This small yet very informative museum presents local Islington history in an interesting way to people of all ages.
We enjoyed our trip through the Islington Museum. The exhibits on the suffragettes and Lenin were especially interesting. Islington seems to be home to a long line of social activists.
A number of small exhibitions turn over frequently here. See this website for details of what is currently on display: (
visit link)
"Islington Burning
Dates: Thursday 22 September to Saturday 26 November
Opening times: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday: 10am - 5pm. Wednesday and Sunday: closed
Admission: Free
Venue details: Information on visiting the venue
London has had a turbulent and fiery history! It has been burned to the ground many times over in its 2000 year history and yet the London Fire Brigade (LFB) was only formed in 1866.
From the destruction of St. John’s Priory, Clerkenwell in 1381, the impact of the Great Fire of London, to the tragic blaze at Smithfield Market in the 1950s, ‘Islington Burning’ uncovers the story of fire fighting in the borough and commemorates 150 years since the founding of the LFB. The story is told through key objects from the London Fire Brigade Museum Collection, original material from Islington’s museum, archives and other collections from across the capital.
The exhibition is great for kids –look up close at some burnt tiles from the Great Fire of London, try on a firefighter’s uniform, and learn how to test a smoke alarm. You can even use our fire engines to put out some fires!
Commit Outrage!: The Spa Fields Riots of 1816
Dates: Monday 7 November 2016 to Saturday 7 January 2017
Opening times: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday: 10am - 5pm. Wednesday and Sunday: closed
Admission: Free
Venue details: Information on visiting the venue
On 15 November and 2 December 1816 two of the largest public meetings and demonstrations in decades were held in London at Spa Fields, Clerkenwell (now Islington). The scale of the first meeting so surprised the organisers that they reconvened two weeks later; pikes and guns were also purchased for the rescheduled event.
Post Napoleonic-war unemployment, recession, poverty and food shortages had led to public anger and unrest throughout the country. Towards the end of 1816 leading ‘Spencerians’, a group advocating public land ownership and universal (including female) suffrage, began to plan a different kind of public meeting in the capital – one which would be huge in scale and specifically designed to feature physical force.
‘Commit Outrage’ commemorates these infamous political riots in Clerkenwell that were to shock the nation and looks at the leading protagonists and how the authorities dealt with such public disorder two hundred years ago."