Although it feels like the heart of an ancient village, Clerkenwell Green was originally just the empty space between the Priory of St John and St Mary’s Nunnery. Perhaps it was this sense of belonging to no-one that made it a focal point for Londoners’ opposition to authority, which stretches back to at least 1381 when a peasant army stormed St John’s Priory and beheaded its Prior.
Along with Speaker’s Corner and Trafalgar Square, it became one of London’s three notable outdoor venues for public oratory. In the first half of the 19th century, the area’s mix of desperate poverty and skilled craftsmen made it a natural breeding ground for the Chartists’ radical ideas about human rights and democracy, and the Green was the site of numerous Chartist rallies and running battles with police.
By the end of the 19th century, it was the meeting point for May Day marches (and still is), and much of the socialist literature circulating in the capital was printed by the Social Democratic Federation at 37a Clerkenwell Green – haunt of Lenin during his time in London, and now the Marx Memorial Library.
In recent years Clerkenwell Green has undergone another quiet revolution, as the London Borough of Islington has transformed the area with new paving and planting, removed motor traffic, and made a great space for people.
Address: Clerkenwell Green, Clerkenwell, EC1R 0QE
Latitude,Longitude: 51.522866, -0.105414