Focus On Holloway: How the area went from “no-go area” to a thriving hotspot for independent businesses
Holloway may be one of the oldest neighbourhoods in north London, but it hasn’t always been popular.
Londoners who weren’t Arsenal fans might only pass through to get on to the M1 and its infamous women’s prison on Parkhurst Road hardly does wonders for its reputation. For a long time, its only cultural claim to fame was The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, written by Douglas Adams in a house on Kingsdown Road.“Look back a decade and Holloway was a no-go area,” says Rupert Cattell, founder of online estate agent OwnerSellers.com. But, in the Nobel prize-winning words of Bob Dylan, times they are a-changin’. The opening of the Emirates Stadium in 2006 kick started a regeneration project to transform some 60 acres in N7 and N5, bringing new business and 3,000 homes to the area.
And nowhere is this more apparent than on Holloway Road, the main artery that runs through the area. “The two mile road is home to the third largest concentration of independent retailers in the capital and its diverse mix of shops closely reflects the area’s changing fortunes,” says David Fell, research analyst at estate agent Hamptons International.
“It runs through the heart of Holloway and marks where the development of North London began in the 1820s. Architects from every era have since made their mark leaving five storey Victorian townhouses jostling for space with 1960s offices and 90s flats.”
You can chart this change in the area’s landmarks, from the Victorian prison, to the grand Odeon cinema bombed during WWII to the brutalist modernity of Daniel Libeskind’s London Metropolitan University building.
