Islington Museum
What Visitors Say
After checking website, we went to visit museum on Friday December 26. Closed sign on entrance gate, BUT NOTE ON MUSEUM WEBSITE. Poor administration!!
This lovely little museum has some real charming displays on the history of Islington, organised into themes like leisure, education, and work. Some of the exhibits are interactive, which makes the visit even more enjoyable. You definitely shouldn't miss the great temporary exhibition about the hidden waterways of Islington.
Detailed information on all aspects of life in that area. The displays were attractively arranged.
This Museum not too big,separated small room.But very nice.Especially the artwork "every Kind of love" too nice.the exhibitions card is something different than other museum.well decorated.
Fascinating small musuem with displays, some interactive, on the history of Islington split into themes e.g. leisure, education, work....plus great temporary exhibition on the hidden waterways of Islington. Note its closed 1pm to 2pm at present.
Highlights
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
Opening Hours
Fun Facts
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.
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