Tolpuddle Street is a more recent street of Islington.
Work began in 1982 on what was then called the Culpeper link-road, renamed Tolpuddle Street on its completion in 1986 - a faster connection between Liverpool Road and Penton Street.
It replaced two residential roads - Mantell Street (formerly Sermon Lane) and Culpeper Street (formerly Albert Street). The name was chosen to mark the 150th anniversary of a dinner held at the White Conduit House to celebrate the remission of the sentences passed against the Tolpuddle Martyrs, who had gained massive local support two years previously.
For some years the sites on the south side were used for car parking.
Directly under the road, the car park and Liverpool Road runs the Islington Tunnel of the Regent’s Canal. This 960-yard brick-lined tunnel was a major undertaking and the most ambitious engineering work on the canal, passing under Islington Hill and the New River. Designed by the canal’s engineer James Morgan as a 17 ft-wide horseshoe vault over a brick invert, it was built by direct labour, from west to east, largely during 1815. This northern part of Pentonville was then mostly open ground, allowing space for a construction depot as well as one or more of the shafts from which sections of the tunnel were built. The tunnel opened with the canal in 1820.
