Finsbury Circus

Visited 17 March 2006

A wraparound shot of Finsbury Circus with its immaculate 1925 bowling green.  For large size (3.9M) click here.  For an aerial view, click here.   During the middle ages, Londoners added another gate on their upper city wall called Moorgate, after the moor that lay to the north.  Like all of the other gates then surviving, Moorgate was torn down in 1761 to improve traffic flow.  (Its stones were redeployed on improvements to the London bridge.)  Today the road leading out of of the city from this gate is still called Moorgate street and near where it crossed the wall (now called London Wall Street) sits the City of London's oldest park, Finsbury Circus.  (While named Circus, it's really an ellipse.) 18th century map when Moorgate once stood (near the "W" on London WALL Street).  Note the Bethllem (Bedlam hospital site.

The Moorfields were one of the last undeveloped tracts in the City and became a tent town after the Great London Fire in 1666.  Development started in 1777 with Finsbury Circus (pictured below).  Seven years later, it was the site of the first British Balloon flight.   During the World War II London Blitz, it was a barrage balloon site hoping to tangle attacking German bombers in the cables that tethered these "low zone" balloons to the winch-wagons 5000 feet below.  They pretty well discouraged dive bombing and low level bomb drops.

Above and below are views of the city's only Bowling Green and the buildings that wrap around it, typically housing financial institutions, perhaps encouraging homeowners to make balloon payments.  BP headquarters were once at Finsbury Circus as well.

Early March flowers bloomed on the green.

Just southeast of this site (but safely inside the walls), the Romans built the largest amphitheatre in Britannia, another elliptical structure, now long gone except for a few traces in London's Guildhall.

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