North-Country Mails at the Peacock, Islington

North Country Mails at the Peacock, Islington - passengers embark and await departure for destinations including Liverpool, Glasgow, Leeds and 'Holy Chester'. Next door to the pub is 'Chapman - chemist and druggist - wholesale and retail' and 'Young - oilman etc.' The Peacock figures in Tom Brown's Schooldays (ch 4 starts: 'Now, sir, time to get up, if you please. Tally-ho coach for Leicester'll be round in half an hour, and don't wait for nobody." So spake the boots of the Peacock Inn Islington, at half-past two o'clock on the morning of a day in the early part of November 183-. . . . And as the Tally-ho was an early coach, they had driven out to the Peacock to be on the road. etc.' Dickens also mentions the Peacock in his story "Boots at the Cherry Tree Inn." The inn was at 11 Islington High Street. Four inns are known to have occupied this site, the earliest dating from 1564. The importance of the Peacock declined with the demise of the four-in-hand; the travelling public now entrusted itself to the railway carriage. In 1857 the distinctive exterior of the Peacock was transformed with large plate shop windows and shop fittings but it continued as a public house until 1962. Same as A9504.