Facts about St. Lukes
St. Lukes General Info
St Luke’s is a district in central London in the London Borough of Islington. It lies just north of the border with the City of London near the Barbican Estate, and the Clerkenwell and Shoreditch areas. The area takes its name from the now redundant church of St Luke’s, on Old Street west of Old Street station. Following the closure of St Luke’s Church, the parish was reabsorbed into that of St Giles-without-Cripplegate, from which it had separated in 1733.
Goswell Road forms the western boundary with Clerkenwell, while the areas northern and eastern boundaries with the Shoreditch area of the London Borough of Hackney area have been adopted by the London Borough of Islington. St Luke’s is inside the London Congestion Charging Zone, the Ultra Low Emission Zone, and is located in Zone 1.
History
The civil and ecclesiastical parish of St Luke’s was created on the construction of the church in 1733, from the part of the existing parish of St Giles Cripplegate outside the City of London. The area covered by the parish is the same as that previously occupied by the landholding known as the Manor of Finsbury.
In 1751, St Luke’s Hospital for Lunatics, an asylum, was founded. It was rebuilt in 1782–1784 by George Dance the Younger. In 1917, the site was sold to the Bank of England for St Luke’s Printing Works, which printed banknotes. The building was damaged by the Blitz of 1940, and the printing works were relocated in 1958 to Debden, Essex.
