A walk through London’s Little Italy up to the fields of Islington

This walk is based on the first part of Chapter 8 of my book This Other London.
Starting at Chancery Lane Station on High Holborn, we go into the curious anomaly of Ely Place, owned by the Bishops of Ely and once technically part of Cambridgeshire. We visit the Old Mitre Pub where Sir Christopher Hatton danced with Elizabeth I. We go along Hatton Garden, the centre of Britain’s diamond trade, and into Leather Lane Market. The walk through Little Italy takes us in search of Fagin’s den in Saffron Hill, a place visited by Charles Dickens who drank in the One Tun pub. We walk along Hatton Wall into Portpool Lane where the Kings Ditch ran and through the Bourne Estate.

The Heart of London’s Little Italy

The heart of London’s Little Italy lay in the streets falling away from Clerkenwell Road into the Fleet Valley – Back Hill, Eyre Street Hill, Herbal Hill. From here we go up Crawford Passage to Coldbath Square and Mount Pleasant. We stroll through Spa Fields – now Exmouth Market and Wilmington Square where Merlin was said to have a cave in the heart of the hill. The Merlin’s Cave Tavern stood in Merlin House on the site of Charles Rowan House. Next we walk through Lloyd Square to Percy Circus where Lenin stayed in 1905. Back on Amwell Street we recount E.O Gordon’s powerful mythology of London at the head of the Pen Ton Mound, now the New River Head Upper Reservoir on Claremont Square. Passing down Penton Street our walk ends at White Conduit House, once a celebrated pleasure garden and the true home of cricket.

Video filmed January 2021