Looking at Clink, if you’d said its outward appearance resembles that of a court you’d be right. Inside the holding cells converted into rooms gives this away. But transformation from court to hostel isn’t the only interesting piece of the buildings history…
Previously having been a court there were thousands of cases that were seen in its halls. Including a few famous cases over the years. One of which being the 70’s band The Clash, appearing in Clerkenwell Magistrates Court for shooting pigeons of all things. The pigeons in question were actually racing pigeons out to stretch their wings. On top of their rehearsal space in North London Paul Simonon and Topper Headon were taking a break from things. They were doing this by taking shots at the passing pigeons, unfortunately for the musicians the aforementioned pigeons had an owner. After a (perhaps overkill) troupe of four police cars and a single helicopter arrived the suspects were apprehended. Following the incident both Paul and Topper were summoned to Clerkenwell Magistrates Court, whereby they both plead guilty to Criminal damage. They also had to pay the owner of the pigeons £700, regrettably it did not bring back the pigeons.