They say that if you put your ear to the asphalt of Clerkenwell, you will hear the sound of rushing water. Deep under the layers of tarmac and sediment is the river Fleet. But on the first Saturday in August, there was no chance of hearing the hidden waterway. Instead, you’d have heard a thrumming bassline.
Turning onto the corner of Mount Pleasant was a scene straight out of Berlin. A mass of young-ish people covered the sloped road. You could barely see the soundsystem from the top of the street – but the dub-infused beat was unmissable. So were the people dancing to it: skanking, grooving, or simply moving. People chatting, bumping into each other, lending a lighter or swapping drinks. There were academics, journalists, baristas, charity sector workers, students, advertising executives, bankers.
The “proper local rave” was hosted by Kindred Radio, a record shop and events space right in the heart of EC1. No ticket was required, and almost every person you encountered uttered in astonishment: “I can’t believe the council let this happen!”
On paper, Clerkenwell should be exhibit A of corpsified London: a ward of law firms and architecture practices and Grade II-listed conversions, the kind of place that empties out at 6pm and stays that way. An area that has ‘closed on Saturday and Sunday’ signs. A place, surely, for expense-account dinners – not four hundred people losing it to a soundsystem on a hill.
Yet Clerkenwell is fizzing like Shoreditch once did. Charli XCX recently held her intimate ‘Conversations’ event at Antisocial Exmouth Café, along with an afterparty at Coin Laundry down the road. Long-shuttered pubs like the Hat & Feathers and the Peasant have reopened under new owners. Legendary furniture design studio SCP recently upped sticks from its Shoreditch home after 40 years to relocate to Clerkenwell Green. And Exmouth Market was just this summer dubbed the “vibiest street in London” by Time Out.
Who, then, made Clerkenwell cool? I wanted to investigate. As I did so, I found a lineage of butchers and architects, nightclub impresarios and restaurateurs, all of whom laid the groundwork for the district’s recent success. Like the River Fleet, that history lies just below the surface of the area’s newfound hip status.
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