Whitecross Street, London

Whitecross Street is a short street in Islington, in Inner London. It features an eponymous street market and a large housing estate.

Since 2010, there has been an annual Whitecross Street Party one weekend in the summer, together with an exhibition of street art.

The street is located in St Luke's, Islington. It runs north-south, between Old Street in the north, where it abuts St Luke Old Street, and the junction with Beech Street (west), Chiswell Street (east) and Silk Street (south, continuing the street) in the south. The southern junction marks the boundary with the City of London: Whitecross and Chiswell (north and east) are in Islington, while Beech and Silk (west and south) are in the City.

Whitecross Street formerly continued further south from its current southern end, to just outside Cripplegate, a gate of the London Wall surrounding the City of London.

In his 1720 work, A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, John Strype wrote:

In Whitecross street, King Henry V. builded one fair House; and founded there a Brotherhood of St. Giles, to be kept. Which House, had sometime been an Hospital of the French Order, by the Name of St. Giles without Cripplegate, in the Reign of Edward I. The King having the Jurisdiction, and appointing a Custos thereof, for the Precinct of St. Giles, &c. Which Hospital being suppressed, the Lands were given to the Brotherhood, for the relief of the Poor. In this Street was a White cross; and near it was built an Arch of Stone, under which ran a Course of Water down to the Moor, called now Moorfields."

The Fortune Playhouse, an early Elizabethan theatre, was built on the street c.1600. John Lambe was killed in 1628 at this theatre. It was closed in 1642 as part of Parliament's closure of all theatres. A debtor's prison, Whitecross Street Prison, was built on the street in 1813-15, near Fore Street (which still exists). After the prison's closure in 1870, the Midland Railway Company built a goods terminus and a booking office for goods and passengers on the site in 1876-77.

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