Streets of St Pancras and Somers Town
and the Railway Lands. Camden History Society, £6.95

LONG before Drummond Street became home to some of the best Indian restaurants in London, it was the hangout of a young local delinquent, Charles Dickens. This most famous of English authors would loiter on the street with his school chums seeking mischief. Pretending to be beggars, they would ask old ladies for charity, then run away cackling at their victims’ surprise. It is this sort of tale that is brought to life in the Camden History Society’s new collection of historical walks around St Pancras.

The book includes seven walks stretching from Camden Town to Warren Street, and King’s Cross to Mornington Crescent. Every street and turning is mined for its historical curiosities. Notable former residents are given their due, but light also shines on the old businesses that kept Camden thriving and the architectural clues to the past that litter the area.
The research is impressive and diverse. Pay attention, and the book gradually reveals something of why this borough looks the way it does. The writers cleverly intersect the different economic, civic and celebrity strands.

The guide shows some of the constants in the area. The tendency for Camden residents to collect their groceries from Sainsburys is not some modern fad. Chalton Street is revealed as the location of the shop in the 19th-century, although it was hardly the superstore that we know today. We are told: “It was opened in 1889 on the site of a dairy owned by Ben Staples, whose daughter Mary Ann married John James Sainsbury, founder of the firm.”

Other insights tell of conflicts. Commerce has long competed with the needs of residents. The widow of the landowner William Agar sold small 72ft plots to poor Irish workmen, squeezed out of more central districts, who built houses on the land. By 1866, the Midland Railway Company had obtained Parliamentary powers to demolish the area and build new lines into St Pancras station. Four thousand homes were demolished. The writers estimate the displacement of 32,000 people.

Edith Neville was a local reformer honoured with the naming of a primary school after her. Known for her work with the St Pancras Housing Association, she also founded the St Pancras People’s Theatre. Elsewhere, we learn that one of the Edith Neville Cottages on Crace Street was donated by the Brewers’ Company as a tribute to her concern for pubs and belief in their importance to the community.

n Streets of St Pancras: Somers Town and the Railway Lands, edited by Steven Denford and F Peter Woodford, is available for £6.95 from: CHS Publications Manager, Flat 13, 13 Tavistock Place, WC1