John Waddington started off as a theatrical printer in Leeds in 1896 and the firm began printing playing cards in 1921. Waddingtons had sent the card game Lexicon to Parker Brothers hoping to interest them in publishing the game in the United States. In a similar fashion, Parker Brothers sent over a copy of Monopoly to Waddingtons early in 1935 before the game had been put into production in the United States.

The managing director of Waddingtons, Victor Watson, gave the game to his son Norman (who was head of the card games division) to test over the weekend. Norman was impressed by the game and persuaded his father to call Parker Brothers on Monday morning – transatlantic calls then being almost unheard of. This call resulted in Waddingtons obtaining a license to produce and market the game outside of the United States.

Watson felt that for the game to be a success in the United Kingdom, the American locations would have to be replaced, so Victor and his secretary, Marjory Phillips, went to London to scout out locations. The Angel, Islington is not a street in London but an area of North London named after a coaching inn that stood on the Great North Road. By the 1930s, the inn had become a Lyons Corner House (it is now a Co-operative Bank). Some accounts say that Marjory and Victor met at the Angel to discuss the selection and celebrated the fact by including it on the Monopoly board. In 2003, a plaque commemorating the naming was unveiled at the site by Victor Watson's grandson, who is also named Victor.

The standard British board, produced by Waddingtons, was for many years the version most familiar to people in countries in the Commonwealth (except Canada, where the U.S. edition with Atlantic City-area names was reprinted), although local variants of the board are now also found in several of these countries. In the cases wherein the game was produced under license by a national company, the £ (pound) was replaced by a $ (dollar) sign, but the place names were unchanged.

An interesting fact about the U. K. version of Monopoly was that the British Secret Service had customized the U. K. version of the game during World War 2. Inside the games there were hidden maps, codes, real money, compasses and even objects that could be used for escaping. The Red Cross Association distributed these games to the prisoners.

In the 1970s, the game became widely available in a standard, commercial version and also a very famous book by the name of Monopoly Book: Strategy and Tactics of the World's Most Popular Game was published by Maxine Brady.

In 1995, Winning Moves Games was founded by four game industry professionals including Philip Orbanes (formerly at Parker Brothers, and the leading expert on the game Monopoly). The company then forged a close relationship with the world's largest game company, Hasbro, Inc., owner of Parker Brothers and as a result, local editions (and some custom editions) of Monopoly in the United Kingdom continue to be made exclusively by Winning Moves Games.

The boards properties are all changed, but in relevant sections although the corner properties have to remain as the original.