Goswell Road, in

Central London Central London is the innermost part of London, in England, spanning several boroughs. Over time, a number of definitions have been used to define the scope of Central London for statistics, urban planning and local government. Its characteris ...

, is an end part of the A1. The southern part ends with one block, on the east side, in City of London; the rest is in the London Borough of Islington, the north end being Angel. It crosses Old Street/ Clerkenwell Road. In the north it splits

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 ...

from

Finsbury 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 ...

; the south was sometimes used as a demarcator but all but the southern corporate/legal/financial end in the modern era forms the heart of the highly developed mixed-use district

Barbican A barbican (from fro, barbacane) is a fortified outpost or fortified gateway, such as at an outer fortifications, defense perimeter of a city or castle, or any tower situated over a gate or bridge which was used for defensive purposes. Europe ...

. All of the road is inside the Central

London congestion charge The London congestion charge is a fee charged on most cars and motor vehicles being driven within the Congestion Charge Zone (CCZ) in Central London between 7:00 am and 6:00 pm Monday to Friday, and between 12:00 noon and 6:00 pm Saturday an ...

zone.

Notable premises

It is mostly fronted by offices and shops, else by some buildings of City University London. It also contains the central library of the Society of Genealogists, one of London's most important reference collections, The main campus of the university centres takes up a set of back streets, many broad and pedestrianised, west, including the large semi-garden public square, Northampton Square. DB Cargo UK's headquarters is a building that is a merger of numbers, № 310. A shop of the road in the 1840s was the first shop of baker and confectioner Tom Smith (1823-1869) where he popularised, and may have 'invented', the

Christmas cracker Christmas crackers are festive table decorations that make a snapping sound when pulled open, and often contain a small gift, paper hat and a joke. They are part of Christmas celebrations in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Commonwealth countri ...

Buses

London Bus routes serving the street: * 4 and 56.

Toponymy

Some sources claim the road was named after the estate or garden written variously 'Goswelle' or 'Goderell' of (medieval noble) Robert de Ufford, 1st Earl of Suffolk; others single out "Gos-wel" to be the meaningful phonemes and so posit a very local "God's Well" (a sacred well). The Roman founding of the city (see

Londinium Londinium, also known as Roman London, was the capital of Roman Britain during most of the period of Roman rule. It was originally a settlement established on the current site of the City of London around AD 47–50. It sat at a key cross ...

) was in the pre-Christian years of the empire and it may have been multi-god before listed in Christian times. Until 1864 named generally Goswell Street, as in Charles Dickens' '' Pickwick Papers'' (in the novel, the protagonist Samuel Pickwick lodged there with Mrs. Bardell).

New River

The New River low aqueduct ran along Goswell Road before turning to terminate at New River Head on Rosebery Avenue. Its course is locally culverted (underground).

James Parrott and the four-minute mile

Some (notably Olympic medallist

Peter Radford Peter Frank Radford (born 20 September 1939) is a former British athlete, who competed at 100 and 200 metres (and 100 and 220 yards), broke world records, and won Olympic medals, despite having been seriously ill as a child due to a hole in his ...

) contend the first successful four-minute mile was run by James Parrott on 9 May 1770. He ran the 1-mile length of Old Street to finish somewhere within the grounds/building of

St Leonard's, Shoreditch St Leonard's, Shoreditch, is the ancient parish church of Shoreditch, often known simply as Shoreditch Church. It is located at the intersection of Shoreditch High Street with Hackney Road, within the London Borough of Hackney in East London. The ...

(church). Timing methods at this time were - after invention of the chronometer by John Harrison - accurate enough to measure the four minutes correctly, and sporting authorities of the time accepted the claim as genuine. Old Street has a 11 foot downward fall (but note intermittent gentle undulations), and the record is not recognised by modern sporting bodies.

The Dame Alice Owen's School bombing

On 15 October 1940, approximately 150 people were sheltering in the

basement A basement or cellar is one or more floors of a building that are completely or partly below the ground floor. It generally is used as a utility space for a building, where such items as the furnace, water heater, breaker panel or fuse box, ...

of Dame Alice Owen's School, then on Goswell Road. A large

parachute A parachute is a device used to slow the motion of an object through an atmosphere by creating drag or, in a ram-air parachute, aerodynamic lift. A major application is to support people, for recreation or as a safety device for aviators, who ...

bomb A bomb is an explosive weapon that uses the Exothermic process, exothermic reaction of an explosive material to provide an extremely sudden and violent release of energy. Detonations inflict damage principally through ground- and atmosphere-t ...

squarely hit the building, causing majority-collapse and blocking access to the damaged basement. The blast wave from the bomb caused the New River culvert to rupture, flooding the shelter, drowning most survivors. A memorial to the victims stands in Owen's Fields at the northern end of Goswell Road.

Image gallery

File:Goswell Road - geograph.org.uk - 726551.jpg, Goswell Road from Upper Street File:Goswell Road, Finsbury - geograph.org.uk - 1727537.jpg, Goswell Road, DB Cargo UK office File:Goswell Road, EC1 - geograph.org.uk - 1069809.jpg, Goswell Road File:Angel House, 338-346 Goswell Road, EC1 - geograph.org.uk - 1097586.jpg, Goswell Road, Angel House File:Goswell Road - Percival Street, EC1 - geograph.org.uk - 1069806.jpg, Goswell Road - Percival Street, EC1 File:Нявядомы Лондан 08.JPG, Goswell Road, City University File:Goswell Road, Islington - geograph.org.uk - 705575.jpg, Goswell Road, towards the City File:Clock Tower near The Angel - geograph.org.uk - 416430.jpg, Goswell Road clock tower

References

External links

History of Goswell Road
{{coord, 51.526970, N, 0.100295, W, display=title Streets in the London Borough of Islington A1 road (Great Britain)