St Luke's

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For other uses, see St. Luke's.

St Luke's is an area in the London Borough of Islington in Greater London, close to the borders with the London Borough of Hackney and the City of London, near the Barbican and Shoreditch. The closest tube station is Barbican. The area includes City Road, Finsbury Square, Whitecross Street and part of Old Street. The name is not often used in modern times.

It is named after the church of St Luke Old Street. The parish was created in 1733 (with the construction of the church) as both a civil parish and an ecclesiastical parish, from the part of the parish of St Giles Cripplegate outside the City of London.

The parish had a large non-conformist population. John Wesley's house and Wesleyan Chapel are in City Road, as is Bunhill Fields burial ground.

In 1751 St Lukes Hospital, an early lunatic asylum, was founded. Rebuilt in 1782 - 1784 by George Dance the Younger, it later became the banknote and postage stamp printing works of De La Rue. It was badly damaged by The Blitz of 1940

The civil parish became officially known as St Luke's Middlesex. The parish was historically in the county of Middlesex, and was included in the area of the Metropolitan Board of Works in 1855. From 1889 it was part of the County of London. The vestry administered local government in the area until the civil parish became part of the Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury in 1899.