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Kings Cross, London
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kings Cross is an area of London partly in the London Borough of Camden and partly in the London Borough of Islington. It is an inner-city district located 1.5 miles (2.4 km) north of Charing Cross. The area has a reputation for being a red light district and run-down; however, regeneration is going on under the auspices of King's Cross Central in time for the arrival of the Eurostar on 14th November 2007.
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The area was previously a village known as Battle Bridge which was an ancient crossing of the River Fleet. The original name of the bridge was Broad Ford Bridge.
The name "Battle Bridge" led to a tradition that this was the site of a major battle between the Romans and the Iceni tribe led by Boudica.[1] The tradition is not supported by any historical evidence and is rejected by modern historians. However Lewis Spence's 1937 book Boadicea - warrior queen of the Britons went so far as to include a map showing the positions of the opposing armies. The suggestion that Boudica is buried beneath platform 9 or 10 at King's Cross Station seems to have arisen as urban folklore since the end of World War Two.[2]
The area had been settled at Roman times, and a camp here, known as The Brill was erroneously attributed to Julius Caesar, who never visited Britain.[3] The name is commemorated in two streets lying behind King's Cross and St Pancras stations. St Pancras Old Church, also set behind the stations, is said to be one of the oldest Christian sites in Britain.
In 1830 a monument to King George IV was built at the junction of Gray's Inn Road, Pentonville Road, and New Road, which later became Euston Road. The monument was sixty feet high, topped by an eleven foot high statue of the king, and was described as "a ridiculous octagonal structure crowned by an absurd statue". The upper storey was used as a camera obscura while the base was in turn to house a police station and a public house. The unpopular building was demolished in 1845, though the area has kept the name of Kings Cross.[1]
King's Cross Railway Station now stands at the junction where the cross stood. The station, designed by architect Lewis Cubitt and opened in 1852, succeeded a short-lived earlier station, erected north of the canal in time for the Great Exhibition.
St Pancras railway station station, owned by the Midland Railway, lies immediately to the west. They both had extensive land ("the railway lands") to house their associated facilities for handling general goods and specialist commodities such as fish, coal, potatoes and grain. The passenger stations on Euston Road far outweighed in public attention the economically more important goods traffics to the north. King's Cross and St Pancras stations, and indeed all London railway stations, made an important contribution to the capital's economy.
After World War II the area declined from being a poor but busy industrial and distribution services district to a partially abandoned post-industrial district. By the 1980s it was notorious for prostitution and drug abuse. This reputation impeded attempts to revive the area, utilising the large amount of land available following the decline of the railway goods yard to the north of the station and the many other vacant premises in the area.
Relatively cheap rents and a central London location made the area attractive to artists and designers and both Antony Gormley and Thomas Heatherwick established studios in the area. In the 1990s the government established the King's Cross Partnership [1] to fund regeneration projects, and the commencement of work on High Speed 1 in 2000 provided a major impetus for other projects. Within a few years much of the socially undesirable behaviour had been moved on, and new projects such as offices and hotels had begun to open. The area has also been for many years home to a number of trades union head offices (including the NUJ, RMT, UNISON, NUT, Community and UCU).
The area has increasingly become home to cultural establishments. The London Canal Museum opened in 1992, and in 1997 a new home for the British Library opened next to St Pancras Station. There was a small theatre, the Courtyard. However this had to close in late 2006 as a result of the gentrification of the area caused by a number of regeneration projects here, in this case, Regent's Quarter [2]. The Gagosian Gallery moved their main London premises to the area in 2004. There are plans for the London Sinfonietta and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment to move into Kings Place, a development under construction next to the Regent's Canal. Due to open in 2008, this will also become the new home of The Guardian and The Observer newspapers.
The area is expected to remain a major focus of redevelopment through the first two decades of the 21st century. The London terminus of the Eurostar international rail service moved to St Pancras station in November 2007. The station's redevelopment led to the demolition of several buildings, including the Gasworks.[4] Following the opening of the new high speed line to the station, a redevelopment of the land between the two major stations and the old Kings Cross goods yard is expected to commmence. To be called King's Cross Central, this will be one of the largest construction projects in Greater London in the first quarter of the 21st century.
For readers of Harry Potter, platform 9 3/4 is where the schoolboy hero boards the train for Hogwarts. The railway station has capitalised on tourist interest by putting up a sign for this platform, and burying a luggage trolley, apparently, half into the wall.
King's Cross and its surrounding streets was also the setting for the 1955 Ealing comedy, The Ladykillers and Mike Leigh's High Hopes 1988. Anthony Minghella's 2006 film Breaking and Entering is also set in King's Cross.
The British pop music duo Pet Shop Boys recorded a song featured on their 1987 album Actually named "King's Cross": the melancholy track discusses the hopelessness of the AIDS epidemic during that time and uses the King's Cross area as the "backdrop" of the story, trading on the area's associations with drug use and prostitution. Tracey Thorn covered the song in 2007.
- ^ a b Highbury, Upper Holloway and King's Cross, Old and New London: Volume 2, by Walter Thornbury (1878), accessed December 6, 2007 (British History Online)
- ^ Boudica and King's Cross Station, (Museum of London), accessed December 6, 2007
- ^ Caesar's Camp at Pancras called the Brill (British Library), accessed December 6, 2007
- ^ Built in the 1860s and rebuilt in the 1880s, the Gasworks was still in use until 1999. Several gasholders that had dominated the area behind station for over a century have been taken down during the building works and placed in storage.
- Camden Town hall
- The British Library
- Camley Street Natural Park
- London Canal Museum
- St Pancras Old Church
- Kings Cross Online
- The original King's Cross monument (Victorian London)
- Camden Council: recent developments
- Kings Cross Development Brief
- Argent (Kings Cross) Ltd. Developers for Kings Cross Central
- Kings Cross gay scene information
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Belsize Park · Bloomsbury · Brondesbury · Camden Town · Chalk Farm · Covent Garden · Dartmouth Park · Fitzrovia · Fortune Green · Frognal · Gospel Oak · Hampstead · Highgate · Holborn · Kentish Town · Kilburn · Kings Cross · Primrose Hill · Saffron Hill · St. Pancras · South Hampstead · Swiss Cottage · Tufnell Park · West Hampstead |
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References Elliot Smith - King's Crossing. Album: From a Basement on the Hill.