page_title: Liverpool Road
section_title: Royal Agricultural Hall
hierarchical_section_title: Liverpool Road / Places of interest / Royal Agricultural Hall
caption_attribution_description: A cattle show at the Agricultural Hall in en:Islington, en:London, en:England, now the en:Business Design Centre, in 1861. en:Illustrated London News.
context_page_description: Liverpool Road is a street in Islington, North London. It covers a distance of 1 ¹⁄₄ miles between Islington High Street and Holloway Road, running roughly parallel to Upper Street through the area of Barnsbury. It contains several attractive terraces of Georgian houses and Victorian villas, many of which are listed buildings. There are a number of pubs, small businesses and restaurants along its route, as well as some secluded garden squares. The vast majority of the street is residential, with a bustling shopping and business area at the southern, Angel, end.
context_section_description: The Royal Agricultural Hall (originally named the Agricultural Hall) was the primary exhibition site for London until the Second World War and the largest building of its kind, holding up to 50,000 people.
  It was built in 1862 by the Smithfield Club on the site of William Dixon's cattle lairs, at a cost of £32,000. The construction was inspired by the Crystal Palace, which had been designed for the Great Exhibition of 1851. The original purpose of the Agricultural Hall and its location were related specifically to its proximity to Smithfield, the great livestock market, and took advantage of Liverpool Road’s function as a cattle route. The hall was 75 ft high and the arched glass roof spanned 125 ft. It was built for the first annual Smithfield Show in December 1862 but was subsequently popular for other purposes, including recitals and the Royal Tournament. The most glamorous event to take place was the Grand Ball held for the Belgian Volunteer regiments during their visit to England in July 1867. Other events at the “Aggie” included military tournaments, walking matches, missionary exhibitions, musical recitals, dairy shows, balls, mule and donkey shows, revivalist meetings, circuses, dog shows, motorcycle and cycle shows, trade fairs, and in 1870 a bullfight. In 1884 the prefix “Royal” was added because of the number of visits by Queen Victoria and members of the Royal Family.
  In 1943, after the nearby Mount Pleasant sorting office was bombed, the building was requisitioned for use during World War II and never re-opened to the public. It continued as a sorting office until 1971, then lay empty and deteriorating until eventually the main hall was redeveloped as the Business Design Centre in the 1980s. The remainder of the building was demolished and the main entrance moved from Liverpool Road to the Upper Street side.
  The Royal Agricultural Hall features as the location for a Victorian walking match in Peter Lovesey’s 1970 novel  Wobble to Death, and its BBC Radio's Saturday Night Theatre adaptation.
  Liverpool Road is unusual in being one of the few streets in London to have a "high pavement". This was constructed in the 1860s to protect pedestrians from being splashed by the large numbers of animals using the road to reach the then-new Agricultural Hall. As a consequence, the pavement is approximately 1 metre (3 ft 3 in) above the road surface for some lengths of the street.
caption: 1861 Cattle show at the Royal Agricultural Hall
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