Farringdon Road is a road in

Clerkenwell Clerkenwell () is an area of central London, England. Clerkenwell was an ancient parish from the mediaeval period onwards, and now forms the south-western part of the London Borough of Islington. The well after which it was named was redisco ...

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a major s ...

Route

Farringdon Road is part of the A201 route connecting King's Cross to

Elephant and Castle The Elephant and Castle is an area around a major road junction in London, England, in the London Borough of Southwark. The name also informally refers to much of Walworth and Newington, due to the proximity of the London Underground statio ...

. It goes southeast from King's Cross, crossing Rosebery Avenue, then turns south, crossing Clerkenwell Road before going past Farringdon station. It finishes on the border between the City of London, the

London Borough of Camden The London Borough of Camden () is a London borough in Inner London. Camden Town Hall, on Euston Road, lies north of Charing Cross. The borough was established on 1 April 1965 from the area of the former boroughs of Hampstead, Holborn, and St ...

and the

London Borough of Islington The London Borough of Islington ( ) is a London borough in Inner London. Whilst the majority of the district is located in north London, the borough also includes a significant area to the south which forms part of central London. Islington has ...

, at a junction with Charterhouse Street. Its line continues into the City as Farringdon Street.

History

The road's construction, taking almost 20 years between the 1840s and the 1860s, is considered one of the greatest urban engineering achievements of the 19th century. It was one of the first engineered multi-lane roads, and buried the

River Fleet The River Fleet is the largest of London's subterranean rivers, all of which today contain foul water for treatment. Its headwaters are two streams on Hampstead Heath, each of which was dammed into a series of ponds—the Hampstead Ponds an ...

in a system of tunnels, solving one of London's most significant sanitary problems. Its construction also included the building of the world's first stretch of underground railway, the

Metropolitan Railway The Metropolitan Railway (also known as the Met) was a passenger and goods railway that served London from 1863 to 1933, its main line heading north-west from the capital's financial heart in the City to what were to become the Middlesex su ...

that later became part of the

London Underground The London Underground (also known simply as the Underground or by its nickname the Tube) is a rapid transit system serving Greater London and some parts of the adjacent counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex and Hertfordshire in England. The Un ...

running beneath Farringdon Road from into the City at station. The construction of Farringdon Road necessitated the removal of the Fleet Market that had been built in 1736 above the course of the

, which is now London's largest

subterranean river A subterranean river is a river that runs wholly or partly beneath the ground surface – one where the riverbed does not represent the surface of the Earth. It is distinct from an aquifer, which may flow like a river but is contained within a pe ...

. North of the market was Hockley-in-the-Hole (around Ray Street Bridge), an area notorious for bear-baiting and similar activities.

Properties

Amongst the notable buildings on Farringdon Road are the former headquarters of ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the G ...

'' newspaper at Nos. 119-141, the so-called Zeppelin Building at No. 61 built in 1917 after a

Zeppelin A Zeppelin is a type of rigid airship named after the German inventor Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin () who pioneered rigid airship development at the beginning of the 20th century. Zeppelin's notions were first formulated in 1874Eckener 1938, p ...

raid during World War I, and the western side of

Smithfield Market Smithfield, properly known as West Smithfield, is a district located in Central London, part of Farringdon Without, the most westerly ward of the City of London, England. Smithfield is home to a number of City institutions, such as St Bartho ...

. A notorious building on Farringdon Road was the Farringdon Road Buildings, a five-tenement block of dwellings built for the working classes during the Victorian era. Lacking bathrooms and with poor sanitary conditions this building, one of the last slum dwellings to exist in central London, was still occupied until the early 1970s. Common features were poor lighting, overcrowding, with rat- and cockroach-infested living conditions, and people trapped by their own poverty. The residents were re-housed by Islington Borough Council and the buildings, close to Exmouth Market and the Royal Mail Mount Pleasant Sorting Office, were pulled down in the mid-1970s to be replaced by a

multi-storey car park A multistorey car park (British and Singapore English) or parking garage (American English), also called a multistory, parking building, parking structure, parkade (mainly Canadian), parking ramp, parking deck or indoor parking, is a build ...

. A contemporary description of the buildings is given in

George Gissing George Robert Gissing (; 22 November 1857 – 28 December 1903) was an English novelist, who published 23 novels between 1880 and 1903. His best-known works have reappeared in modern editions. They include ''The Nether World'' (1889), ''New Grub ...

's novel ''The Nether World''. The dwellings in Faringdon Road had an annex at the bottom of Safron Hill have been restored and now belong to the De Beers Diamond Group. The original set of dwellings were occupied predominantly by Italians and formed part of "Little Italy"

References

{{coord, 51, 31, 13, N, 0, 06, 21, W, region:GB_type:landmark, display=title Streets in the London Borough of Camden Streets in the London Borough of Islington Clerkenwell

Route

History

Properties

See also

References