Between the Angel and the White Lion, along the frontage now belonging to Nos 7–17 Islington High Street, there was at least one tavern or alehouse in the late sixteenth century. By the 1670s there were three victuallers (but no inns) in eight relatively small buildings along this stretch. Some time around 1700 these were largely replaced by the new Peacock Inn, which occupied a 67 ft frontage where the present Nos 9–13 stand, creating an allbut-solid run of three inns. Remarkably, a part of this building survives at No. 13.
An Islington Council plaque on No. 11 records this as being the site of the Peacock Inn from 1564. The earlier Peacock, however, was further north, on the site of Nos 31 and 33, in a building that had eight hearths in the 1670s when it was run by a widow Liquorish.
The Peacock of c. 1700 may have begun with a symmetrical nine-bay (2:5:2) brick front. Other ranges, probably timber-built and relatively short, ran back from either end, that to the north being constrained by an irregular site boundary. Entrance to the inn's narrowly confined yard was off-centre to the south. At No. 13 the front wall, floors (with chamfered binding beams) and forward roofline of c. 1700 still survive. From the original roof there is much of the substantial north end truss, a collared assembly of halved principal rafters, with butt purlins. A number of common rafters also remain in situ and elsewhere mortise positions indicate the former presence of a dormer window, already absent in 1823, and the junction with the back-range roof that Pollard showed as having a slightly higher ridge. The back wall was rebuilt in brick in the twentieth century.
The Peacock perhaps had difficulty establishing itself between its bigger neighbours, and may already have been scaled down by the 1760s, when it had a rateable value just a quarter to a third that of the Angel; the yard, which incorporated a skittle ground, had become inhabited as Peacock Court. By 1807 the inn had shrunk to occupy just the central five bays (Nos 11 and 11A), with John Todd, china-dealer (later cheesemonger), at No. 9 (perhaps rebuilt as a single bay), and Samuel Birch at No. 13, succeeded by George Chapman, chemist, in 1809. The freehold remained undivided.
By the time of Pollard's painting, the whole of this front had been stuccoed. The present appearance of the front of No. 13, with its incised panels and upper-storey architraves, is perhaps largely due to Chapman's arrival in 1809. Despite its reduced size the Peacock was, as Pollard's painting indicates, a well-known address in the early nineteenth century—'a house we all stop at', as a coachman of the Chester Mail witnessed at the Old Bailey in 1813. This fame as a stopping place was attested later on, in Nicholas Nickleby and Tom Brown's Schooldays. By the 1850s the old 'long-roofed and capacious' building had long been divided, only part remaining in use as an inn.
In 1857 the reduced inn was rebuilt as a substantially taller, three-storey public house with a four-bay front. This was extensively upgraded in 1888–9, and in 1931 it was replaced by the present yet taller, three-bay building at Nos 11 and 11A—erected, as the rainwater hoppers record, for Higgins & Co. Ltd, freeholders, and P. Goodrich, licensee. The entrance had a large encaustic-tile representation of 'The Triumph of the Emperor Aurelian after the Conquest of Palmyra'. The Peacock closed in 1962. At No. 13 the shopfront was replaced in 1932 for H. Samuel, jewellers and long-standing occupants, by which time the first-floor veranda was long gone and slates had replaced tiles on the roof.