Upper Holloway was one of several hamlets within the ancient parish of St Mary Islington.
The area around Hornsey Road was traditionally known as Tollington and this name was used in the Domesday Book.
The part of the Great North Road through north of the parish of Islington was known as the Holloway Road by 1307, a name later applied to the communities that formed along it.
The Church of St John Upper Holloway was built because the population of the parish was increasing. It was consecrated in 1828 and in 1830 a new ecclesiastical parish was created.
Upper Holloway station opened in 1868 and the classic late Victorian comic novel Diary of a Nobody is set here.
