Goswell Road, in Central London, is an end part of the A1. The southern part ends with one block, on the east side, in

City of London The City of London is a city, ceremonial county and local government district that contains the historic centre and constitutes, alongside Canary Wharf, the primary central business district (CBD) of London. It constituted most of London f ...

; the rest is in 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 ...

, the north end being

Angel In various theistic religious traditions an angel is a supernatural spiritual being who serves God. Abrahamic religions often depict angels as benevolent celestial intermediaries between God (or Heaven) and humanity. Other roles inclu ...

. It crosses

Old Street Old Street is a street in inner north-east Central London that runs west to east from Goswell Road in Clerkenwell, in the London Borough of Islington, via St Luke's and Old Street Roundabout, to the crossroads where it meets Shoreditch High ...

Clerkenwell Road Clerkenwell Road is a street in London. It runs west–east from Gray's Inn Road in the west, to Goswell Road in the east. Its continuation at either end is Theobald's Road and Old Street respectively. Clerkenwell Road and Theobalds Road we ...

. In the north it splits Clerkenwell from Finsbury; 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. All of the road is inside the Central London congestion charge zone.

Notable premises

It is mostly fronted by offices and shops, else by some buildings of

City University London City, University of London, is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, and a member institution of the federal University of London. It was founded in 1894 as the Northampton Institute, and became a university when The City Univ ...

. It also contains the central library of the

Society of Genealogists The Society of Genealogists (SoG) is a UK-based educational charity, founded in 1911Fowler, S School of Advanced Study, University of London. Date unknown. Retrieved 2011-10-30. to "promote, encourage and foster the study, science and knowledge ...

, 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 Northampton Square, a green town square, is in a corner of Clerkenwell projecting into Finsbury, in Central London. It is between Goswell Road and St John Street (and Spencer and Percival Streets), has a very broad pedestrian walkway on the no ...

DB Cargo UK DB Cargo UK (formerly DB Schenker Rail UK and English, Welsh & Scottish Railway (EWS)), is a British rail freight company headquartered in Doncaster, England. The company was established in early 1995 as ''North & South Railways'', successful ...

'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.

Buses

London Bus Buses have been used as a mode of public transport in London since 1829, when George Shillibeer started operating a horse-drawn ''omnibus'' service from Paddington to the City of London. In the decades since their introduction, the red London b ...

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 Robert Ufford, 1st Earl of Suffolk, KG (9 August 1298 – 4 November 1369) was an English peer. He was created Earl of Suffolk in 1337. Early life Born 9 August 1298, Robert Ufford was the second but eldest surviving son of Robert Ufford, 1st B ...

; 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) 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 Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian e ...

' ''

Pickwick Papers ''The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club'' (also known as ''The Pickwick Papers'') was Charles Dickens's first novel. Because of his success with '' Sketches by Boz'' published in 1836, Dickens was asked by the publisher Chapman & Hall to ...

'' (in the novel, the protagonist

Samuel Pickwick Samuel Pickwick is a fictional character and the main protagonist in ''The Pickwick Papers'' (1836), the first novel by author Charles Dickens. One of the author's most famous and loved creations, Pickwick is a retired successful businessman an ...

lodged there with Mrs. Bardell).

New River

The New River low aqueduct ran along Goswell Road before turning to terminate at

New River Head New River Head is a historic site located adjacent to Sadler's Wells Theatre on Rosebery Avenue and Amwell Street in the Clerkenwell area of London, England. Originally it was the London terminus of the New River, an artificial watercourse ope ...

on Rosebery Avenue. Its course is locally culverted (underground).

James Parrott and the four-minute mile

Some (notably Olympic medallist Peter Radford) contend the first successful

four-minute mile A four-minute mile is the completion of a mile run (1609 m) in four minutes or less. It was first achieved in 1954 by Roger Bannister, at age 25, in 3:59.4. As of April 2021, the "four-minute barrier" has been broken by 1,663 athletes, and is n ...

was run by

James Parrott James Parrott (August 2, 1897 – May 10, 1939) was an American actor and film director; and the younger brother of film comedian Charley Chase. Biography Early years James Gibbons Parrott was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to Charles and Blan ...

on 9 May 1770. He ran the 1-mile length of

to finish somewhere within the grounds/building of St Leonard's, Shoreditch (church). Timing methods at this time were - after invention of the

chronometer A clock or a timepiece is a device used to measure and indicate time. The clock is one of the oldest human inventions, meeting the need to measure intervals of time shorter than the natural units such as the day, the lunar month and th ...

John Harrison John Harrison ( – 24 March 1776) was a self-educated English carpenter and clockmaker who invented the marine chronometer, a long-sought-after device for solving the problem of calculating longitude while at sea. Harrison's solution revol ...

- 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 of

Dame Alice Owen's School Dame Alice Owen's School (also known as Dame Alice Owen's or Owen's; referred to by the acronym DAOS) is an 11–18 mixed, partially selective secondary school and sixth form with academy status in Potters Bar, Hertfordshire, England. It i ...

, then on Goswell Road. A large parachute bomb squarely hit the building, causing majority-collapse and blocking access to the damaged basement. The

blast wave In fluid dynamics, a blast wave is the increased pressure and flow resulting from the deposition of a large amount of energy in a small, very localised volume. The flow field can be approximated as a lead shock wave, followed by a self-similar sub ...

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,

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)