Gillespie Road | Arsenal N5 Street Sign Tee

These streets are our own. So is the street sign.

THE STREET

Gillespie Road runs east to west along the north side of the old Highbury ground, in N5, the London Borough of Islington. It is the road the away end walks. It is where the queues still form on a matchday, the same lanes supporters have funnelled through for over a century. The buildings changed. The street name didn't.

WHOEVER HEARD OF GILLESPIE ROAD

In 1932, Arsenal manager Herbert Chapman wanted the Underground station renamed. "Whoever heard of Gillespie Road," he said. "It is Arsenal around here." It took months of lobbying and a small fortune in reprinted tickets, maps and signs. On 31 October 1932, Gillespie Road station became Arsenal — the only station on the entire London Underground named after a football club.

THE TILES THEY COULDN'T SCRUB

Walk down to the platform and the old name is still there, spelled out in the original tiling, GILLESPIE ROAD in letters the size of your head. Ninety years on, the receipt is still on the wall. The club took the station. The street kept its name. Both are true at once, and both belong to the same postcode.

WEAR IT

The Islington nameplate, on a shirt. For anyone who has made the walk from the tube to the ground, for the away end that knows whose streets these are, for the diaspora who rides the only line in the world that stops at a club. These streets are our own. The sign says so.

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