The Angel

The Angel

A former public house and hotel, now converted to bank and offices, occupying a prominent and historically significant site at the junction of Pentonville Road and Islington High Street on the brow of a hill in Islington. The building is dated 1903 and was designed by the architects Eedle and Myers (Frederick James Eedle and Sydney Herbert Myers), with terracotta manufactured by J C Edwards of Ruabon, for the brewers Truman, Hanbury, Buxton and Co. Ground-floor alterations were undertaken around 1981.

The building is constructed with a polished Norwegian granite and stone ground-floor pub and shopfront, with variegated orange terracotta cladding to the upper floors and a Welsh-slate mansard roof with dormers. The corner features a domed terracotta roof topped by a waisted lantern, though the original finial has been removed. The style is Flemish and Edwardian Baroque with elaborate animated detailing throughout.

The building rises five storeys with a basement and attic. The Pentonville Road elevation is three bays wide and the Islington High Street elevation two bays wide. At the fourth-floor level, the corner takes a circular form comprising a two-storey drum and dome. The sashes decrease in height as they ascend the building. Upper floors feature architraved casement sashes with rectangular overlights, except for bow and oriel windows.

The first-floor sashes are set between banded rustication and walls lined as ashlar, with a dentiled cornice above. The second and third floors have sashes between paired Corinthian pilasters topped by raised relief cushions carved with masques and putti. Balustraded panels beneath the second-floor sashes display keystones and cornices. The third-floor sashes are surmounted by winged angel heads with small brackets to the sills and a heavy modillioned and egg and dart cornice above. The fourth-floor bays are articulated by empty niches, with keystoned sashes to the right bay of the Islington High Street elevation. The drum of the dome features round-cornered sashes and a wide frieze carved in relief; the ribbed dome is topped by a console-bracketed lantern.

The Pentonville Road attic has a richly carved gabled dormer to the left, a dormer to the right, and two windows in the drum of the corner dome. The Islington High Street elevation attic has two dormers to the right and two sashes in the corner dome drum.

The Pentonville Road first-floor centre bay contains a bow window topped with a balustrade and a panel dated 1903. The second floor has segmental-arched four-light full-length casement windows opening onto a bowed balcony formed by projection below. The ground-floor bays are articulated by original granite pilasters supporting console-bracketed cornices, though the shopfronts are now predominantly twentieth-century plate-glass windows and doors. The Pentonville Road round-arched recessed entrance to the centre bay is surmounted by an open semi-circular pediment with a winged angel's head. To the left is a three-light bow window flanked by single sashes. To the right of the doorway, shop windows have been removed and a twentieth-century glass wall set back behind the corner of the building. The Islington High Street subsidiary entrance is a twentieth-century recessed opening to the right bay.

The main entrance originally accessed an internal staircase to the upper floors on the Pentonville Road facade, which has been removed. The Islington High Street elevation has a subsidiary lobby-entrance to the far right bay, leading to a twentieth-century staircase serving the upper floors.

Little original interior fabric survives.

The site has been occupied by an inn or public house since at least the seventeenth century, and possibly earlier. The name of the former Angel Inn gave its name to the local area. Between 1921 and 1960 the building served as a Lyons Corner House. It remains a distinctive local landmark.