Angel Escorts

Angel is a district of London, England, and part of the London Borough of Islington. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London.
The Angel was originally an inn near a toll gate on the Great North Road (at what is now the corner of Islington High Street and Pentonville Road). The corner itself was in the parish ofClerkenwell[3] which was part of the Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury until it was merged with the Metropolitan Borough of Islington to form the London Borough of Islington in 1965.
Thomas Paine may have stayed at the inn after he returned from France in 1790 and it is believed that he wrote passages of the Rights of Man whilst staying at the nearby Red Lion, now Old Red Lion, in St. John Street. The original building was rebuilt in 1819 and became acoaching inn; the first staging post outside the City of London. It became a local landmark and was mentioned in Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens "The coach rattled away and, turning when it reached the Angel at Islington, stopped at length before a neat house in Pentonville". A new building in pale terracotta stone with a corner cupola replaced the old building in 1899. From 1921 to 1959 the building was used as a Lyons Corner House (see below) and is now aCo-operative Bank, with ORC International, a market research agency, occupying the floors above the bank.
A pub operated by JD Wetherspoon situated near the junction of Pentonville Road and Islington High Street (just next door to the original building: it is visible in the image above) goes by the name The Angel.