Camden Town

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Aldenham Street

Estate was given to the public school in Hertfordshire called Aldenham by Richard Platt. Native of the town and Brewer under Elizabeth he had it as a grammar school. Three fields in the area and Medburn Farm to the school under the control of the Brewers Company.

Ampthill Square

Site of the Duke of Bedoerd’s Figs Mead Estate laid out with terraces in the 1830s and called Bedford New Town.Bombed  and demolished.

St Pancras's Estate  by Eric Lyons & Partners. mixed development  with three clumsy tower blocks of c. 1960, reclad in 1988 with  trimmings in primary colours. . Three twenty-storey tower blocks, north of the expanded railway-reclad in primary colours in the 1980s.. It occupies a lot of ground, most of which was once Ampthill Square, actually a segment of a circle.

Baxter Street

Bessemer bronze powder manufacture bought factory premises

Bayham Street

Nineteenth century artisan street called after Bayham Abbey, the Marquis of Camden's house.  Fleet ran down the other side of the canal.  Modest houses on Camden Town development. Bayham was another of Charles Pratt’s titles.

Greenland Road Children’s Centre on the site of 16.

16 after Charles Dickens left Chatham as a boy of ten in December 1822, he lived here. In 1822, his father was transferred to work in Somerset House and the family rented this house, built in 1812, for £22 a year. It had four rooms, a basement and an attic, in which Mr and Mrs Dickens, their six children, a cousin and a servant-girl lived. The area was one of the poorest London suburbs and the house was a small tenement, with a little back garden abutting on a squalid court.  A washerwoman lived next door, and a Bow Street officer nearby. At the back was Mr Lever's field, used for haymaking; and there was a walk across the fields to Copenhagen House. The house was demolished in 1910 and replaced by the Outpatients' Department of Hampstead General and North West London Hospital.

Brunel court in Pratt Street, 1840.

126-129 demolished for ARP exercises

Westerham flats 1955-61 Festival of Britain style tiles. Large council schemes, characteristic of its era. A tall range with canted wings, the old-fashioned symmetry of its frontage relieved by lightweight balconies

St.Martin's in the Fields' almshouses.  Built 1818. Build in modest stock brick by H. H. Seward, with additions done in 1881.

Greenland Street Hall.  19^thcarefully detailed late c19 Gothic, with tile-hanging, is probably by B Bodley& Garner, architects of St Michael's Church

Curnock Street Estate, c. 1967-70 by Boissevain & Osmond, offers an alternative to high-rise in the form   of trim three- and four-storey blocks in yellow brick, approached along pavements raised above a podium of well-concealed garages.   Behind this urban face is hidden surprisingly generous planted enclosed squares and playgrounds. 

Beatty Street,

Built soon after the Battle of Trafalgar, originally Nelson Street, in tribute to the Admiral's success at Trafalgar, was renamed in 1937. There are two possible derivations, both nautical Sir William Beatty, Nelson's surgeon, and Admiral Lord Beatty, Commander-in-Chief of the Fleet in World War I who had died in 1936.

Camden High Street

A lively mixture of mostly small shops and utilities, typical of the modest development of the Southampton Estate in Camden Town.

1a Features in films 'Breaking Glass’.

8

24

34

38

112-138 Department Store, ship and steam engines

133 site of Marks and Spencer's bazaar site of Electric Cinema in the 1920s. By 1939 this had grown into a departmental store. Part of the present Marks & Spencer’s site was one cinema, the Electric, run by a Mrs Elizabeth Storey. I 135, inscribed 'SB 1925 SB'

135 'SB' Sydney Bolson, Boot Dealer

287/289 Jobmaster's office.  Booking office 1972.  Crews of Buses for the Metropolitan District railway to Gower Street station, then railway took over.  Went all round the stations 1895.  Assoc. Omnibus stables, then motor engines and private buses

93-95 new building on site of Bedford Theatre Royal Camden Theatre, odd dome 1900, Old Bedford music hall demolition in 1969. It was last used as a playhouse in 1 and the final productions included Sir Donald Wolfit Othello and King Lear. The list of famous players appearing at the Bedford before World War 1 is a long one. In 1912 it included Gracie Fields (fourteen years at the time) and Charlie Chaplin. Among lesser lights the wife of Dr Crippen, later murdered by her husband. Famous interiors of the theatre were painted by Sickert. Features in films 'Trottie True’.

ABC Bread Co., 1915, 1920s facade, became Sainsbury's site

Sainsbury supermarket and housing, 1988 Nicholas Grimshaw & Partners Ltd. There is a certain heroic quality about this supermarket complex striving to achieve a piece of urbane architecture appropriate to its context out of a brief better suited to some suburban fringe. It not only succeeds, but does so while offering its client a column-free trading hall and its customers ample underground car parking. The means employed are typical of Grimshaw: an acrobatic structure which becomes a principal feature of the architecture. The articulation of the two storey bays to the main street frontage is intended to acknowledge the rhythm of the Georgian terrace opposite. Similarly, the canal to the rear of the site is provided with a sensitively scaled residential terrace made up of essentially conventional townhouses, although their aesthetic of curved aluminium and gasketed windows upsets some people. The inventiveness lies in the way a restrictive northern orientation has been addressed by means of incorporating roof lights and glazed, electrically operated garage doors to the double height living space. Just another piece of canal has become a place. The western, service side of the complex is less successful, the relentless scale of the workshop strip overwhelming the smaller grain of existing street activities. This side has elaborate vehicle entry gates - competing, with the post- modernism of Terry Farrell at TV-AM just along the street. Apparently the client was less than impressed by the difficulties and costs of developing an inner city site - a comment OB commercial criteria and an underscoring oft struggle undertaken by the architects. The battleship grey colouring, which lends an unnecessarily aggressive air to an otherwise thoughtful design.   

Camden Palace, 1900 designed as the Royal Camden Theatre.  Cinema and night spot.  Plasterwork, galleries. At the junction of the High Street with Crowndale Road stands what was once an elegant Edwardian playhouse, the Camden Palace, built at the beginning ( this century at a cost of £50,000. The architect m was Sprague, the man responsible for the design of numerous turn-of-the-century theatres in London and suburbs. Messrs. Waring and Gillow carried out the interior decoration, on his orders, in the then popular Louis XV style. (Due to the influence of the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, it was fashionable to be Francophile, even in unfashionable Camden Town) The building, lighted by electricity, had a seating capacity of over 3,000, and a winter garden and promenade. Ellen Terry travelled from Brighton to open the theatre on 2 December 1900 and a copper bas-relief still hangs in the foyer to commemorate the event. After World War I the building became a cinema, as did several other London theatres. Later it was used as radio and television studios later, in the 1970s, as a restaurant and disco. Now a listed building, the Camden Palace is a thriving night spot for the younger generation.

Originally called Southampton Place.  Developed by Southampton Estate in 19^thbut disrupted by the railway line out of Euston.

Southampton Arms, The present building dates from the mid-nineteenth century and is close to the site of a former humble inn of the same name. On the outside of the building, note the remains of the gas jets which were lit after dark to publicise the pub. Adjoining the original inn was the establishment of Mrs Lait, stay and crinoline tiemaker, in the earlier nineteenth century. Two tiers of pilasters.

The Brighton

Woolworth's, site of the studio of the painter, George Morland (1763-1804).

Statue of Cobden.  On site of toll house.  Statue financed by Napoleon III 1868.  Toll gate, was also a weigh bridge. Up to 1866 the old toll-house and bar stood in the road where the Cobden Statue now stands. A nineteenth century account tells us that one of the 'pikemen' had been an amateur gardener who 'raised an embankment of road-drift to enclose the evidence of his taste for floricultural adornment'. When the toll-house and bar were removed their place was taken, for no obvious reason, by the larger than life size Sicilian marble statue of Richard Cobden, Liberal MP and 'Apostle of Free Trade'. This was put up in 1868, by public subscription to honour the man who helped to establish free trade between Britain and France. Perhaps not surprisingly the project was largely financed by Napoleon III, though the total cost was only about £320. Sculpted by the brothers W. & T. Wills, 1863, of Euston Road, Cobden is seen in the every-day dress of the period, holding a parliamentary roll addressing Mornington Crescent Underground Station as if he were making a speech in the House of Commons. The statue bears the inscription: 'Cobden. The Corn Laws Repealed, June 1846.' The unveiling ceremony, which took place on a very warm Saturday afternoon, 27 June has been immortalised by Henry Dixon, photographer, of Albany Street, from the vantage point of a window opposite

Camden Street

Coherent terraces. Where the southern terrace has been ingeniously rehabilitated within substantial c20 back extensions, visible from the public garden behind.

All Saints. 1822. Very neat, approaching eleganceit has a semi-circular portico and  the cylindrical tower is surrounded by columns. The building was consecrated on 15 July 1824 and was  Built as Chapel of Ease for St.Pancras New Church and first called Camden Chapel. Became All Saints in 1920. closed by the Church of England early in 1948 and has since been in the hands of the Greek Holy Orthodox Church. Simpler version of Grecian than the new St.Pancras church designed by the Inwoods, with a 'flair for recapturing that nervous intensity of Greek archaetecture of the fifth century’

46 Miss Buss

170 Gas light testing stations

Camden Town,

Dower of St.Paul's and then others until sold for housing by Charles Pratt, first Earl of Camden. It was previously part of Kentish Town. Called after Camden Place in Chiselhurst. development dates from the Act of 1788 whichallowed Pratt to lay out streets on his  property. He had come into possession of the manor of Kentish Town through his marriage to the daughter of Nicholas Jeffreys. early streets bear the names of both families, and their estates of Bayham and Brecknock, as well as that of the contractor, Greenland.   George Dance  Jun. prepared an ambitious Neoclassical plan in 1790, with a  linked crescent and oval, and a large circus. This became less expensive semis and villas. west of Camden High Street was part of Lord  Southampton's estate, and was developed in the early c19, but  progress was disrupted by the railway line into  Euston in the 1830s. The early c19 terraces were not fashionable, and by the later c19 the district had an aura of impoverished gentility with pockets of industry and services near the canal and railway. Piano making was a specialty.  Some areas were entirely rebuilt after the Second World War, but gradually gentrification took over. The fabric is essentially c19,lively and scruffy. A Greek Cypriot community developed post war.

Gilbey's gin distillery

Camley Street

Was Cambridge Street. Features in films 'Alfie’, ‘Robbery’, ‘Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter’.

Nature Park.  London Wildlife Trust and LBC, 1985. Site of Plimsoll coal drops   1866. Coal transhipment and distribution was one  of the major activities of the area, and Samuel Plimsoll (of loading-line fame) campaigned successfully against the railway  companies' monopoly of the coal trade, promoting his  improved coal drops (structures for the unloading and  bagging of coal) which, he claimed, caused less damage to  the coal.  A highly successful habitat creation scheme focuses on wetland and a pond alongside the Regent's Canal. A wooded embankment protects the park on the street side, while a boardwalk allows visitors to wander without causing damage to vulnerable wetland plants. The coal depot, changed into a rubbish dump, and was acquired by the former G.L.C. for a lorry park in 1981. After lobbying from LWT and the GLC's own ecologists an ecological park was agreed instead and opened in 1985. By 1986 such was the success of the park that it became the first habitat creation scheme to be designated a Local Nature Reserve, and only the third LNR in the Greater London area.  The most obvious feature of the park is the pond with substantial reed beds which encourage the blue tailed damsel-flies and dragonflies and hide toads and frogs. The pond contains hornwort, water milfoil and arrowhead, and along the banks can be seen yellow flag irises, water mint, marsh marigold and bogbean. The two areas of woodland are mainly of sallow and alder. The cover provided by this and the location of the park attracts around species of bird from the common blackbird and sparrow, to chiff-chaffs, heron and black redstart.

Rail lines to Midland Railway’s Somerstown Goods Station

St.Pancras Coroner's Court. Gothic. At the back of the churchyard. 1886. 1886 by Frederick Eggar. A small Gothic building

Steps to the canal. Rope marks on the old stone piers.

Bessemer 'secret' factory, listed in the 1851 census as "Besemeer's [sic] Glass Factory".

Cardington Street

Just about at the later position of the turnpike

Carol Street

Previously was Caroline Street.  Coherent terraces. Probably called after George IV's queen though it might just have been the builder's daughter. Cobden House and the other works buildings are quite recent the southern terrace has been ingeniously rehabilitated within substantial c20 back extensions, visible from the public garden behind.

Charrington Street

Named after the brewers in question

Brewers' Company Estate mid-19^th terrace stucco- trimmed, with pediments to the tall first-floor windows of the end houses.

Brewers Company Estate.  Terraces

South Camden Community School.  Old L.C.C Board School.

Collingham Gardens

1880s development by Peto and George. Variety of styles.

Clarendon Square?

Site of the Polygon development. Replaced with artisan dwellings

Coopers Lane

Site of St.Pancras Coal Depot.  Informal maisonettes brown brick and houses

Cranleigh Street

Was Johnson Street

29 John Dickens was released from prison in May 1824, and at the end of that year  the family they moved to a small house, in what was then Johnson Street  ). The family was evicted from the house soon after Lady Day 1827 for non-payment of rent and rates

Crowndale Road

Was previously called ‘Fig Lane’ because of an old fig tree.  The road from London forked here, one way picked up the main road via Hampstead Road and the other went off to Highgate

Crowndale Centre.  Office of Works Post Office converted to community services. Library, Health Centre and Surgery. Crowndale was an appropriate commission for a practice known for its economic, enabling work with local authority projects. This project - designed by Charles Thompson, the partner in charge - is a conversion of a substantial but redundant Edwardian post-office building. Rock Townsend have carved out the interior and formed a new atrium from which an escalator leads up to the council offices. These are supplemented by an outer periphery of shops, cafes and some apartments, together with a health centre located in a smaller, separate building. The whole totals 11,000 sq.m and accommodates 400 people. The large curved roof - cantilevered from supports around the atrium's edge - and the add-on features signal massive changes.  It works well, but the scheme was caught up in struggles between central and local government and there is an underlying dispiritedness.

Working Men's College. Founded 1854 by F. D.Maurice. The building is 1904-6 by W.D. Came, very subdued for this architect; perhaps influenced by the c18 houses nearby.  It had originated in Great Ormond Street.  hall at the end with a curved wall, the classroom block symmetrical. Extra floor added by Alban Caroe in the 1930s.  2008 new library, café, studios and performance space. Features in films 'The Rachel Papers’.

Frederick Denison Maurice 1834, 1st City of London Regiment

26 St.Pancras Vestry House.  Mission House and Hall.  Baroque doorway with figure of St.Pancras by Hems.  Church House, 1896-7 by C.R. Baker King.

Lodge to Oakley Square remains, low stucco

Curnock Street

Estate by Camden.  1967. Alternative to high rise and generously planted squares and playgrounds.

Doric Way

St.Pancras Home Improvement Society – these are their earliest buildings.  1926. St.Mary.  St. Ann and St.Joseph.  Plus pedestrian link to two storey cottages.

Eversholt Street,

Was previously Seymour Street.  East of the street St.Pancras 1960s development of maisonettes.

Dense cluster of brown brick maisonettes, c. 1965, mostly of four storeys, with a pedestrian spine leading through grassed courtyards and car parking tucked away beneath

24 Euston House, 1934 'modernistic and quite uncommon' pompous. For British Railways Board.

St.Mary, thin and papery, 1824 west tower.  ,

Cab road for Euston

148-192 19^th houses.

162-203 Railway clearing house. 1842 to transmit railway business. 2,500 clerks in 1915.  Refurbished in 1980s.

Goldington Crescent

17 Prince Alfred

Goldington Street

Cecil Rhodes House site of Pancras Square. First block of workers flats' built in 1847 but destroyed in bombing. Built by Metropolitan Association for improving the dwellings of the Industrial Classes Prince Consort visited. Now a building works depot for the council

Unity Theatre

Granby Terrace

15

Originally Granby Street, took its name from the Granby Arms, demolished in 1889 for railway widening. The Marquis of Granby was a popular general, whose name was often used for inns, but he has no known connection with this area. The street once housed William Black, a Scottish journalist and successful novelist, who in 1870 had the distinction of being arrested as a spy in Germany, where he was correspondent for the Morning Star in the Franco- Prussian War.

A great deal of the street is now taken up by the railway bridge.

Independent Chapel in 1870, soon to be cut off with the Granby Arms by the railway.

After the bridge railway buildings in red and blue brick, serving the carriage sheds below.

Greenland Road,

Where the southern terrace has been ingeniously rehabilitated within substantial c20 back extensions, visible from the public garden behind.

Hampstead Road

Leads south to the upper end of Tottenham Court Road

Corner with Euston Road. Disturbing faceted cliff of glossy mirror glazing

261-263 are the only remaining houses of this same elegant terrace of about 1830, which gave a fitting introduction to Mornington Crescent.

263 plaque to commemorate George Cruikshank, who lived here from 1850 until his death in 1878. Another celebrated artist, Clarkson Stanfield, who was previously in Mornington Crescent  lived in the same house in 1846 before moving to Hampstead. The house was then 48 Mornington Place but was renumbered as part of Hampstead Road in 1863. 

Railway bridge and signalling system into Euston

Euston Taxi Centre on a derelict patch where there were once terrace houses. Covers 247

247 Dickens’ went to Wellington House Academy school here in 1824-6 when his family lived in Bayham Street. This was probably the original of 'Salem House' in David Copperfield.   In 1849 he wrote that the railway had 'taken the playground, sliced the schoolroom, and pared off the corner of the house'. Walter Sickert painted and taught in the house. It had been given a plaque to Dickens in 1924 but was demolished in 1964 for bridge rebuilding.

Toll House

Harrington Estate

Harrington Gardens

Built around 1877   1880s development Ernest George and Harold Peto. Flemish inspired Queen Anne style

11 Chez Cleo,

20-26

35-45

39 W.S.Gilbert

47-75

Harrington Square

St Pancras Borough council flats. One terrace remains of what was Bedford New Town stucco-trimmed terraces developed from 1834 on the Duke of Bedford's small Figs Mead Estate. Arched first-floor windows in stucco panels with paterae are the distinctive feature.. Bombed

Gate. barriers were erected on the Bedford estate in Fig's Mead in St Pancras when this area was developed in the 1840s and 1850s; one barred Harrington Square at the junction with Houghton Place.

Johnson Street?

12

King's Road?

Demolished for St.Pancras Station; St.Pancras destructor 1893

Martin's Gardens?

Old churchyard is the cemetery for the dead of St.Martin's in the Fields.  C.Dibden memorial from KT estate.  Riots when it was closed - now a public garden.

Mary Terrace

Originally Mary's Terrace, described in 1828 as a 'new intended street' to be built on land leased to Mr William Maryon.

Car park marks the site of the famous Bedford Tavern and there is a story that the street was named after the landlord's favourite daughter. The tavern had a tea garden, arbours and a bowling green; coffee was served as well as beer and shrimps.. On gala days there were balloon ascents. In July 1824, Mr Rossiter made an ascent from the Bedford in aid of the family left by Mr Harris, who had perished in a similar exploit. A music hall was built in the garden of the Bedford Arms and was opened in 1861. Admission cost 4d a each man was allowed two women guests free of charge.  The original building had a sliding roof, presumably to save artificial lighting. By 1898 the hall had been reconstructed and was known the Bedford Theatre. The facade straddled Mary Terra and then faced onto Camden High Street Millbrook Place? Bedford Theatre, Camden Town, N.W.I. This small music hall was allowed to become derelict In the 1960s with the usual result. The modern bulldirg  which occupies the front part of the site houses a branch of the Abbey National Building Society at street level, with the DHS office above. The rear of the site where auditorium and stage were Is the car park. Part of one of the walls of the theatre still stands, facing Mary Terrace.

Miller Street

Miller was the builder. . Started in 1811 an named after John Miller, its builder, who lived in Warren Street

Mornington Crescent

Built by the Southampton Estate - Fitzroy. built by Russell family as ‘Bedford New Town’. It was first called Southampton Street – then named after Earl of Mornington whose daughter married one of the Fitzroy sons.  He was Governor General of India, and the eldest brother of the Duke of Wellington. It First appears in the Rate Books in 1821, with one entry and a note by the collector to leave room for thirty houses. However it was fully inhabited by 1832. The Crescent originally overlooked a neatly-planted garden and Thomas Rhodes's fields to the east, which temporarily kept at bay the dense development creeping up from the south. The backs of the houses looked across fields to Park Village East and Regent's Park. The first residents of the area were middle class families, with servants on the top floor. Residents of the 1860s included a professor of music, a dental surgeon, a surveyor and a valuer.  All the houses have fine cast-iron, balconies and the front railings have a variety of tasselled spear heads and finials; even Greater London House has classic railings of its period. It was a curved terrace with pretty balconies and door cases with inset fluted columns.  Until 1926 it was a garden and it is a pity that Greater London House cannot be demolished to reveal the Crescent, which would then form a suitably embracing entrance to Camden High Street and the restored gardens would punctuate the depressing approach up the Hampstead Road. Features in films 'Night, After Night, After Night’.

6 plaque to Sickert, Camden Town Group. As the blue plaque records, Walter Sickert (1860-1942), probably the most significant English impressionist painter of his day, was a member of, and personally dominated, the Camden Town Group, formed at the beginning of this century. They adopted the name as an expression of the spirit of the group, which found many of its subjects in 'the simple life of the lower and middle classes ... so richly exemplified by that neighbourhood'

12 was occupied by a seminary 1820s

25 erstwhile "Hotel Splendide"  Built 1821-32. bedsit use.

Greater London House -   Carreraas Factory. ‘Abominable’ bulk of the 550-ft-long Six storeys high former tobacco factory fills what had been the gardens of Mornington Crescent.  sold off by the borough council. The factory was built for Carreras in 1926 by M. E. & O. H. Collins with A. G. Pom. It was equipped with progressive machinery and air-conditioning and given one of the most extravagant Art Deco exteriors in London, said to be inspired by the Egyptian temple to the cat-goddess at Bubastis.   There is showy Egyptian detail along the long frontage, a solar disc to the sun-god Ra, and two gigantic bronze cats flanking the entrance. It was called the Arcadia Works but known as the 'black cat factory', because of the two cats and also the black cat on their cigarette packet. The Egyptian decorations were inspired by the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb- Even the chimney looks like an obelisk. In its day, it was heralded as the largest reinforced concrete building of its type.  The detail was stripped off in 1961 when the building was converted to officesand  It Became GLC’s Greater London House.  It was restored in colourful splendour in 1998-9. The development represents all that town planning would now prevent

Mornington Crescent Station, 22^nd June 1907. Between Camden Town and Euston on the Northern Line. Built for the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway. Work started in 1903. Taken over by Yerkes Leslie Green designed station where the Booking office rode up and down in the lift. The Station was built in the usual red tiles on the site of two houses of Millbrook Place, a short terrace looking north at Cobden's statue and it station has changed very little.Prior to the station's opening, the name of "Seymour Street" had been proposed.  Closed in 1992 for renovation but shortage of money meant it was closed for six years.  Street level building restored and all looks very authentic although it is a mixture of restoration and original.   The ticket hall is all reproduction as is all the platform level tiling.

36 Clarkson Stanfield (1793-1867), famous marine artist and friend of Charles Dickens lived in 1832

261 Athene Booksellers

277 East Asia Book and Arts Co.

31 Spencer Frederick Gore (1874-1914) lived until 1912. He was the first president of the Group. Other members included Augustus John, Harold Oilman and the Director of the Tate Gallery, J. B. Manson: not surprisingly, there is a good selection of the Group's work in the Tate Gallery.

48 Cruikshank

The Metropolitan Drinking trough reminds us of the main mode of transport.

Mornington Court. Built in 1937, it mimics the Egyptian flavour of the Carreras factory of ten years earlier

Crowndale Centre

Oakley Gardens

Features in films 'The Rachel Papers’.

Oakley Square

Large houses 1840s air raid shelters. South side replaced by St.Pancras 1960s. One terrace remains of what was Bedford New Town stucco-trimmed terraces developed from 1834 on the Duke of Bedford's small Figs Mead Estate. Arched first-floor windows in stucco panels with paterae are the distinctive feature.

Old vicarage in polychrome brick for St.Matthew’s church which stood next door... boldly Gothic c. 1861 by John Johnson

Godwin Court

Gate.  barriers were erected on the Bedford estate in Fig's Mead in St Pancras when this area was developed in the 1840s and 1850s; two were in Oakley Square. 

Lodge. Only one gatekeeper was appointed to manage three gates and so only one lodge was built in the garden in Oakley Square

24 Spencer

Oakley Street

1856, part of Bedford New Town.  Middle suburb of lower and middle classes.  Home named after Oakley House where the Duke of Bedford lived.  St.Michael's church, 1852, council flats

Ossulton Street

'Superior blocks of artisan dwellings''avoid typical monotony of the older types' bombed in 1940. Experimental L.C.C Estate. Showpiece. To cater for housing needs other than cottage estates.

Midland Green hostel closed in 1935. Opened 5/73.

Chamberlain House. First part of the estate.  1927

Levita House. Tribute to housing schemes of Vienna. Electric servicing though coal fires.

The Cock – part of the facilities of the estate

Walker House., 1929

Pancras Road

The road follows the line of the Fleet. Used to be called Fig Lane - fig tree there until the nineteenth century. Old main road forked here. Fleet river line near the church which is built on a mound above it. St.Pancras. Prebendal manor by King Ethelbert given to St.Paul's, 1251.  30 houses, 4 manor houses, two moated houses, vicarage and rectory area of brickfields.  Bodies hanging on gibbets, Highwaymen, one shot 1730.  Warehouses in ruins.  Site of Bruges mansion. Body snatchers and baby abandoners.  Services not held in the church.  Around the church is an abandoned medieval village.  Stukeley thought it was a Roman camp

Old St.Pancras Church.  Roman bricks in the foundations and it is  believed to be the first Christian church in England, founded by St.Augustine.  Site of a pre-Saxon temple with a  Saxon altar of 600.  Dedicated to martyr, St.Pancras, boy – is Pangrace or Pan Crucis the Christ child himself.  There is a 13^th window, some bits of Norman in the doorway. The chancel was rebuilt in 1500.  It is said to have had the last bell to toll the Catholic mass. On 5 November 1642 fifty Cromwellian troopers were billeted in the deserted church, and on 9 December of the following year they pulled down the chancel rails and communion table. Inhabitants petitioned the House of Commons but got no compensation. Fortunately they hid the church plate. Jonathan Wild married there 1718, and Grimaldi.  The church was restored in Norman style in 1848 by Roumieu & Gough, who removed the medieval tower and replaced it with an extension and incongruous half-timbering was introduced. The interior was restored in 1888 by A. W. Blomfield.. In 1872 became a chapel of ease. There is diagonal bedding in the stone of the church which shows it was in the sea.   Altar Stone - discovered in 1847. Dated from the early 7^th . Stained Glass of 1866, possibly by W.M.Teulon.  Monuments: Early 16^th  recess with tomb-chest and indents for kneeling brass figures against the back;  Philadelphia Woolaston 1616, wall monument with semi-reclining effigy; William and Mary Platt 1637 wall monument with frontal busts; John Offley and family, big, ornamental architectural tablet of after 1678; Samuel Cowper, the miniature painter 'Angliae Apelles', 1672 and his wife

Features in films 'This Year’s Love’.

Churchyard.  Built on the old packhorse track and then embanked because of floods.  In the 18^th an elephant was dug up near the church – or was it a mammoth?  Or a Roman elephant?  In the 15^ththe area around was full of muggers and murderers.  The Midland Railway wanted the area and there was a big row about the bodies buried there - questions in Parliament about it.  Catholics are buried in the churchyard because it is supposed to be the last church in England where mass was said and also a lot of refugees from the French Revolution.  The St.George, Bloomsbury, and St.Giles, in the Fields, burial grounds were added to it.  Large monument erected by Cecil Rhodes in 1866 to all his ancestors who had lived in the area as farmers.  Jonathan Wild was buried there, then dug up and gibbeted.  Mary Wollstonecraft was originally buried there but later moved to Brighton. There are also the tombs of the Corsican patriot, Pasquale de Palio; the Burdett Coutts monument and sundial unveiled by Angela in 1879; John Christian Bach (d. 1782),the composer, and John Flaxman (d. 1826), the sculptor.  Thornton drinking fountain.  Mausoleumdesigned by Sir John Soane for his wife in 1815, in which the architect himselfwas buried in 1837.  The gravestone of Captain John Mills of the East India Company who died in 1811, records that he was the last survivor of the Black Hole of Calcutta of 1756 when he died in 1811.  Ash tree planted by Thomas Hardy when  he was given the task of clearing graves for the Midland Railway as a young man in the 1860s. Grave of William Jones, head of Wellington Academy where Dickens went to school and which was the basis for the school in David Copperfield.  Dickens used the churchyard as a setting in the Tale of Two Cities as a burial place but also as a site for body snatchers.

Coal drops.  Now garages with timber chutes

Coal offices. Gothic.  1896 with two level coal depot now demolished

Concrete Building for Midland railway 1880.

Site of Bessemer’s Baxter House site in front and to the south of the church. An outcome of a  massive clearance of brickwork is that the ground at the site of  Baxter House where the first Bessemer steel was made was cleared. Baxter House became St Pancras Ironworks was on the east side of Pancras Road just south of the churchyard.. Bessemer between 1841 and 1862 used the site to manufacture his famous 'bronze powder' (a cheap substitute for the 'gold powder' used by japanners); and a centrifugal machine for separating molasses from sugar crystals; and there were conducted the early experiments that led to the patenting of his celebrated eponymous steel-making 'converter'. The recently demolished Midland Railway coal drops later occupied the site.

Flats High-density by St.Pancras borough 1948.  Opposite are two proud cliffs of flats by Thomas Sibthorpe of St Pancras Borough Architect's Department, eight and ten storeys, with the big windows of lift shafts and stairs made into streamlined vertical features. In total contrast is the low-rise area behind, demonstrating Camden's rejection of monumental schemes in the later 1970s.

Houses - humble nineteenth century terraces in the side street built for the Borough Council

Lodge for the churchyard

Parish boundary marker

Plate girder bridges carrying the railway coming out of St.Pancras station

Cedar Way Industrial Estate. Site of earlier Midland Railway Goods Depot that lay to the west of the main passenger line into St Pancras station just north of the point where it crossed the Regent's Canal, and the linked Ale and Porter Stores to south of the canal. Also partly a communications complex. Ale and Porter warehouse opposite.

The hydraulic pumping station was situated under the arches of the approach viaduct adjacent to the gasworks just north of the station.  One 40 hp engine was used to provide power for the wagon hoist which moved wagons to and from the cellars under the station.

The hydraulic pumping station alongside the Regent's Canal supplied powor to the St. Pancras Goods Station and to the Ale and Porter warehouse on the opposite side of the canal.  Ths capstans here were converted to electricity and the pumping station was partly demolished, but  half of the building was converted into a canteen.  Stylish accumulator remains converted to a boat club

Site of St.Pancras Goods yard site. Warehouse burnt down 1987 demolished.  Some fragments remain on British Library site – mainly boundary walls. 

St. Pancras Vestry Hall. This vestry hall was built adjoining the St. Pancras Workhouse in 1846 to designs by Thomas Bird for the select vestry of St. Pancras and the Directors of the Poor.  It was remodelled in I874-5 to' the competition-winning designs of H H Bridgman when it was given a grand new brick-and-stone Italianate facade. The second floorboard room would have been familiar to George Bernard Shaw who served as both vestryman and councillor here. From 1900-1903. A competition for its replacement in 1892-3 was won by William Harrison but the plans were never realised. Bombed and destroyed

Site of Workhouse

St.Pancras Gardens.  Managed by Vestry of St.Pancras. Features in films 'Career Girls’.

Enclosure as part of Civil War Defences 1642 on the site of St Pancras Gardens. A moated rectangle measuring some 100ft (E-W) by 165ft (N-S). Their function as possible sconces or gun positions has not been ruled out.

St.Pancras Lock.  Goods sheds of Great Northern Railway. Features in films 'Alfie’.

Underneath the railway works is the site of St.Pancras wells

Wells c. 1650-1800  advertised by Edward Martin, proprietor of the nearby Horns Tavern, as early as 1697. The site was on the south side of old St Pancras Church. The most notable feature was a garden, laid out with long straight walks shaded by avenues of trees.  About 1735 the waters were offered  for sale in London at 12 bottles for 6/-.  Facing the church was the House of Entertainment with Long Room and Pump Room behind. By 1769 the attractions were chiefly the tea garden with its hot loaves, syllabubs, and milk from the cow. Dinners were also obtainable with 'neat wines, curious punch, Dorchester, Marlborough and  Ringwood beers'.

Pancras Way

Called Pancras Wash and line of the Fleet. Submerged after 1812 during building of the canal 25 ft below the road

St Pancras Hospital and Hospital for Tropical diseases. It is now a wing of UCL catering for geriatrics.  It was transferred to London County Council from St.Pancras Board of Guardians.  It was built as a replacement to an earlier workhouse.  Tall and gaunt with clock tower.

Stables converted into a garden centre

Plender Street

Features in films 'The Man Who Knew Too Much’.

93 Pricks and Chicks. Features in films 'This Year’s Love’.

New Camden Chapel. Methodist. Designed by T. & W. Stone. Decent debased classical. Stock brick with stucco dressings; recessed entrance between columns, ' rather squashed central pediment.

Kimon Bookshop

Polygon Road

1976 low rise housing for Camden. Striking red brick Roman Halter Assocs and James Gowan

Somers Town development.  It was named after Earl Somers Lord Chancellor 1695 who was given the estate by Queen Anne.  Jacob Leroux main landowner

Oakshott Court

Polygon

The four sides of the square are now defined by Chalton Street, Polygon Road, Phoenix Road and Werrington Street. It was a ring of 32 houses arranged in a 15-sided figure, and was demolished in the 1890s.  It was three storeys high.

29  W.Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft died there, 1797,

17 Riches

Dickens family was evicted from Johnson Street soon after Lady Day 1827 took lodgings here.

Pratt Street

Some humble terraces remain from Lord Camden’s development of the 1790s onwards, amid later industry and council rebuilding. Some battered survivals

6 with eccentric Gothick doorway

21Shogun Property Features in films 'The Lowdown’.

57 Electricity sub station used as ARP control room

82-86 Gothick glazing

Modest houses (humble) on Camden Town development. 

St.Martin's Hall 19th County of London Regiment

St.Pancras Burial Ground Gardens.  Monuments and Gothic sarcophagus.  Very neglected. The gardens were laid out in 1889 for long a sad and neglected space   with tombstones lining the walls and a few battered Monuments.A two-tier Gothic sarcophagus to the Woodburn family,

St.Pancras destructor/generating station.  1895, first combined in London.  Did not work.

Purchese Street

Site of St.Pancras Coal Depot.  Informal maisonettes brown brick and houses

Clyde Court,

Monica Shaw Court ,

Railway

Euston to Camden Town first electric telegraph system which didn't work and was replaced by pneumatic signal system original cable haulage scheme

Canal

Completed 1820, gave the Grand Junction Canal, which ran from Paddington to the Midlands, access to the London docks, and a second route to the Thames. Features in films 'Nuns on the Run’, Jack and Sarah’, ‘Janice Beard 45 wpm’, Smashing Time’,

Pad stone of a bridge above the sixth window which carried coal to drops on the other side of the canal by Maiden Lane steps.  Cooling plant for power cable

Bangor Wharf, Ash from dust destructor brought through bricked up arch IDRIS building, red brick with square tower and arched windows redeveloped for Post Office

St. Pancras Yacht Basin, built originally for coal staithes, and now used for residential moorings. 1867 Built for coal transfer from the Midland Railway. For bottom discharge railway wagons to barges Basin over which railway sidings used to discharge cinders from locos into barges. Used for cruising mooringsSt.Pancras Cruising Club. Iron girders remain. 

Brick wall pad stone on site of bridge which was siding of 1865 to Bass and Co. store. Remains of hydraulic pumping station and fragment of Midland Railway lozenge shaped window panes

Bridge replica in concrete and steel of 1840s cast iron bridge oblique angle.  Older abutments there.  Carried drive to Mr. Agar's house Elm Lodge

Bridge used to take railway line from Great Northern Railway yards to coal chutes in Camley Street and the Plimsoll Coal drops

Camden Canoe Club is where the mayor fell in the river.  Burnt down twice since.

Canal narrows and stop gates for dewatering

Elm Lodge was on the left behind the wall. Agar's turreted house became railway offices

The St Pancras Way Bridge was once an elaborate cast iron structure butit has been modernised. The loss of the iron panels has opened up the canal tothe view of passers-by. Astone on the side of the bridge records that it was opened on Thursday, March4th, 1897.   T

Site of organ factory

Site of another pianofactory.

Horse ramp. Cobbled horse entrance to the towpath and horse ramp

Iron roller protects brickwork from rope abrasion

Canal widens on site of St Pancras dust wharf and dust destructor was under Bricked up arch 

Site of the access bridge to the Plimsoll Coal Drops.

Modern wharf with blue steel doors and nextto it is a red brick tower

Base of a bridgein the wall. Opposite the tower. This once carried a railway line over to the opposite sideof the canal to the Burton Warehouse

Burton Warehouse. Built in 1865 to house 100,000 barrels of Bassale.  The warehouse changed its function on a number of occasions and in the mid1970s carried a faded sign proclaiming F.W. Woolworth & Co

Embankment on canal to contain the water

Hampstead Road locks

Maiden Lane/York Way Bridge widened.  Underneath see abrasion marks from ropes on the abutments cast iron work

Midland Railway Bridge into St.Pancras from Park Gates. Steel works in 1868.  Lines and main line station at same level.  17' above the ground. The station concourse is raised about 20 feet (6 metres) above ground level in order to be level with the railway tracks after they have crossed the canal at this point. Wrought iron bridge over the canal, which determined the MR's approach to St.  Pancras

Camley Street entrance to canal. Oblique bridge modernised.  Cast-iron road bridge with vertical railings.  Steps from towpath.  Note rope marks.

Goods shed of Great Northern Railway Opposite lock

St.Pancras lock only one where there is a left hand weir.  Brick building was a pumping station; only tiny landing stage for boaters; the twin chamber (one out of use) one of 13 locks on the canal which drops 100ft in 8 miles.  Canal often short of water and the two chambers acted as mutual side-ponds.

Lock Keeper’s Cottage. Not used and let on a lease. The brick building, c1880 with later alterations, also contained a pumping station by which water was pumped back up the canal.  Listed Grade II, Conservation Area. Converted to a dwelling in 1926.

Steps to the road c used to be King's Road

Tower across the tow path with base of bridge in the canal wall, this was the railway line to the opposite side of the Burton warehouse 1865 for Bass, warehouse changed and in 1970s was Woolworth, burnt down and now PO Royal Mail North West district office

Towpath crosses entrance to St.Pancras basin.  Serving stone and coal wharves operated by Great Northern Railway London to Doncaster line 1846 for coal from South Yorkshire and in 1867 handling 1m tons a year.  Basin filled in and bricked up

Towpath paved with granite setts to help the horse Depot.  cf. Alfie film.  Stone blocks in the brickwork on sixth bricked up arch; Wall which was Agar Town Goods Yard of MR opened in 1862 now Elm Village Housing development

Wagons ran on sidings laid on girders- some ends left

Windows in the wall for stables built under a roadway in the goods yard

Rossendale Road

Elm Village development

Royal College Street

Modest houses on Camden Town development. Features in films 'The Man Who Knew Too Much’.

Goldington Buildings.  1902-3 earliest housing of the Borough of St.Pancras – five storeys in cheerful orange and yellow brick. K. D. Young

8 Where Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbauld lived having fled France  in 1873 because of the scandal of their relationship.

St. Augustine’s Road

17 Low energy Victorian house.  Camden Council project.

St Pancras

Means place with a church dedicated to St Pancras'. Pancras was a Christian martyr in Rome at the time of Diocletian. Some early spellings indicate a development towards ‘Pancridge’, paralleled by Mrs Gamp's pronunciation of Jonas as 'Jonadge', but the name was doubtless brought back to its original form by awareness of its origin in the dedication. ‘Sanctum Pancratiu’ 1086, ‘Parochia Sancti Pancrassi’ 1353, ‘Pancrich’ 1575, ‘Pankeridge al St Pancras’ 1588.

Sidney Street

Sidney Street Estate

This is Bridgeway and Aldenham Street – No Sidney Street on AZ. It was the final  phase of the St Pancras Housing Association's second majorscheme in Somers Town, planned in 1929, when it was described  optimistically as 'a miniature garden city'. An ambitious lay-out, with Hamilton's flats arranged around a generous central court. A central assembly hall was intended, also shops along the street front.

St.Anthony’s. Unusually grand forecourt with iron gates to Chalton Street in front 1938-9. Clock and coloured ceramic roundels on the flats, by Bayes, but his delightful decorative finials to the drying-yard posts have gone. They included dolphins,galleonsand 'four and twenty blackbirds'.

St. Nicholas. 1933-4, had a Nursery School with roof garden planned by Lady Allen, with Hans Andersen reliefs, and fountain by Bayes.

Somers Road

Bridge access to goods yard.  Pad stone remain

Smallpox hospital moved to Highgate Hill when the railway was built Fever and smallpox hospital.  London Fever Hospital sold to Great Northern Railway

Somers Town

Haynes and Douglas Cotton Mill

Gladwin House

Morland House

Wolcot House

Stanhope Street

Very little left all under Euston Centre Name from William Stanhope Earl of Harrington

Was Brook Street

Factory building of 1930s

'Boys' entry to school now London School of Accountancy

Marylebone Divisional Offices LSB and a rose

Central Institute was Stanhope Institute, Sidney, Kaye & Firmin

Lord Nelson pub 1899

Samuel Lithgow Boys Club after founder of Stanhope Inst.

Pangbourne

Stanhope Parade

Sovereign, site of older pub

Garage with Regent's Park Nursery above

Levertons

Stebbing Street?

Underhill Passage.

Used to Pleasant Passage

Werrington Street

51 Neptune

Wharf  Road