Islington Museum
A borough museum focused on people and place, with thematic galleries on Work, Home, Leisure, Radicalism and ‘Hidden Islington’. Strong on stories unique to the area—from radical politics and prisons to waterways and entertainment—and closely integrated with the adjacent Local History Centre for archives and rotating displays.
Opening Hours
What's not to miss inside?
Radicals & Dissent
Islington’s history of activism—campaigners, printers, meeting halls—told through placards, pamphlets and portraits.Follow a single cause across decades (suffrage, housing, civil liberties) through original local material.
📍 Core gallery sequence
Holloway & Pentonville: Prisons and the Borough
Documents the social history around two nationally significant prisons and their impact on local streets and families.Registers, ephemera and testimony link everyday Islington to national debates on punishment and reform.
📍 Justice & Society section
Hidden Waterways
Maps and models of the New River (opened 1613) and buried tributaries like the Fleet trace how water shaped settlement and health.Aqueducts and culverted streams run under today’s pavements—the city’s plumbing as urban archaeology.
📍 Environment / Mapping displays
Stage & Street: Collins’s Music Hall and Beyond
Programmes, posters and props recall a major Islington venue (19th–20th c.) and local popular entertainment.Music-hall satire and variety shaped working-class nights out long before television.
📍 Leisure section
Inspire your Friends
- The museum sits beneath Finsbury Library and works hand-in-glove with the Islington Local History Centre—archival holdings regularly feed into temporary displays.
- Collections include material on playwright Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell’s infamous defaced library book jackets (1960s), a local episode that ended in a court case and prison terms.
- Water history is foundational here: the New River, completed in 1613 to bring fresh water to London, runs through the borough and appears in the museum’s mapping displays.
