Kentish Town | |
---|---|
The Assembly House Pub, Kentish Town | |
Location within Greater London | |
OS grid reference | TQ285845 |
London borough | |
Ceremonial county | Greater London |
Region | |
Country | England |
Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
Post town | LONDON |
Postcode district | NW5, NW1 |
Dialling code | 020 |
Police | Metropolitan |
Fire | London |
Ambulance | London |
UK Parliament | |
London Assembly | |
Kentish Town is an area of northwest London, England, in the London Borough of Camden, immediately north of Camden Town, close to Hampstead Heath.
Kentish Town likely derives its name from Ken-ditch or Caen-ditch, meaning the "bed of a waterway." The area was initially a small settlement on the River Fleet, first recorded in 1207 during King John's reign. The early 19th century brought modernization to the area, and it became a popular resort due to its accessibility from London. Notably, Karl Marx resided at 46 Grafton Terrace in Kentish Town from 1856.
The area saw further development after World War II and has a rich history of political representation, with the Holborn and St Pancras seat held by Labour Party Prime Minister Keir Starmer as of April 2024. Kentish Town has also been a popular filming location for various movies and television shows. It is home to numerous independently owned shops, music venues, and cultural establishments, such as the Kentish Town Community Centre.
The name of Kentish Town is probably derived from Ken-ditch or Caen-ditch, meaning the "bed of a waterway" and is otherwise unrelated to the English county of Kent. [1] In researching the meaning of Ken-ditch, it has also been noted that ken is the Celtic word for both "green" and "river", while ditch refers to the River Fleet, now a subterranean river. [2] However, another theory is the name comes from its position near the Fleet; it has been suggested that Kentish Town, which lies in between two forks of the Fleet, takes its name from cant or cantle (from the Middle English [3] meaning "corner"). [4] [5]
Kentish Town was originally a small settlement on the River Fleet (the waterway is now one of London's underground rivers). [6] It is first recorded during the reign of King John (1207) as kentisston. By 1456 Kentish Town was a thriving hamlet. In this period, a chapel of ease was built for its inhabitants.
The early 19th century brought modernisation, causing much of the area's rural qualities, the River Fleet and the 18th-century buildings to vanish, although pockets still remain, for example Little Green Street. Between the availability of public transport to it from London, and its urbanisation, it was a popular resort.
Large amounts of land were purchased to build the railway, which can still be seen today. Kentish Town was a prime site for development as the Kentish Town Road was a major route from London northwards. Karl Marx was a famous resident, living at 46 Grafton Terrace from 1856. Jenny Marx described this eight-room house in Kentish Town as "A truly princely dwelling, compared with the holes we used to live in" (March 11, 1861 letter by Jenny Marx, quoted in Rachel Holmes, "Eleanor Marx: A Life", Bloomsbury Books, London, 2014,P 10).
1877 saw the beginning of mission work in the area as it was then poor. The mission first held their services outside but as their funding increased they built a mission house, chapel, and vicarage. One mission house of the area was Lyndhurst Hall which remained in use before being taken over by the Council. The Council wished it to sell it for residential use, and the hall was demolished in 2006.
During the 19th century and early 20th century the area of Kentish Town became the home of several piano and organ manufacturers, and was described by The Piano Journal in 1901 as "...that healthful suburb dear to the heart of the piano maker".
A network of streets in the East of Kentish Town has streets named after places or persons connected with Christ Church, Oxford viz: Oseney, Busby, Gaisford, Caversham, Islip, Wolsey, Frideswide, Peckwater & Hammond. All these streets lay behind the Oxford Arms. Some of the freehold of these streets is still in the name of Christ Church Oxford.
A network of streets in the north of Kentish Town was part of a large estate owned by St John's College, Cambridge. Lady Margaret Road is named after Lady Margaret Beaufort, foundress of St John's College. Burghley Road is named after Lord Burghley, Chancellor to Elizabeth I and benefactor of St John's. Similarly, College Lane, Evangelist Road and Lady Somerset Road are street names linked to the estate of St John's College.
In 1912 the Church of St Silas the Martyr (designed by architect Ernest Charles Shearman) was finally erected and consecrated, and by December of that year it became a parish in its own right. It can still be seen today along with the church of St Luke with St Paul and the Church of St Barnabas (handed over to the Greek Orthodox Church in 1957). The present Church of England parish church is St Benet and All Saints, Lupton Street. [7]
In his poem Parliament Hill Fields, Sir John Betjeman refers to "the curious Anglo-Norman parish church of Kentish Town". This possibly refers to the former parish Church of St John Kentish Town.
Kentish Town Road contains one of London's many disused Tube stations. South Kentish Town tube station was closed in June 1924 after strike action at the Lots Road Power Station meant the lift could not be used. It never reopened as a station, although it was used as an air raid shelter during World War II. [8] The distinctive building is now occupied underground by a massage shop and on ground level by a 'Cash Converters' pawn shop at the corner of Kentish Town Road and Castle Road. There have been proposals to rebuild the station.
Kentish Town was to see further modernisation in the post-World War II period. However, the residential parts of Kentish Town, dating back to the mid-19th century have survived.[ by whom? ]
Kentish Town is part of the Holborn and St Pancras seat which is held by Labour Party Prime Minister Keir Starmer as of March 2024. Kentish Town was an early base for the Social Democratic Party and the increasingly middle class population has returned large votes for the Greens and Liberal Democrats. In May 2006 the Liberal Democrats won two of the three Council seats in Kentish Town, strengthening this hold by taking the final seat in a by-election in November of the same year. In the Council elections in May 2010, Labour regained all three Council seats.
In May 2022, the ward of Kentish Town North elected two Labour Councillors Sylvia McNamara and James Slater. Kentish Town South reelected Labour Councillors Georgia Gould, Meric Apac, and Jenny Headlam-Wells. [9]
In the 2011 census, 53% of the population was White British and 15% were White Other. [10]
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In 2002 the comedy and drama film About a Boy was filmed in Lady Margaret Road, which is located at the top of Kentish Town, and Oseney Crescent. Many of the filming locations used in the 2006 film Venus , starring Peter O'Toole, Leslie Phillips, and Jodie Whittaker were in Kentish Town. In 1959 Lady Somerset Road and Oakford Road were used substantially for the filming of Sapphire , a film exploring racial tension in London, directed by Basil Dearden. The Assembly House pub was the location for the 1971 film Villain starring Richard Burton. The 1993 comedy Bad Behaviour , featuring Stephen Rea and Sinéad Cusack, was set in Kentish Town and includes scenes set in several local streets and the Owl Bookshop.
The 1947 Ealing Studios film It Always Rains on Sunday had scenes shot in Clarence Way during 1944 or 46 showing Holy Trinity Church with just the lower part of its spire still intact following the destruction of the upper section of the spire in WWII. The entire spire has since been removed leaving the church, effectively, with a tower. Kentish Town was also used as the location for the BBC comedy series Gimme Gimme Gimme with its main protagonists Tom and Linda living with their ex-prostitute landlord and upstairs neighbour Beryl at the fictional and suggestively named "69 Paradise Passage". In addition, the video of the Madness track "Baggy Trousers" was filmed at Islip Street School and the park in Kentish Town.[ citation needed ]
The Anglican Parish Church of St John Kentish Town, now known as "Christs Apostolic Church", was used by Only Fools and Horses as the backdrop (in external scenes) exterior of the Church where Damien was christened. [11]
Plenty of exterior shots in the BBC tragicomedy Fleabag were filmed in Kentish Town, star/writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge being a resident.
In 2005, a survey of Kentish Town by the local Green Party claimed that out of 87 shops on Kentish Town Road (locally known as Kentish Town High Street), 53 were still independently owned. [12] The high street is a mixture of national retail chains and independent shops, including a long-standing bookshop, several delis and organic stores. Many 'World Food' shops have opened up on the street. However, since 2009 there has been a marked increase in independent shops being replaced with chain stores including Pret a Manger, Costa Coffee, Caffe Nero and Sainsbury's.
An architectural design competition was launched by RIBA Competitions and Camden Primary Care Trust and James Wigg Practice to design a new integrated care centre in Kentish Town that would deliver a flagship building, new models of care, enhance integrated working and provide a model for future delivery of primary care throughout the country. Through this process Architects AHMM were selected and the building opened in 2008 and has since been credited with a number of awards including RIBA Award for Architecture 2009 and Building Magazine Public Building Project of the Year 2010.
Kentish Town Community Centre is a community centre, created in 2004, to provide meeting spaces and activities for local residents of all ages.
Pub rock is usually traced back to the "Tally Ho" in Kentish Town, a former jazz pub, where Eggs over Easy started playing in May 1971, and were soon joined by Bees Make Honey, Brinsley Schwarz, Max Merritt and the Meteors, Ducks Deluxe and others. [13] The Assembly House is a Grade II listed pub at 292–294 Kentish Town Road. [14]
Kentish Town is also home to The Forum (formerly known as the Town and Country club), during the 1950s a cinema, and now a live music venue. Spring 2014 saw Kentish Town to get its first speak easy, 1920s style hidden bar, when Knowhere Special opened its doors next to Kentish Town station. [15]
Torriano Avenue, dating back to 1848, is a Kentish Town street home to Pete Stanley, one of the country's best-known bluegrass banjo players; British actor Bill Nighy; and The Torriano Poets, where local poets have met for over 20 years and still hold weekly public poetry readings on Sunday evenings: its founder was John Rety. The street is also home to two pubs, one being an 1850s hostelry The Leighton, the other The Torriano, which was for many years an old-fashioned community off-licence. They take their names from the local landowners, Sir David Leighton and Joshua Torriano, who developed the land for housing in the mid 19th century. [16]
One of London's most famous nudist public baths, Rio's, is in Kentish Town. [17]
The largest municipal building is the Kentish Town Sports Centre [18] which opened as the St Pancras public baths in 1903, [19] designed by Thomas W. Aldwinckle. [20] The large complex originally had separate first and second class men's baths and a women's baths, along with a public hall. Little of the interior remains intact. The baths were closed in January 2007 for refurbishment and re-opened at the end of July 2010. [19]
Kentish Town has a fairly large boundary, stretching from Camden Gardens to as a far north as the Highgate Road/Gordon House Road junction near Dartmouth Park. Kentish Town generally includes the areas to the west, around Queens Crescent and to the east around Torriano.
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Kentish Town has a range of transport connections: a mainline railway station that is served by Thameslink along with an interchange to the London Underground; Underground stations, overground connection (at Kentish Town West and Camden Road stations) and multiple bus routes with the majority going into or around Central London.
The following Bus Routes serve Kentish Town: 88 (24 hour), 134 (24 hour), 214 (24 hour), 393 and Night Bus Route N20.
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)Bloomsbury is a district in the West End of London, part of the London Borough of Camden in England. It is considered a fashionable residential area, and is the location of numerous cultural, intellectual, and educational institutions. Bloomsbury is home of the British Museum, the largest museum in the United Kingdom, and several educational institutions, including University College London and a number of other colleges and institutes of the University of London as well as its central headquarters, the New College of the Humanities, the University of Law, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, the British Medical Association and many others. Bloomsbury is an intellectual and literary hub for London, as home of world-known Bloomsbury Publishing, publishers of the Harry Potter series, and namesake of the Bloomsbury Group, a group of British intellectuals which included author Virginia Woolf, biographer Lytton Strachey, and economist John Maynard Keynes.
Chalk Farm is a small urban district of north west London, lying immediately north of Camden Town, in the London Borough of Camden.
Highgate is a suburban area of London at the northeastern corner of Hampstead Heath, 4+1⁄2 miles north-northwest of Charing Cross.
St Pancras is a district in central London. It was originally a medieval ancient parish and subsequently became a metropolitan borough. The metropolitan borough then merged with neighbouring boroughs and the area it covered now forms around half of the modern London Borough of Camden. The area of the parish and borough includes the sub-districts of Camden Town, Kentish Town, Gospel Oak, Somers Town, King's Cross, Chalk Farm, Dartmouth Park, the core area of Fitzrovia and a part of Highgate.
King's Cross is a district in the London Boroughs of Camden and Islington, on either side of Euston Road in north London, England, 1.5 miles (2.4 km) north of Charing Cross, bordered by Barnsbury to the north, Clerkenwell to the southeast, Angel to the east, Holborn and Bloomsbury to the south, Euston to the west and Camden Town to the northwest. It is served by two major rail termini, St Pancras and King's Cross. King's Cross station is the terminus of one of the major rail routes between London and the North.
Camden Town, often shortened to Camden, is an area in the London Borough of Camden, around 2.5 miles (4.1 km) north-northwest of Charing Cross. Historically in Middlesex, it is identified in the London Plan as one of 34 major centres in Greater London.
The River Fleet is the largest of London's subterranean rivers, all of which today contain foul water for treatment. It has been used as a culverted sewer since the development of Joseph Bazalgette's London sewer system in the mid-19th century with the water being treated at Beckton Sewage Treatment Works. Its headwaters are two streams on Hampstead Heath, each of which was dammed into a series of ponds—the Hampstead Ponds and the Highgate Ponds—in the 18th century. At the southern edge of Hampstead Heath these descend underground as sewers and join in Camden Town. The waters flow 4 miles (6 km) from the ponds.
Somers Town is an inner-city district in North West London. It has been strongly influenced by the three mainline north London railway termini: Euston (1838), St Pancras (1868) and King's Cross (1852), together with the Midland Railway Somers Town Goods Depot (1887) next to St Pancras, where the British Library now stands. It was named after Charles Cocks, 1st Baron Somers (1725–1806). The area was originally granted by William III to John Somers (1651–1716), Lord Chancellor and Baron Somers of Evesham.
Gospel Oak is an area of north west London in the London Borough of Camden at the very south of Hampstead Heath. The neighbourhood is positioned between Hampstead to the north-west, Dartmouth Park to the north-east, Kentish Town to the south-east, and Belsize Park to the south-west. Gospel Oak lies across the NW5 and NW3 postcodes and is served by Gospel Oak station on the London Overground.
St Pancras Church is a Greek Revival church in St Pancras, London, built in 1819–22 to the designs of William and Henry William Inwood. The church is one of the most important 19th-century churches in England and is a Grade I listed building.
St Pancras Old Church is a Church of England parish church on Pancras Road, Somers Town, in the London Borough of Camden. Somers Town is an area of the ancient parish and later Metropolitan Borough of St Pancras.
All Saints Cathedral, Camden Street, London, originally All Saints Church, Camden Town, St Pancras, Middlesex, is a church in the Camden Town area of London, England. It was built for the Church of England, but it is now a Greek Orthodox church known as the Greek Orthodox Cathedral Church of All Saints. It stands where Camden Street and Pratt Street meet.
Agar Town was a small, historically poor neighbourhood of St Pancras in central London. Most of the area was demolished making way for St Pancras railway station.
Dartmouth Park is a district of north west London in the Borough of Camden, 6.0 km (3.7 mi) north of Charing Cross. The area adjoins Highgate and Highgate Cemetery and Kentish Town. Parliament Hill is to the west.
Haverstock is an area of the London Borough of Camden: specifically the east of Belsize Park, north of Chalk Farm and west of Kentish Town. It is centred on Queens Crescent and Malden Road. Gospel Oak is to the north, Camden Town to the south.
Queen's Crescent Market is an outdoor street market held every Thursday and Saturday on Queen's Crescent in Kentish Town, Camden between the junction with Malden Road in the West and the junction with Grafton Road in the East. Licences to trade are issued by Camden London Borough Council.
The London Borough of Camden was created in 1965 from the former area of the metropolitan boroughs of Hampstead, Holborn, and St Pancras, which had formed part of the County of London. The borough was named after Camden Town, which had gained its name from Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden in 1795. Since the 17th century, many famous people have lived in its various districts and neighbourhoods.
The London Borough of Camden is a borough in Inner London, England. Camden Town Hall, on Euston Road, lies 1.4 mi (2.3 km) north of Charing Cross. The borough was established on 1 April 1965 from the former metropolitan boroughs of Holborn, St Pancras and Hampstead.
Highgate West Hill is a street in Highgate, London. Located in the London Borough of Camden it runs north to south with Hampstead Heath off to its west and Highgate Cemetery away to the east. A number of streets run off the road including The Grove, Millfield Lane and Hillway. The route dates back to the medieval era.
Highgate High Street is located in Highgate in London. A high street, it provides the main shopping thoroughfare for the settlement at the top of Highgate Hill. It runs downhill from the western end and forms of the longer B519 that includes Highgate Hill towards Archway. At its western end is a crossroads by The Gatehouse pub where it meets Hampstead Lane, Highgate West Hill and North Road. Pond Square, the village green of Highgate, is located nearby. Other roads running off the High Street include Southwood Lane and South Grove. The High Street forms the border between the London Borough of Camden to the south and Haringey to the north, reflecting the historic parish boundaries between Hornsey and St Pancras.