History
The Battle Bridge and Holloway Road Co. built it privately in 1826 as a toll road by to link the New Road with Holloway Road (which is part of the Great North Road), providing a new link to the West End from the north. It was first known as Chalk Road but changed its name after the Royal Caledonian Asylum, for the children of poor exiled Scots, was built here in 1828. (This building has since been demolished. It occupied the site of local authority housing called the Caledonian Estate built 1900-7.)
The first residential buildings on Caledonian Road were Thornhill Terrace (Nos 106-146) built in 1832. Other terraces were built in the 1840s. Pentonville Prison was built on the road in 1842 immediately to the south of the Asylum. Cattle drovers used the Caledonian road on their way to Smithfield until 1852 when the City of London Corporation transferred the Metropolitan Cattle Market here and it became known as the Caledonian Market. Drovers' lodgings, five public houses, and two hotels were put up around the market, and the Corporation built a block of working-class dwellings c. 1865.
Read more about this topic: Caledonian Road (London)
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