Seventy metres from the platform to the kettle
Seventy metres. That is the distance between the Victoria line ticket hall and your own front door, and it is the whole argument for this address. You come up at Highbury & Islington, turn left along the parade, and let yourself into a flat with an oak worktop, a proper oven and a sofa you can put your feet on. No lobby to cross, no desk to queue at, nobody waiting to hand you a key, because the door takes a code that reaches you before you travel. For a weekend built around a show, a match or an early train, this is the shortest walk in north London. The practical side of the corner is unusually good too: a Little Waitrose that opens at half seven every morning and runs to eleven at night, a Tesco Express a few doors further on, a cash machine, two Italian restaurants and a run of coffee places, all inside a minute of the door.
Two flats, and they are not the same
The studio is the one to look at first. It was refurbished recently and it shows: white walls, deep green velvet cushions, mustard curtains, black-framed prints and a compact kitchen along one wall with a mint retro microwave and an oak worktop. A short staircase comes up into the room itself, which is part of its character and part of its catch, and the window looks out over a raised deck at the back. The two-bedroom flat is plainer and more practical, with wood floors, a big corner sofa and, crucially, a washing machine the studio does not have. It takes two doubles and a sofa bed, so five people fit without anyone sleeping next to the kettle. Both are let whole, so you are never sharing with strangers, and both come with tea, coffee and cereal waiting on the worktop. Neither has air conditioning, so both rely on an open window and a fan when London turns hot.
What the building opposite means for your night
The venue guests keep mentioning is The Garage, with the 150-capacity Grace upstairs, both run by DHP Family and both putting on separate bills most nights. It is a two-minute walk and it is the reason a lot of people book. It also holds one of the later licences in the area, running to 4.30am on Fridays and Saturdays. The council attaches conditions about asking people to leave quietly and calling cabs from inside, but a flat this close to a late-licensed venue is a light sleeper’s gamble on a weekend. Take earplugs, or take the room at the back.
Why book Highbury & Islington Hub
A whole flat on a transport interchange, chosen almost entirely for where it puts you.
Seventy metres to the Victoria line
Highbury & Islington station is across the parade. King’s Cross St Pancras is one stop south, and the Night Tube runs on Friday and Saturday nights.
A gig venue across the junction
The Garage and The Grace are a two-minute walk. Guests book this flat to walk home from a show, and that is the honest reason to choose it.
Your own kitchen and front door
Oven, hob, fridge, kettle and a dining table in both flats, plus tea, coffee and cereal waiting when you arrive. Buy milk opposite.
Let yourself in, any time up to midnight
There is no reception. You get a door code before you travel and arrive when it suits, from 4pm until midnight.
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Interesting Points About Highbury & Islington Hub
- The venue guests call “the Grace” is the 150-capacity upstairs room at The Garage, 20-22 Highbury Corner, run by DHP Family. Both rooms programme separate bills, most nights of the week.
- The building across the road holds one of the later licences in the area: regulated entertainment until 4.30am on Fridays and Saturdays, and until 3.30am Monday to Thursday.
- The flats sit in Islington parking Zone E, controlled Monday to Friday 8.30am to 6.30pm and Saturday 8.30am to 1.30pm, with no Sunday and no evening control.
- On Arsenal home matchdays those Zone E hours extend to 8.30pm on weekdays, 4.30pm on Saturdays, and noon to 4.30pm on a Sunday, so the usual free evening disappears.
- The Little Waitrose across the junction opens 7.30am to 11pm every day of the week. The Tesco Express on Holloway Road closes at 5pm on Sundays.
- Highbury & Islington is step-free only to the London Overground platforms. There is no step-free route to the Victoria line.
- Four flats at this address hold their own energy certificates, at 25, 52, 55 and 58 square metres, so the floor areas quoted on listing sites are roughly double the registered figures.
Rooms & Accommodation at Highbury & Islington Hub
Studio Apartment
One open room, sleeps up to three
Best for two people whose weekend happens outside the flat. Everything is in one bright room: the bed, the sofa, the breakfast bar and a kitchen along one wall with an oven, hob, microwave and kettle. The staircase comes up into the room, so it is open rather than private, and the sofa bed is a serviceable third berth rather than a comfortable one. There is a tumble dryer but no washing machine in this flat.
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Two-Bedroom Apartment
Two bedrooms plus a sofa bed, sleeps up to five
Choose this one if you are a group of four or five, or if you are staying long enough to need to do laundry. It has a separate living room with a corner sofa, a full kitchen with a washing machine, and two double bedrooms, so nobody has to sleep next to the kettle. Be straight with yourself about the finish: this flat has not had the studio’s refurbishment, and guests describe it as comfortable but tired rather than smart.
Check PricesWho this suits
Best Suited For
- Anyone with a ticket for The Garage, The Grace, Union Chapel or the Assembly Hall who wants to walk home
- Arsenal supporters happy with an eighteen-minute walk to the Emirates
- Travellers with an early departure who want one stop to King’s Cross St Pancras
- Small groups who would rather cook and share a whole flat than book two hotel rooms
Worth Considering Alternatives If
- Anyone who cannot manage a steep flight of stairs with luggage, because there is no lift and no step-free flat
- Light sleepers on a Friday or Saturday, given the late licence across the junction
- Drivers, since there is no parking and the road outside is a red route
- Guests expecting hotel service, daily housekeeping or a front desk
What is in the flats
In the kitchen
- Oven
- Gas hob
- Microwave
- Fridge
- Toaster
- Electric kettle
- Kitchenware, pots and pans
- Dining table
- Cleaning products
- Tea, coffee and cereal to start you off
In the flat
- Flat-screen TV with cable channels
- Streaming services
- Free Wi-Fi
- Heating
- Fan
- Iron and ironing facilities
- Sofa bed
- Wardrobe or closet
- Desk
- Socket beside the bed
- Tumble dryer
- Washing machine
Bathroom
- Private bathroom
- Bath or shower
- Free toiletries
- Towels
- Hairdryer
- Toilet paper
Building and access
- Self check-in by door code
- CCTV outside the property and in common areas
- Smoke alarms
- Fire extinguishers
- Security alarm
- Non-smoking throughout
- Not available: Lift
- Not available: Step-free access
- Not available: Reception
Not here
- Not available: Parking
- Not available: Breakfast service
- Not available: Restaurant or bar
- Not available: Air conditioning
- Not available: Pets
- Not available: Outdoor space for guests
Highbury Corner, and what is around it
Highbury Corner is a junction, not a quiet street, and that is the trade. The flats sit on the parade beside the station, with a supermarket, a Tesco, three or four cafes and two Italian restaurants inside a minute’s walk. Upper Street unrolls south towards Angel with its theatres and antiques arcades; Highbury Fields opens out to the north, the largest park in the borough and effectively the end of the road. The Emirates is eighteen minutes on foot. Nothing here needs a car, which is fortunate, because the road outside is a red route.- The Garage and The Grace: Two-minute walk. Two music rooms in one building, 500 downstairs and 150 upstairs, on separate bills most nights.
- Highbury Fields: Three-minute walk. The borough’s largest open space, with tennis courts, a playground and a long avenue of plane trees.
- Highbury Leisure Centre: Four-minute walk. An indoor pool and gym on Highbury Crescent, still widely called Highbury Pool.
- Union Chapel: Five-minute walk. A working Grade I listed church that doubles as one of London’s better-loved music venues.
- Estorick Collection: Seven-minute walk. A Georgian house on Canonbury Square holding the country’s only collection of modern Italian art.
- Islington Assembly Hall: Nine-minute walk. A 1930s art deco hall behind the town hall, used for gigs and comedy.
- Almeida Theatre: Twelve-minute walk. A small producing theatre off Upper Street with a reputation well beyond its size.
- Emirates Stadium: Eighteen-minute walk. Arsenal’s ground, with a self-guided tour and the club museum on non-matchdays.
- Camden Passage: Nineteen-minute walk. Antiques arcades and independent shops in a lane off Upper Street, busiest on market days.
- Chapel Market: Twenty-five-minute walk. A working street market near Angel, closed on Mondays.
Getting to Key Locations
Within a 15-minute walk: 3 of the 4 places below.
Photo: Ewan-M, CC BY-SA 4.0
The Garage and The Grace
2 min walk
A hundred metres from the front door, a two-minute walk, The Garage has been putting bands on at Highbury Corner for decades, with the 150-capacity Grace in the room above it. The two run separate bills, so there is usually something on both floors. It is the reason a good number of guests book this flat, and the reason to bring earplugs on a Friday.
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Photo: Marathon, CC BY-SA 2.0
Highbury Fields
3 min walk
A three-minute walk north, Highbury Fields is the largest open space in the borough: twenty-nine acres of grass and plane trees with tennis courts, a playground and a leisure centre with an indoor pool at its southern corner. It is where the neighbourhood goes to run, sit and walk dogs, and it starts almost at the end of the parade.
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Photo: Philafrenzy, CC BY-SA 4.0
Union Chapel
5 min walk
A five-minute walk down Compton Terrace, Union Chapel is a working Grade I listed church that moonlights as one of the most atmospheric places in London to hear music, under a vaulted roof with the congregation’s pews still in place. It also runs a daytime programme and keeps a night shelter going in the crypt.
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Photo: Julian Osley, CC BY-SA 2.0
Emirates Stadium
18 min walk
Eight-tenths of a mile north, an eighteen-minute walk, Emirates Stadium is Arsenal’s 60,000-seat ground. On non-matchdays the self-guided tour and the club museum run daily, adult admission £34. On matchdays the walk back is slower than the walk there, and the streets around the flat carry the crowd.
View on MapGetting here
- From King’s Cross St Pancras: Take the Victoria line northbound one stop to Highbury & Islington. Leave by the main exit, turn left along the parade, and the door is about seventy metres on. Allow fifteen minutes door to door.
- From Heathrow: Piccadilly line eastbound to King’s Cross St Pancras, then the Victoria line north one stop. Allow about an hour and ten minutes with luggage, and remember there is no step-free route to the Victoria line here.
- From Gatwick, Luton or Stansted: Thameslink from Gatwick or Luton Airport Parkway to St Pancras, then one Victoria line stop. From Stansted, the Express to Tottenham Hale and the Victoria line four stops south.
- Arriving by car: Do not, if you can avoid it. Highbury Corner is a red route with no kerbside parking, the flats have none, and the nearest public car parks are at Sobell Leisure Centre and Sonderburg Road.
Islington, on foot
Everything that makes Islington worth staying in sits along one road. Upper Street runs from Highbury Corner down to Angel, and between the two you get the theatres, the antiques arcades at Camden Passage, Chapel Market, and more small music rooms per square mile than almost anywhere else in London. This walking tour covers the southern end of it.Watch: a walk through Angel and Islington
A narrated walking tour of Islington, taking in Chapel Market, the Camden Passage antiques arcades and Upper Street.
Is Highbury & Islington Hub worth booking?
Book it for where it is. Seventy metres from the Victoria line, two minutes from a venue licensed to 4.30am and eighteen from the Emirates, and you get a whole flat with a kitchen rather than a room with a kettle. What you trade is polish and access: a steep staircase, no lift, a shower guests have called erratic since spring, and a two-bedroom flat that is tired where the studio is not. Carry your own bag up a flight and it is a sound choice.
What guests say
Scores and review counts are aggregated from verified guest bookings on major travel platforms.
Good
Guests are consistent about two things, and they pull in opposite directions. The position is rated far above everything else: right by the tube, opposite the venue, shops on the doorstep. Then almost every review that marks it down names the same short list, and the list barely changes from spring to summer: a steep staircase nobody warned them about, a shower that swings between scalding and freezing, and paintwork and fittings that need attention. The company itself gets credit for answering quickly and fixing things mid-stay.
Rated the position highly and found the flat clean, with a company that answered quickly and sorted out problems. Her list of small letdowns was long though: scuffed paint on the doors and frames, storage boxes stacked in the living room, spare bedding left behind the television, no tea towel, and a keypad whose batteries needed attention before she could get in. She had also chosen the place partly for the terrace and was told she could not use it.
2026-08-14Kept it short: an excellent spot and hosts who went out of their way to help.
2026-08-10Liked where it put her and slept well on a comfortable bed. The shower was the problem, running hot then cold without settling. Her one suggestion was that a little milk in the fridge would finish off the tea, coffee and cereal already provided.
2026-07-20Booked it for one night to be opposite The Grace, which worked exactly as intended. Marked it down for the staircase and the bathroom.
2026-07-08Called it a great stay and said the flat suited her perfectly: clean, properly equipped and about as well placed as she could have asked for. A fan helped in the heat and the cereal was a nice touch with shops right outside for milk. The sofa bed was adequate rather than comfortable.
2026-06-03Said he had one of the best weekends of his life. The spot was ideal and the flat comfortable. Only the hot water let it down, coming and going.
2026-06-01Found it roomy and clean and perfect for seeing a band at the venue opposite, with a supermarket across the road and useful basics laid on. Her complaint was the staircase, which she called brutal and which nothing in the listing had prepared her for. Her mother, in her seventies, struggled with it. She also found only the bathroom radiator working, a shower stuck between extremes, and a vent beside the bed in the small room that let in every noise outside from five in the morning.
2026-05-13Judged it good value and exactly as advertised, comfortable and clean if visibly due a fresh coat of paint. The beds turned up without pillowcases, and the company sorted that out while she was gone for the day.
2026-05-13Would come back. Praised the setting, easy access and a clean, comfortable flat that was well equipped on the whole. Some of the fittings were past their best, and he could not adjust the boiler so the radiators were slow to come up to temperature.
2026-04-22Rated the setting highly, with the tube round the corner, a concert at the venue over the road, two supermarkets and a cash machine alongside, and coffee wherever he looked. The main bed had a dip but he slept fine. One room had nowhere to hang clothes, the shower would not settle between freezing and scalding, and the lock took some persuading. His warning was blunt: the stairs rule the place out for anyone with mobility problems, and carrying a heavy case back down nearly finished him.
2026-04-14Good to Know Before You Book
Stairs, and no lift
Both flats are on the first floor and reached by a steep staircase with no lift, which the listing sites mention only in passing. Guests raise it repeatedly, including one whose mother in her seventies struggled with it. If stairs or a heavy case are difficult, this is not the right stay.
You let yourself in
There is no reception and no key. The operator sends a door code, and you arrive any time from 4pm to midnight, having told them roughly when. Early arrival from 2pm is sometimes possible for a small charge. Save the code before you travel, because there is nobody in the building to ask.
A £500 deposit, paid by bank transfer
A refundable damage deposit of £500 is collected by bank transfer about a week before you arrive and returned within seven days of check-out after the flat is checked. Payment for the stay is also arranged before arrival. Budget for the deposit leaving your account in advance.
Shops opposite, but check the Sunday hours
The Little Waitrose across the junction opens 7.30am to 11pm every day. The Tesco Express on Holloway Road closes at 5pm on a Sunday, which catches people out. Tea, coffee and cereal are provided in the flat, but not milk.
Photos of Highbury & Islington Hub
Questions guests ask
No. Both flats are on the first floor and the only way up is a steep staircase. There is no lift and no step-free unit, and the listing describes the upper floors as accessible by stairs only. Guests raise the staircase more often than anything else, so treat it as the deciding factor if stairs are difficult for anyone in your party.
It is a short-stay holiday let. You book one self-contained flat, either the studio or the two-bedroom apartment, and you have it to yourself. There is no reception, no housekeeping during your stay and no restaurant. It is not a residential tenancy and it is not let by the room.
You let yourself in with a door code. Tell the operator roughly what time you will arrive, and they send the code before you travel. Check-in runs from 4pm to midnight and check-out is by 11am. Early check-in from 2pm is sometimes available for a small charge, subject to availability.
There is no parking at the property, and Highbury Corner itself is a red route with no legal kerbside parking. The flats sit in Islington’s Zone E, controlled Monday to Friday 8.30am to 6.30pm and Saturday 8.30am to 1.30pm, with no Sunday or evening control, so nearby residential streets are free in the evening. On Arsenal home matchdays and Emirates event days that changes: control runs to 8.30pm on weekdays, 4.30pm on Saturdays and noon to 4.30pm on Sundays. A car is genuinely unnecessary here.
Four services: the Victoria line, the London Overground’s Mildmay and Windrush lines, and Great Northern trains to Moorgate, which take eight minutes. Highbury & Islington is the northern terminus of the Windrush line. The Night Tube runs on the Victoria line on Friday and Saturday nights. Step-free access reaches only the Overground platforms, not the Victoria line.
In the two-bedroom apartment, yes, along with a tumble dryer. The studio has a tumble dryer but no washing machine. Both are inside the flat rather than shared, which is worth knowing if you are staying more than a couple of nights.
No. There is no breakfast service and no restaurant, because these are self-catering flats. What you do get is a starter supply on the worktop: tea, coffee and cereal, with kitchenware, a toaster and a kettle to hand. Milk is not provided, so pick some up at the Little Waitrose across the junction, which opens at 7.30am every day.
£500, refundable. It is collected by bank transfer roughly seven days before arrival and returned within seven days of check-out once the flat has been inspected. Payment for the stay itself is also arranged before you arrive.
It might, on a Friday or Saturday. The Garage and The Grace are a two-minute walk across the junction and the building is licensed for entertainment until 4.30am at weekends and 3.30am midweek. The licence obliges the venue to ask people to leave quietly and to call cabs from inside, but guests do mention street noise, and one reported a vent beside the bed in the smaller bedroom carrying every sound from outside. Bring earplugs if you sleep lightly.
Eight-tenths of a mile, an eighteen-minute walk. On home matchdays expect the area to change character: Holloway Road station is exit-only before kick-off and shut for up to two hours afterwards, Drayton Park has no trains from about two hours before until two hours after, and a managed queue runs along the south side of Holloway Road past this junction.
No pets, and the whole property is non-smoking. Children of any age are welcome and an extra bed is free on request. The house rules say no cots are available, but the operator answered a guest in 2025 saying a cot could be arranged, so ask when you book.
Other places we cover nearby
The Farringdon
Self-catering apartments on Farringdon Road in Clerkenwell, about a mile and a half south and still inside the borough, two minutes from Exmouth Market.
Finsbury Rose
A guest house on Fonthill Road by Finsbury Park, roughly a mile north, handy for the Victoria, Piccadilly and Great Northern interchange.
GuestReady The Fitzroy
Apartments in Fitzrovia about two miles south-west, closer to Oxford Street and the West End theatres.
A whole flat, seventy metres from the Victoria line
Check the dates and see what the studio and the two-bedroom flat are doing for your nights.
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