The Angel was originally an inn near a toll gate on the Great North Road, at what is now the junction of Islington High Street and Pentonville Road.
In this photo, the inn is seen straight ahead on the corner.
Thomas Paine may have stayed at the inn after he returned from France in 1790 and it is believed that he wrote passages of the Rights of Man whilst staying at the nearby Red Lion, now Old Red Lion, in St. John Street. The original Angel was rebuilt in 1819 and became a coaching inn, the first staging post outside the City of London. It became a local landmark and was mentioned in Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens: "
The coach rattled away and, turning when it reached the Angel at Islington, stopped at length before a neat house in Pentonville".
A new building in pale terracotta stone with a corner cupola replaced the earlier building in 1899. From 1921 to 1959 the building was used as a Lyons Corner House and it is now a bank.
