and on its later construction, Moorgate) in London Wall. At that time, much of the manor was part of the "great fen which washed against the northern wall of the City".Finsbury gave its name to two larger administrative areas: the Finsbury Division of the Ossulstone Hundred of Middlesex, from the 17th century until 1900, and from 1900 to 1965 the Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury. The Metropolitan Borough included Finsbury (also known as St Luke's) and Clerkenwell. The area should not be confused with Finsbury Park, a public space roughly 3 miles (5 km) to the north, which gives its name to its surrounding mainly residential area.

The Fortune Playhouse was a historic theatre in London. It was located between Whitecross Street and the modern Golden Lane, just outside the City of London. It was founded about 1600, and suppressed by the Puritan Parliament in 1642.

Quaker Gardens is a small public garden in the extreme south of the London Borough of Islington, close to the boundary with the City of London, in the area known historically as Bunhill Fields. It is managed by Islington Borough Council. It comprises the surviving fragment of a former burying ground for Quakers (members of the Religious Society of Friends), in use from 1661 to 1855. George Fox (d. 1691), one of the founders of the movement, was among those buried here. The gardens lie to the west of Bunhill Row, to the south of Banner Street, and to the north of Chequer Street, and can be entered from either Banner Street or Chequer Street. In addition to the public garden, the site includes a children's playground and a tarmac ball court with basketball hoops. A Quaker meeting house, the last remaining part of the former Bunhill Memorial Buildings, stands at the north-west corner of the gardens.

St Luke's is a district in central London in the Borough of Islington. It lies just north of the border with the City of London near the Barbican Estate, and the Clerkenwell and Shoreditch areas. The area takes its name from the now redundant parish church of St Luke's, on Old Street west of Old Street station. Following the closure of the church, the parish was reabsorbed into that of St Giles-without-Cripplegate, from which it had separated in 1733.

The Jugged Hare is a public house and restaurant at 49 Chiswell Street, between Barbican and Moorgate underground stations in the City of London. The pub was opened on the site of an old Grade II listed brewery in 2012 by brothers Ed and Tom Martin, who also run The Gun in the Docklands and The Prince Arthur in London Fields, among other establishments. The decor includes oak flooring, red leather seating and a collection of stuffed and mounted animals.Upon opening, it was reviewed favourably by restaurant critic Giles Coren of The Times, who called it "a very good addition to a good chain of pubs".

St Luke's is a historic Anglican church building in central London, and in the London Borough of Islington. It served as a parish church from 1733 to 1959. It was designed by John James and Nicholas Hawksmoor, and is a Grade I listed building. Following closure in 1959, the church stood derelict and roofless for some 40 years, but since 2003 has been a music centre operated by the London Symphony Orchestra and known as LSO St Luke's. It is the home of the LSO's community and music education programme, LSO Discovery. The main body of the building seats up to 372 and is used by the LSO for rehearsals, and by a wide variety of musicians for performances and recording. Additional rooms in the crypt provide practice facilities for professional musicians, students and community groups.

The Jewin Welsh Presbyterian Chapel (Welsh: Eglwys Gymraeg Jewin) is a Presbyterian Church of Wales church in Clerkenwell, London, England. The current building was opened in 1960 on a site adjoining the Golden Lane Estate. It replaced a chapel built in 1878–1879 on the same site, destroyed in World War II air raids in September 1940. The congregation had moved there in 1879 from nearby Jewin Crescent, a site now incorporated into the Barbican. The Jewin Crescent chapel had opened in 1822, following a move from Wilderness Row, Clerkenwell. The first services had taken place in c. 1774 in Cock Lane, Smithfield. The current building was designed by Caroe and Partners in a Swedish-inspired form of modern architecture sometimes called the New Humanism. After a dramatic fall in the congregation, in 2013 London-based BBC News presenter Huw Edwards agreed to lead a campaign to save the building and the chapel, to keep the traditions of the London Welsh community alive. Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones chose the campaign as his input to BBC Wales Today for Children in Need 2013.

Bunhill Row is a street located in St Luke's, London Borough of Islington, London. The street runs north–south from Old Street to Chiswell Street. On the east side are the cemetery of Bunhill Fields and the open space of the Honourable Artillery Company's Artillery Ground.

St Paul's Tavern is a former pub at 56 Chiswell Street, London EC1. It is now a restaurant, the Chiswell Street Dining Rooms.It is a Grade II listed building, dating back to the mid-late 18th century.

The Golden Lane Estate is a 1950s council housing complex in the City of London. It was built on the northern edge of the City, on a site devastated by bombing during the Second World War. Since 1997, the estate has been protected as a group of listed buildings of special architectural interest.

Beech Street is a street in the City of London. It was formerly known as Beech Lane and was named after Nicholas de la Beche, a lieutenant of the Tower of London in the reign of Edward III in the 14th century. It runs west-east, from its junction with Aldersgate Street and Long Lane in the west, to the junction with Whitecross Street, Silk Street and Chiswell Street in the east. The eastern junction marks the boundary of the City with Islington: Whitecross and Chiswell (north and east) are in Islington, while Beech and Silk (west and south) are in the City. The majority of the street is in a pseudo-tunnel under the Barbican estate. On 18 March 2020 the street became the UK's first "zero emission street", only allowing access to pedestrians, cyclists, and zero emission vehicles. This remained in effect until September 2021, and in December that year members of the City of London corporation voted for a public consultation into making the scheme permanent.Access to several of the Barbican car parks is from Beech Street.