Clerkenwell Office Space

While Clerkenwell office space is located in the relatively recently titled area of London known as Midtown, Clerkenwell’s heritage dates back centuries.

In 2024, The Sunday Times named the district the best place to live in the UK capital. It stated that Clerkenwell embodies all that’s best about life in London, from its rich past of ribaldry to its current status at the heart of the capital’s culinary and creative scenes. It detailed its offering of cosy pubs, cool cafes, lively bars, and some of London’s best restaurants in a warren of streets and alleys full of fascinating history.

Once known for the water source for which it was named. The Clerks’ Well was supplied by the same river that gives its name to Fleet Street.

Clerkenwell was an ancient parish from the medieval period onwards. It now forms the south-western part of the London Borough of Islington and is the site of several wells and spas, including Sadler’s Wells and Spa Green.

Goswell Street formed the eastern boundary of the Clerkenwell parishes, with the River Fleet, now buried beneath Farringdon Road and other streets, forming the western boundary with Holborn. Pentonville is a part of northern Clerkenwell, while the southern part is also referred to as Farringdon.

The ‘Clerk’ of Clerks’ Well came from the Middle English variant of ‘clerc’, meaning literate person or clergyman, referring to the area’s early monastic population.

The Monastic Order of the Knights Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem had its English headquarters at the Priory of Clerkenwell from the 12^th Century. Its gateway, erected in 1504 in St John’s Square, still stands today. The Order were medics and had a hospital at the site for war-wounded. It also had an herb garden within which botanicals, including St John’s Wort, were grown for medicinal purposes. The order, which adopted the Maltese cross as its emblem, still exists today in the form of St John Ambulance.

Later, as Clerkenwell was a suburb beyond the confines of the London Wall, it was outside the jurisdiction of the somewhat puritanical City fathers. Consequently, it became an area of revelry and disrepute, and during the Elizabethan era, it contained a notorious brothel quarter.

Clerkenwell Green lies at the centre of the old village in the district, and its real estate today is a mixture of housing, offices, and pubs. It is dominated by the imposing former Middlesex Sessions House, built in 1782. It was once the largest and busiest courthouse in London, complete with dungeons from which convicts were transported to awaiting ships on the Thames bound for Australia.

The building featured in Charles Dickens’ novel Oliver Twist. Near its steps, the Artful Dodger pickpocketed a passerby, and Oliver was wrongly implicated in the crime and taken inside to see the magistrate. Now known as Old Sessions House, it is an exclusive members’ club offering work and event space complete with a swimming pool as one of its numerous amenities.

Another iconic institution of Clerkenwell is the 800-year-old Smithfield Market. Its central hall was completed in 1868 by Sir Horace Jones, the architect who designed Tower Bridge. Its masterful Italian-inspired architecture was well-fitting for the area, as it had earned the moniker Little Italy, as it was home to over 2,000 Italians at that time.

The Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries significantly changed Clerkenwell. It became a centre for breweries, distilleries, and the printing industry. It also gained a particular reputation for the making of clocks, marine chronometers, and watches. It was also described as ‘the greenhouse of invention’, and it was here that the machine gun, Marconi’s electric telegraph, dynamos, speedometers, torpedo engines and the Christmas cracker were invented.

Clerkenwell office space today is occupied by an eclectic range of occupiers, including those from the architectural, legal, professional services and creative sectors.

They can choose from a diverse range of offices, from brand-new Grade A office buildings to elegantly renovated period properties that have been retrofitted to offer premium contemporary workspace.

One example of a new Grade A office building is Turnmill. Developers used handmade bricks that would be sympathetic with the neighbouring Grade I listed Old Sessions House. Its curved design was used to reflect the movement of people through Clerkenwell.

Turnmill offers prime office space to rent on a conventional leasehold basis, which provides tenants with ready-to-fit space and complete autonomy over fit-out and management of the space. Old Sessions House, like many other properties in Clerkenwell, offers premium flexible workspace.

Flexible workspace includes managed office space, serviced offices and coworking spaces. All of which offer a turnkey workspace solution where management of the space is outsourced and the rent is all-inclusive.

Prime managed office spaces are pre-cabled, and the tenants dictate the fit-out and furnishing process with the assistance of the managed office landlord or provider’s design and technical teams.

Customised managed offices can include dedicated reception areas, meeting rooms, private office suites, open-plan workspaces, coworking areas, kitchens, and bathrooms. Tenants can choose a bespoke service level package that utilises the services of the IT, hospitality, and business support teams.

High-end serviced offices in Clerkenwell are private offices that are fully furnished, fitted, and equipped with cutting-edge business technologies. Tenants enjoy first-class shared amenities, including fully stocked kitchens, bookable meeting rooms and boardrooms, breakout areas, quiet zones, fitness and wellness facilities such as gyms and meditation rooms, and outdoor spaces such as courtyards and roof terraces.

In contrast to leased offices, these are occupied via flexible licences, which allow businesses to extend terms and expand into larger office suites as they grow. Many offices in Clerkenwell can provide space for over 1,000 desks spread over several self-contained floors or a designated building with its own front door.

Equally, the office licences allow a tenant to contract into a smaller suite according to changing business needs.

Flexible offices are priced all-inclusively, so the monthly rent covers overheads such as utilities, cleaning, refreshments, reception services, security and other expenses that would be paid separately if renting an office in Clerkenwell with a conventional lease.

The luxury office buildings that offer these flexible workspace options are designed and managed sustainably, ensuring they are run in an eco-conscious manner, suiting the high environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards of their occupiers. This also means they are equipped with end-of-trip facilities, including electric vehicle chargers, bicycle storage, showers, and changing facilities for self-powered commuters.

However, Clerkenwell offers excellent public transport links from Farringdon station, which since 2022 has been served by the Elizabeth Line. Other stations nearby include Angel, Barbican, Chancery Lane and Moorgate.