Do not pass Go...

Above: the only coloured square on the board that’s not a street.

Have you ever wondered why The Angel Islington appears on the Monopoly board – the only property square on the board that isn’t the name of a street?

The game started life in America as The Landlord’s Game, patented in 1904 by Lizzie Magie. It morphed into Monopoly and in 1935 the British company John Waddington Ltd, printers of playing cards, bought the licence to produce and market the game outside the USA.

Waddington’s MD Victor Watson and his secretary Marjory Phillips travelled from Leeds to London to scout out suitable locations for their British version of the game. The story goes that at the end of their busy day, before returning to King’s Cross Station, Marjory and Victor had tea and cake at the Angel Cafe on the corner of Islington High Street and Pentonville Road, and commemorated their visit by putting The Angel on to the Monopoly board.

Above: the Angel Cafe and Restaurant in 1922

The Angel had been a pub and a hotel before the building was bought by J Lyons & Co in 1921. It was never classified by Lyons as a Tea Shop or Corner House but operated as the Angel Cafe and Restaurant until 1959, when the building was bought by the local council in anticipation of a road widening scheme which never happened.

Since 1979 it has been a branch of the Co-operative Bank. In 2003 Victor Watson’s grandson unveiled a plaque commemorating the Angel Cafe and its place on the Monopoly board. It’s inside the bank on the ground floor.