Goswell Road also most likely took its name from a watersource lost to posterity, possibly Stow’s misspelt Godwell or Godewell, easily corrupted to ‘Godswell’.
The early history of Aldersgate Street and Goswell Road, also leading to Islington, is less clear. Its oldest portion, which went by various names, is supposed to have proceeded northwards from Aldersgate bars only up to the present line of Clerkenwell Road and Old Street, north of which point the road may once have turned eastwards. The direct northward continuation of Goswell Road is attested only from the fifteenth century.
Aldersgate Street in due course attracted some post-Reformation inns of the same kind as St John Street. A larger second group of such inns made its appearance at the northern tip of our area, at the southern end of Islington where St John Street and Goswell Road converged. The most famous was the Angel, which though part of the nucleus of Islington lay within Clerkenwell parish.
