A self-guided audio walk
Finsbury Park
From a music hall and a tavern's lake to the Rainbow, round a hill where three boroughs meet
Almost nothing at Finsbury Park is named after anything that was ever here. In under two hours you'll walk from the station to the site of a music hall where a woman was first sawn in half on a public stage, up through a Victorian park to the lake of a Georgian tavern, along a street with a Domesday name and a murder in its past, and on to the cinema where Jimi Hendrix first set fire to his guitar.
Start at Finsbury Park station. The map follows you, and each stop's story plays as you arrive. Narrated in the filmmaker's own voice, recreated with AI.
Before you go
Getting there
Start outside Finsbury Park station's entrance on Station Place, a short street running down to Seven Sisters Road. The station is on the Victoria and Piccadilly lines, with National Rail trains from King's Cross, St Pancras and Moorgate, and many buses. If you come out of the station's other entrance, on Wells Terrace, follow Stroud Green Road to the right, under the railway, to Station Place: about five minutes. The walk ends at the old Astoria on Seven Sisters Road, about five minutes from the station.Your phone
Tap Save for offline before you set off, in case the signal drops. Keep the screen on while you walk: the page keeps it awake for you, and the map uses your location only on your phone. Headphones, or one earbud, make the narration easier to hear on Seven Sisters Road, which is loud with traffic.Opening times
The streets can be walked at any time, but the park's gates are locked at dusk, so set off in daylight. The park is free. The mosque, Saint Mellitus and the old Astoria (now a church) are working places of worship, so please look from outside unless they are open to visitors. Check haringey.gov.uk for park events, which sometimes close parts of the park in summer.Access, toilets and safety
The ground
Paved streets and tarmac park paths all the way, with no steps on the route. The park rises gently to the lake at the top of its hill. You leave the park by the Oxford Road Gate, a step-free footbridge over the railway that cyclists share, so keep to one side.Toilets and food
Public toilets in the park, near the western end of the lake (free; usually open in the daytime), and a wheelchair-accessible public toilet on Seven Sisters Road, near the end of Fonthill Road. There's a café in the park by the lake, cafés all round the station and on Stroud Green Road and Fonthill Road, and a pub, the Park Tavern, at stop 7.Traffic
Seven Sisters Road is a busy main road with a one-way system round the station: use the crossings, and keep children close. Stroud Green Road and Fonthill Road carry traffic too, and the park's drives carry bicycles.For families: Spot it!
Every stop has one thing to find. Tap Spotted it when you've seen it, and see how many you've found at the end. Some are easy. One or two are not.
Two stops tell hard stories plainly: stop 2, about the years when extremists took over the mosque, and stop 9, about the attack on worshippers on Seven Sisters Road in 2017. Their transcripts are on this page if you'd like to read them first.
Walk complete
If you have more time:
Sources and credits
Facts were checked against the sources below. Where they disagree, or a story is only tradition, the narration says so.
Pictures
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors.