North London Line - Gospel Oak

The North London Line (ex Hampstead Junction Railway) curves north west from Kentish Town West and runs westward from Gospel Oak Station




Arctic Street
Used to be Franklin Street, named after 19th builder
Carlton Chapel House, flats built 1983 designed by Christopher Dean Associates for the Tenants' Association.

Brown’s Lane
Where the cows from Brown’s Dairy in Camden grazed.

Carkers Lane
Highgate Studios. Studio spaces for a collection of arts and other organizations.
Read Brothers. In 1883 acquired an acre of land here and built an export bottling premises plus a laboratory. This was a crenallated building with a Gothic tower and a spire. They produced 50,000 bottles per week and in 1906 were the largest buyers and bottlers of Bass Ale in the world, all sold for export. By 1913 they had increased their land, and had stacking space for 10 million bottles, the largest bottling facility in London. They sold widely in Australia as ‘DOG’S HEAD ALE and STOUT’. There was a large advertisement for this on the roof line of the bottling store facing the railway along with "Read Brothers ....  Bottling Stores' in raised lettering. A siding ran into the works from the Midland Railway.
Shand Kyd Wallpaper factory moved here in 1906. Shand Kydd had been set up in 1891 making wallpaper with bold lino block designs and matching friezes. They were taken over in 1960 and moved to Christchurch.
International Orient Carpet Factory

Fortess Walk
Previously called Willow Walk.  It was a crescent  enclosing a paddock for horses

Fortess Road
Public toilets – now turned into a bar
9 Tally Ho Pub. Closed 2006 and replaced with flats.

Greenwood Place
This road was built in the 18th as Prospect Row.
Highgate Business Centre. Called Evandore house and one of Maples, the furniture company’s, works.  An imposing warehouse built 1880. This provides space for offices, light industry etc.
19 Lenshan House. This was originally Maples, furniture stores, timber yard and sawmill and then became their Exhibition works.  It was later the offices of the Family Policy studies Centre until 2001.
37 The Camden Society. This is a London wide organisation providing volunteering opportunities and support for people with disabilities
Centre for Independent Living. This is planned for the area for services including: Mental Health, Dementia, Learning Difficulty, Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulties and Autism. In addition, a “Centre for Independent Living”
Greenwood Centre, currently providing space for a number of charities and similar organisations as well as a Camden Council day centre. It opened in 1973.
Deane House on the site of the Read Brothers bottling store. The store was built in 1885 and had turrets and battlements and its own railway siding.

Highgate Road
Very old road, until 1870 called Green Street and which follows the course of the Fleet. Very bad area for highwaymen in the 18th with lots of local vigilantes.  The High level interceptory sewer crosses near Kentish Town
1-7 a tall urban group of altered houses built 1786 by Thomas Greenwood and called Upper Craven Place.
until 1860 this was Craven House Girls School and then Foresters Hall for the Ancient Order of Foresters.
3 This was once the local Tory HQ. Carved face above the door.
9-17 Forum Cinema. Opened in 1934, the Kentish Town Forum Theatre’s architect was J. Stanley Beard and the interior design was by W.R. Bennett.  This consists of a series of Roman battle scenes said to be paid for by Mussolini so that Moseley and the British Union of Fascists could use it.  It was taken over in 1935 by Associated British Cinemas and re-named ABC in 1963.  It was closed in 1970 and became a bingo hall, then a ballroom and then a concert hall/theatre. It became called Forum again in 1993. It has Art Deco detailing by Beard & Bennett in cream faience, with black columns and lotus capitals and the auditorium has a coffered dome. There was a cafe in the space over the foyer.
19-37 Highgate Day Centre. This provides a service of psychodynamic and creative groups, individual keywork and social support for people with mental health issues. The houses here previously were by John Greenwood and on the north side ran the River Fleet.
20 Kentish Town Fire station. The Old Engine House stood south of here and a successor was built in Fortess Walk. The present station and practice tower replaced that. On this site was also a Methodist chapel dating from 1778. 
30a Piano Workshop in alley north of the Fire Station.  This was once an organ builder and piano key maker and was one of the few piano works left in the area. The business has now moved to Willesden from here in 2012 and the site is being redeveloped as housing.
Maple’s Steam Cabinet works were in the west side of the road. This was for Maple’s Furniture store in Tottenham Court Road.
39-51 Linton House. Early 20th industrial building built as Maple’s bed factory.  Post Second World War it was used by Canadian based, Dominion Rubber Co.  and later Norman Linton Gown makers from which it took its name. Currently light industry and offices.
Christ Apostolic Church. This was the church of St John built on the site of the Kentish Town Chapel by James Wyatt in 1783 but only some nave walls remain. It was rebuilt and extended in 1843-5 by J.H. Hakewill. In 1449 a chapel of ease had been built alongside the road to St Albans, now Highgate Road. This lasted for over 300 years but in 1784 it was demolished and replaced with the first version of the current church which was later rebuilt and dedicated to St. John the Baptist. In 1993 it was declared redundant and was squatted.  It is now a Nigerian evangelistic church.
Elsfield. Camden Council Housing designed by Bill Forrest in 1972. It replaced 1860s housing called Burghley Terrace. In this area Handeford Bridge crossed the Fleet River which also formed a pond.
54-56 Irish Centre Housing built in 1989 on the site of Bridge House.
58 Bridge House was a large pub demolished in 1988. It had once had gardens going to the Fleet. In the early 20th it was the John Apps Laundry and in the 1920s a rubber factory belonging to the Claudius Ash false teeth works.


Holmes Road
This was originally called Mansfield Place which was laid out by local landowner and industrialist Richard Holmes from 1790
This was the Petit Prince restaurant and the remains of murals of French cartoons are on the first floor wall. They used to project films onto the wall opposite
12a Kentish Town Police Station. Built in the 1890s designed by Norman Shaw. It was to be the Headquarters of Y Division.  The arch way took prisoners in to an area now redesigned as a control centre.
Section House for police accommodation built in the 1960s as an 8 storey slab block.
14 this was a factory for the London Piano Company who made self playing pianos and reed organ. Later, in the 1950s, it was the Camden Cardboard Box works who made wire stitched boxes. Now part of the police station.
Holmes Road School. This is currently the Lycee Francais de Londres. Which includes a nursery, as well as primary, and secondary school for 700 pupils. Holmes Road School was an early Board School built 1872 – 74 to the designs of E.R. Robson. In 1923 the school began to open for evening classes as a Community Centre for Education and also used for local clubs. By 1927 it includes the Junior Men's Institute for metalwork, boxing, hygiene and first aid. The school closed in 1931 and it became the Kentish Town Men's Institute, later the Kentish Town & East Hampstead Institute. In the Second World War it was used by Civil Defence, the RAF Volunteer Reserve and A.R. Training, as well as Home Guard Training and as a Rest Centre. Some of the building was used by Camden School for Girls who were still there in 1949. In the mid 1950s it became the Kentish Town & East Hampstead Institute and eventually the Kingsway College for Adult Education which closed in 2008.
Holmes Road Depot. Built in 1972 as the Council Depot on the site of the Midland Railway Coal Depot
Midland Railway bought land from Holmes in 1873 as their coal depot. Trains came from the north over a viaduct and stopped over the arch of a coal merchant, where coal could be dropped from wagons into his transport. The site included 40 stables and coal company offices. The original coaling stage was replaced by mechanical plant in 1939.   The depot closed in 1953 and became a British Road Services Depot.
Brick arches – part of the coal drops viaduct from the Midland Railway site remained here, used for storage and industry, until the 1980s
65-67 Magnet Kitchen Co. Offices. Previously site of their joinery
Arches – bricked up arches next to Magnet. These were part of a garage area used by the Birch bus company. The site was earlier a bronze powder factory.
57-59 housing and offices on site of Birch Bros. bus body building plant. Also used by W.Parkyn wheelwrights and carriage builders. It was also a service station for Beardmore Motors and a taxi depot
54-74 Charles Pugh windscreen manufactures.  This is their third site in the area, having started in Spring Place in the 1930s.
48-52 Maison Bertrand dealing in theatrical fabrics.
45 Entrance plus granite setts and a weighbridge. This was Grape Place in the 19h going to Paradise Row.  The buildings on site were used Bird and Davies, artists’ materials and previously Camden Council’s Sheltered Workshops and part of the hostel next door.  The site is now being developed for housing.
41-47 St Pancras hostel built 1895 as a casual ward by St Pancras Guardians. Inmates had to break rocks to be allowed to stay. – which is what the weighbridge at 45 was for.  It later became a London County Council working men’s hostel and is now run by Camden Council.
Bower Cottage was the superintendent’s house and in the 1930s used as St. Pancras North Relief Station and Dispensary by the London County Council.
24-26 Acquisitions - selling fireplaces and stuff
22 This was at one time a monumental mason
St Patrick’s Roman Catholic Primary School.  St. Patrick’s is one of the oldest Catholic schools in London.  It was founded in Soho in 1803 by Irish merchants in Frith Street as St. Patrick’s Charity School. By 1962 the school roll had fallen to 89 and a new Catholic primary school was needed in Kentish Town. So St. Patrick’s transferred here in 1967.  The school is a single storey building for two junior classes. A Nursery building was added in 2000, on the site of William Caldercourt’s cricket bat factory, subsequently Primrose Laundry, and a Music Room / Library in 2011. There are three spacious playgrounds, a school car park and quiet garden. Some of the site was originally a rag doll store, and 33 had been the Excelsior Welding Works.


Kentish Town Road
Junction of Kentish Town Road and Fortess Road is the centre of the old village, small-scale relics lie alongside late 19th suburban building.
305-315 site of developer Richard Holmes paddock and barn.  The housing was to front his development and called Mansfield Place
301-305 Iceland. On the site of the Alhambra cinema. The current shop was built in 1932 as Marks and Spencer and used by them until 1981. Part of the site was an 18th house and which was of Holmes estate
The Electric Alhambra Cinematograph Theatre opened in 1911. It included a tea-room with a separate entrance in Holmes Road. The architecture and interior were by M.Marsland. It in 1918 and became a billiard hall.  317-347 modern shop front in what was once terraced housing called York Place.  Shop conversions took place from the 1890s.
299 MacDonald’s. From 1923 to 1942 this was a Lyons Teashop. It was built in 1900 as a drapers shop by Herbert Beddell but has been refronted.
383-387 remains of New Chapel Place built in the 1790.
389 Bull and Gate, 18th pub.  Rebuilt 1871. Rebuilt in 1871, with marble pilastered ground floor and a bull and gate high on the frontage. Closed. It is said that the original name was Boulogne Gate and it relates to the capture of the town by Henry VIII in 1544. It is first noted in 1715. A cobbled yard once went to the LGOC stables and horse buses started here,
Jacques Samuels’s pianos store in old LGOC Stables.

Railway
North London Line – the line, as the Hampstead Junction Railway, ran north from Kentish Town West Station crossing the Midland Main Line north of what is now Regis Road.  There was a siding into the area now covered by the Regis Road industrial area.
The Midland Main Line goes westward through the area coming from Kentish Town Station.  Began to fan out into many sidings.  The main line itself continues on to the west.  Other lines continued from it as the Tottenham South Curve, the Tottenham North Curve, going to Highgate Road Station, to Tottenham and beyond.  Other sidings to the east of the rail complex went to a locomotive shed and a carriage and wagon repair shop.  Lines from both the main line and the Tottenham Lines also ran into sidings which serviced the coal depot and the Kentish Town Cattle Dock which stood alongside the main line, for cattle in transit waiting to be killed.
Tottenham South Curve opened in 1870 and was also known as the Highgate Incline. It left the Down Line at Kentish Town Junction, crossed the main line  and climbed to a gradient of 1:48 - some trains needing an additional engine to reach the summit
Tottenham North Curve linked Carlton Road and Junction Road for freight traffic and opened in 1883.
Kentish Town Curve opened in 1900 and ran from Engine Shed Junction and served a station then in Highgate Road. It was less steep than the Tottenham South Curve.
Sidings ran into Read's Bottling Stores
Engine Shed Junction Signal Box. This was between the main line and the Kentish Town Curve. Opened 1889 and closed 1981.
Cattle Dock Junction Signal Box. This controlled access to various sidings.  This opened in 1903 and was replaced in 1936 and closed in 1964.


Regis Road
This road covers the area of the extensive Midland Railway sidings and is largely Kentish Town Business Park.  This consists of many industrial and office locations.
Royal Mail Kentish Town Delivery office
United Parcels Services office built in 1984 as a depot for Whitbread’s Brewers.
Camden Recycling Centre
Camden Car Pound
Howdens Joinery
Alpha House built for Alpha Jewels Ltd.
Fairfax Meadow butchers
Asphaltic Ltd. Distribution centre.

Spring Place
Holmes family owned a brickworks and ropewalk here. They later sold the land to the Midland Railway who built arches here for the local coal depot
2 Autograph Sound Studio in part of Windsor and Newton’s Colour Works. They moved here in 1844 having got a royal warrant and having invented Chinese White. Colour her were ground by hand and spread out on stone slabs to dry. It later became a warehouse for an Italian grocery chain, Walton, Hassall and Port.
3-5 London Lorries were here pre-Second World War as motor body builders.  They were bombed and later General Roadways, lorry haulage took over the site,
8-9 Wall to Wall TV in what was Elliott Optical Co.
Spring House. Winsor and Newton’s steam powered works where they stayed until 1938. Now in other use.

Arctic Street
Used to be Franklin Street, named after 19th builder
Carlton Chapel House, flats built 1983 designed by Christopher Dean Associates for the Tenants' Association.

Brown’s Lane
Where the cows from Brown’s Dairy in Camden grazed.

Carkers Lane
Highgate Studios. Studio spaces for a collection of arts and other organizations.
Read Brothers. In 1883 acquired an acre of land here and built an export bottling premises plus a laboratory. This was a crenallated building with a Gothic tower and a spire. They produced 50,000 bottles per week and in 1906 were the largest buyers and bottlers of Bass Ale in the world, all sold for export. By 1913 they had increased their land, and had stacking space for 10 million bottles, the largest bottling facility in London. They sold widely in Australia as ‘DOG’S HEAD ALE and STOUT’. There was a large advertisement for this on the roof line of the bottling store facing the railway along with "Read Brothers ....  Bottling Stores' in raised lettering. A siding ran into the works from the Midland Railway.
Shand Kyd Wallpaper factory moved here in 1906. Shand Kydd had been set up in 1891 making wallpaper with bold lino block designs and matching friezes. They were taken over in 1960 and moved to Christchurch.
International Orient Carpet Factory

Fortess Walk
Previously called Willow Walk.  It was a crescent  enclosing a paddock for horses

Fortess Road
Public toilets – now turned into a bar
9 Tally Ho Pub. Closed 2006 and replaced with flats.

Greenwood Place
This road was built in the 18th as Prospect Row.
Highgate Business Centre. Called Evandore house and one of Maples, the furniture company’s, works.  An imposing warehouse built 1880. This provides space for offices, light industry etc.
19 Lenshan House. This was originally Maples, furniture stores, timber yard and sawmill and then became their Exhibition works.  It was later the offices of the Family Policy studies Centre until 2001.
37 The Camden Society. This is a London wide organisation providing volunteering opportunities and support for people with disabilities
Centre for Independent Living. This is planned for the area for services including: Mental Health, Dementia, Learning Difficulty, Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulties and Autism. In addition, a “Centre for Independent Living”
Greenwood Centre, currently providing space for a number of charities and similar organisations as well as a Camden Council day centre. It opened in 1973.
Deane House on the site of the Read Brothers bottling store. The store was built in 1885 and had turrets and battlements and its own railway siding.

Highgate Road
Very old road, until 1870 called Green Street and which follows the course of the Fleet. Very bad area for highwaymen in the 18th with lots of local vigilantes.  The High level interceptory sewer crosses near Kentish Town
1-7 a tall urban group of altered houses built 1786 by Thomas Greenwood and called Upper Craven Place.
until 1860 this was Craven House Girls School and then Foresters Hall for the Ancient Order of Foresters.
3 This was once the local Tory HQ. Carved face above the door.
9-17 Forum Cinema. Opened in 1934, the Kentish Town Forum Theatre’s architect was J. Stanley Beard and the interior design was by W.R. Bennett.  This consists of a series of Roman battle scenes said to be paid for by Mussolini so that Moseley and the British Union of Fascists could use it.  It was taken over in 1935 by Associated British Cinemas and re-named ABC in 1963.  It was closed in 1970 and became a bingo hall, then a ballroom and then a concert hall/theatre. It became called Forum again in 1993. It has Art Deco detailing by Beard & Bennett in cream faience, with black columns and lotus capitals and the auditorium has a coffered dome. There was a cafe in the space over the foyer.
19-37 Highgate Day Centre. This provides a service of psychodynamic and creative groups, individual keywork and social support for people with mental health issues. The houses here previously were by John Greenwood and on the north side ran the River Fleet.
20 Kentish Town Fire station. The Old Engine House stood south of here and a successor was built in Fortess Walk. The present station and practice tower replaced that. On this site was also a Methodist chapel dating from 1778. 
30a Piano Workshop in alley north of the Fire Station.  This was once an organ builder and piano key maker and was one of the few piano works left in the area. The business has now moved to Willesden from here in 2012 and the site is being redeveloped as housing.
Maple’s Steam Cabinet works were in the west side of the road. This was for Maple’s Furniture store in Tottenham Court Road.
39-51 Linton House. Early 20th industrial building built as Maple’s bed factory.  Post Second World War it was used by Canadian based, Dominion Rubber Co.  and later Norman Linton Gown makers from which it took its name. Currently light industry and offices.
Christ Apostolic Church. This was the church of St John built on the site of the Kentish Town Chapel by James Wyatt in 1783 but only some nave walls remain. It was rebuilt and extended in 1843-5 by J.H. Hakewill. In 1449 a chapel of ease had been built alongside the road to St Albans, now Highgate Road. This lasted for over 300 years but in 1784 it was demolished and replaced with the first version of the current church which was later rebuilt and dedicated to St. John the Baptist. In 1993 it was declared redundant and was squatted.  It is now a Nigerian evangelistic church.
Elsfield. Camden Council Housing designed by Bill Forrest in 1972. It replaced 1860s housing called Burghley Terrace. In this area Handeford Bridge crossed the Fleet River which also formed a pond.
54-56 Irish Centre Housing built in 1989 on the site of Bridge House.
58 Bridge House was a large pub demolished in 1988. It had once had gardens going to the Fleet. In the early 20th it was the John Apps Laundry and in the 1920s a rubber factory belonging to the Claudius Ash false teeth works.


Holmes Road
This was originally called Mansfield Place which was laid out by local landowner and industrialist Richard Holmes from 1790
This was the Petit Prince restaurant and the remains of murals of French cartoons are on the first floor wall. They used to project films onto the wall opposite
12a Kentish Town Police Station. Built in the 1890s designed by Norman Shaw. It was to be the Headquarters of Y Division.  The arch way took prisoners in to an area now redesigned as a control centre.
Section House for police accommodation built in the 1960s as an 8 storey slab block.
14 this was a factory for the London Piano Company who made self playing pianos and reed organ. Later, in the 1950s, it was the Camden Cardboard Box works who made wire stitched boxes. Now part of the police station.
Holmes Road School. This is currently the Lycee Francais de Londres. Which includes a nursery, as well as primary, and secondary school for 700 pupils. Holmes Road School was an early Board School built 1872 – 74 to the designs of E.R. Robson. In 1923 the school began to open for evening classes as a Community Centre for Education and also used for local clubs. By 1927 it includes the Junior Men's Institute for metalwork, boxing, hygiene and first aid. The school closed in 1931 and it became the Kentish Town Men's Institute, later the Kentish Town & East Hampstead Institute. In the Second World War it was used by Civil Defence, the RAF Volunteer Reserve and A.R. Training, as well as Home Guard Training and as a Rest Centre. Some of the building was used by Camden School for Girls who were still there in 1949. In the mid 1950s it became the Kentish Town & East Hampstead Institute and eventually the Kingsway College for Adult Education which closed in 2008.
Holmes Road Depot. Built in 1972 as the Council Depot on the site of the Midland Railway Coal Depot
Midland Railway bought land from Holmes in 1873 as their coal depot. Trains came from the north over a viaduct and stopped over the arch of a coal merchant, where coal could be dropped from wagons into his transport. The site included 40 stables and coal company offices. The original coaling stage was replaced by mechanical plant in 1939.   The depot closed in 1953 and became a British Road Services Depot.
Brick arches – part of the coal drops viaduct from the Midland Railway site remained here, used for storage and industry, until the 1980s
65-67 Magnet Kitchen Co. Offices. Previously site of their joinery
Arches – bricked up arches next to Magnet. These were part of a garage area used by the Birch bus company. The site was earlier a bronze powder factory.
57-59 housing and offices on site of Birch Bros. bus body building plant. Also used by W.Parkyn wheelwrights and carriage builders. It was also a service station for Beardmore Motors and a taxi depot
54-74 Charles Pugh windscreen manufactures.  This is their third site in the area, having started in Spring Place in the 1930s.
48-52 Maison Bertrand dealing in theatrical fabrics.
45 Entrance plus granite setts and a weighbridge. This was Grape Place in the 19h going to Paradise Row.  The buildings on site were used Bird and Davies, artists’ materials and previously Camden Council’s Sheltered Workshops and part of the hostel next door.  The site is now being developed for housing.
41-47 St Pancras hostel built 1895 as a casual ward by St Pancras Guardians. Inmates had to break rocks to be allowed to stay. – which is what the weighbridge at 45 was for.  It later became a London County Council working men’s hostel and is now run by Camden Council.
Bower Cottage was the superintendent’s house and in the 1930s used as St. Pancras North Relief Station and Dispensary by the London County Council.
24-26 Acquisitions - selling fireplaces and stuff
22 This was at one time a monumental mason
St Patrick’s Roman Catholic Primary School.  St. Patrick’s is one of the oldest Catholic schools in London.  It was founded in Soho in 1803 by Irish merchants in Frith Street as St. Patrick’s Charity School. By 1962 the school roll had fallen to 89 and a new Catholic primary school was needed in Kentish Town. So St. Patrick’s transferred here in 1967.  The school is a single storey building for two junior classes. A Nursery building was added in 2000, on the site of William Caldercourt’s cricket bat factory, subsequently Primrose Laundry, and a Music Room / Library in 2011. There are three spacious playgrounds, a school car park and quiet garden. Some of the site was originally a rag doll store, and 33 had been the Excelsior Welding Works.


Kentish Town Road
Junction of Kentish Town Road and Fortess Road is the centre of the old village, small-scale relics lie alongside late 19th suburban building.
305-315 site of developer Richard Holmes paddock and barn.  The housing was to front his development and called Mansfield Place
301-305 Iceland. On the site of the Alhambra cinema. The current shop was built in 1932 as Marks and Spencer and used by them until 1981. Part of the site was an 18th house and which was of Holmes estate
The Electric Alhambra Cinematograph Theatre opened in 1911. It included a tea-room with a separate entrance in Holmes Road. The architecture and interior were by M.Marsland. It in 1918 and became a billiard hall.  317-347 modern shop front in what was once terraced housing called York Place.  Shop conversions took place from the 1890s.
299 MacDonald’s. From 1923 to 1942 this was a Lyons Teashop. It was built in 1900 as a drapers shop by Herbert Beddell but has been refronted.
383-387 remains of New Chapel Place built in the 1790.
389 Bull and Gate, 18th pub.  Rebuilt 1871. Rebuilt in 1871, with marble pilastered ground floor and a bull and gate high on the frontage. Closed. It is said that the original name was Boulogne Gate and it relates to the capture of the town by Henry VIII in 1544. It is first noted in 1715. A cobbled yard once went to the LGOC stables and horse buses started here,
Jacques Samuels’s pianos store in old LGOC Stables.

Railway
North London Line – the line, as the Hampstead Junction Railway, ran north from Kentish Town West Station crossing the Midland Main Line north of what is now Regis Road.  There was a siding into the area now covered by the Regis Road industrial area.
The Midland Main Line goes westward through the area coming from Kentish Town Station.  Began to fan out into many sidings.  The main line itself continues on to the west.  Other lines continued from it as the Tottenham South Curve, the Tottenham North Curve, going to Highgate Road Station, to Tottenham and beyond.  Other sidings to the east of the rail complex went to a locomotive shed and a carriage and wagon repair shop.  Lines from both the main line and the Tottenham Lines also ran into sidings which serviced the coal depot and the Kentish Town Cattle Dock which stood alongside the main line, for cattle in transit waiting to be killed.
Tottenham South Curve opened in 1870 and was also known as the Highgate Incline. It left the Down Line at Kentish Town Junction, crossed the main line  and climbed to a gradient of 1:48 - some trains needing an additional engine to reach the summit
Tottenham North Curve linked Carlton Road and Junction Road for freight traffic and opened in 1883.
Kentish Town Curve opened in 1900 and ran from Engine Shed Junction and served a station then in Highgate Road. It was less steep than the Tottenham South Curve.
Sidings ran into Read's Bottling Stores
Engine Shed Junction Signal Box. This was between the main line and the Kentish Town Curve. Opened 1889 and closed 1981.
Cattle Dock Junction Signal Box. This controlled access to various sidings.  This opened in 1903 and was replaced in 1936 and closed in 1964.


Regis Road
This road covers the area of the extensive Midland Railway sidings and is largely Kentish Town Business Park.  This consists of many industrial and office locations.
Royal Mail Kentish Town Delivery office
United Parcels Services office built in 1984 as a depot for Whitbread’s Brewers.
Camden Recycling Centre
Camden Car Pound
Howdens Joinery
Alpha House built for Alpha Jewels Ltd.
Fairfax Meadow butchers
Asphaltic Ltd. Distribution centre.

Spring Place
Holmes family owned a brickworks and ropewalk here. They later sold the land to the Midland Railway who built arches here for the local coal depot
2 Autograph Sound Studio in part of Windsor and Newton’s Colour Works. They moved here in 1844 having got a royal warrant and having invented Chinese White. Colour her were ground by hand and spread out on stone slabs to dry. It later became a warehouse for an Italian grocery chain, Walton, Hassall and Port.
3-5 London Lorries were here pre-Second World War as motor body builders.  They were bombed and later General Roadways, lorry haulage took over the site,
8-9 Wall to Wall TV in what was Elliott Optical Co.
Spring House. Winsor and Newton’s steam powered works where they stayed until 1938. Now in other use.

Elaine Grove
The road contains some of the survivors of the 19th Lismore Circus estate scheme. It was then called Arthur Grove.
Estelle Road
This is built on land which was passed to the trustees of St Pancras Church Lands in 1876 by Earl Mansfield. House by 1889 the road was built up
Glenhurst Avenue
Arts and Crafts dwellings in two-storey terraces built 1911-15
Ravenswood is part of the 1960s Haddo House redevelopment.

Gordon House Road
Created on the line of a footpath to Hampstead. It is named after Gordon House Academy which stood at the junction with Highgate Road in the 18th.  It was widened and named only in the 1880s
Clanfield. Flats built in 1971with a sloping façade and raked balconies
32-34 Spectrum House. Large factory building.  In 2004 this was occupied by Hawkshead Retail and some others. It was built in the 1920s as the Heath Works for paper merchants D.O.Evans and Sons. It was later used by Southall based wallpaper manufacturers. John Line and Sons who in this period introduced flock wallpapers = as well as their famous ‘Hampstead’ designs. . Then in 1965 Soho based guitar and drum manufacturers, Rose-Morris.  At the entrance to the yard are two bollards and one has on it ‘George IV’.  There is a yard which goes to other works behind. The building is on site of Julius Barko’s nursery followed by William Thompson who was there until 1927.
Heathview.  Housing Co-operative in flats built in 1937 with green pantiled roof designed by Taperell and Haase.
14 Mark Fitzpatrick or Mortimer Terrace Nature Reserve. Managed by the London Wildlife Trust.  This is on what was a buffer zone between the Midland Railway coal depot and Gordon House Road, with a covenant on it to that end. Mark Fitzpatrick was a previous landowner. The site has varied habitats such as mini meadows and woodland. There is a pond with dipping platform and a rain catcher built by a local architecture students as part of their course and BCTV Green Gym work on the site
Gospel Oak entrance to Parliament Hill Fields. Plus car park entrance.
41 Shack Café. In the park entrance with interesting drawings on the walls
Railway bridges, Two brick skew arch bridges/, The most westerly is for the North London Line, built as the Hampstead Junction Line between Kentish Town West and Gospel Oak stations in 1867.  The eastern bridge is for the Tottenham and Hampstead Junction Railway opened in 1888.  Graffiti by Mr. P and His art crew, known as Ahead of The Game 2003 by creating a piece across the railway bridge which said “ATG Welcomes You To Gospel Oak”
Gospel Oak Station. The station lies between Hampstead Heath and Kentish Town West on the North London Line and is the terminus for trains from Upper Holloway. The station opened in 1860 as Kentish Town on the Hampstead Junction Railway from Camden Road running to what was then Old Oak Common Junction. It was renamed Gospel Oak in 1867 when a different station to the south was named Kentish Town - now Kentish Town West. A different station with its own buildings existed for the Tottenham and Hampstead Junction Railway  but this was not added until 1888, and then without a link to the North London Line due to opposition from other railway companies. The lines were joined for wartime reasons in 1916 and the link severed in 1922 and from 1926 to 1981, passengers could not change lines at this station - trains left the Barking line to go south to Kentish Town station. The buildings for the Barking line remained open until 1926, occasionally used by football special trains but were demolished by the 1980s when a spotters train called there. In 1981 the Barking trains were diverted to Gospel Oak with a terminal platform rebuilt on the north side and slightly higher than the existing station. The North London Line here was electrified in 1916 by the London and North West Railway changing to third rail in the 1970s.  The line is said to have been used by Midlands’s clerks on a day out to Epping.  The station was rebuilt in 1953.
Signal Box. A box on the line from Barking was burnt down in 1985 but replaced. A box on the North London line was opened by the London and North West railway in 1916 and closed in 1957.
Hemingway Close
Housing Association properties, Origin Housing, on the site of sidings and works.  The housing appears to be on the site of Gospel Oak Works, latterly in use by G.A.Shankland, metallic sign producers who left the site in the mid-1990s.
Highgate Road
Highgate enclosures. This consists of three landscaped areas which once formed part of a more extensive village green of Kentish Town. This was an area of common land gradually enclosed. It is shown as 'Green Street' on the Rocque map of 1746. When the Lissenden Gardens Estate was built the developer, Arthur William Armstrong, built a road and landscaped and planted the most northerly of the Enclosures. In the Second World War this area was the site of an air raid shelter consisting of a roofed over trench.
Parliament Hill Girls School. Built as a girls’ secondary school under the 1902 Education Act, a three storey building in red brick. It was developed on land previously occupied by detached 19th houses on the west side of Highgate Road known as The Grove.  It moved to this site in 1914 as a County Secondary School but had been founded elsewhere in 1900. It then had an entrance examination and a high reputation for arts and science; all girls were expected to get School Certificate. In 1956 an extension was opened by Edith Evans and a glazed front was added in 200


Hodes Row
Tiny backland development containing one house, built by Mr. Hodes

Julia Street
Along with other surrounding streets this is the remains of part of the street scape planned around Lismore Circus in the 1850s.

Lamble Street
Kiln Place Tenants Hall
Elizabeth II pillar box with ‘E ll R’ on the door plus a crown.

Lissenden Gardens
Built on the site of Clevedon House a 19th house which was next to the remains of Kentish Town’s village green. Lissenden is a made up estate agents name. Built from 1900 by the Armstrong family as fashionable living. Most of the road consists of mansion-block development of 1900-06 by Bohemer and Gibbs Arts and Crafts designs. There are three blocks of five-stories in orange-red brick, with corner towers. Railings of wrought iron and Doulton tiled lobbies and Terracotta details in the design. Running hot and cold water was laid on, electroliers supplied rather than gas lighting, a coals hoist to kitchen service balcony, and caretakers for communal stair-halls. There are plane trees in all of the estate’s roads. The Armstrong family continued to own and manage the estate until 1972, London Borough of Camden is now the freeholder.
Parliament Mansions. These overlook Parliament Hill Fields. There is a plaque to Richard Tawney ‘economic historian, Christian Socialist, and founding father of the welfare state’.  This was erected in 2003 by the Lissenden Garden Tenants Association.
Clevedon. Mansions . There is a plaque to composer Martin Shaw
Lissenden Mansions. Plaque to painter Anthony Green
Garden. This was laid out in 1899 and enclosed by railings to be gardeners employed by the Trustees of the Estate. Tennis courts may have been laid out as early as 1906.
Salcombe Lodge by Ted Levy and Partners built in  1974 a five storey block in red brick with concrete bands. This is on the site of a nursery which was replaced by Defoe Garage, and later replaced by Lissenden Motors. It was subsequently a factory for British Vacuum Flask Co. On the side is a plaque with a hand pointing to 'Church Lands' which is part of Parliament Hill Fields.
The British Vacuum Flask Co. Had been set up in 1947 by Rothermel, a Kilburn based electrical importer, with factories ere and in Liverpool. They were  able to use newly developer plastics and coatings for flasks of varying sizes and uses.
Chester Court. A five storey red brick block. This was built following bomb damage in the Second World War and as a result the south part of Parliament Hill Mansions were replaced in 1949
The cottage. This was the estate office and members of the Armstrong family lived there.
2 Nordorff Robbins Music Therapy Centre in a converted electricity substation.  Terracotta sculpture of a boy playing a drum.  The centre was founded by Paul Nordoff, an American composer and pianist and Clive Robbins, a special education teacher. Their first work was at Goldie Leigh Hospital in Plumstead set up in 1970 and the first centre was set up in 1982. In 1991the London Centre at Lissenden Gardens was setup  funded by a rock concert at Knebworth Park. The centre is validated by City University and award degrees in Music Therapy
6 Gordon House, Now a  business centre.

Mansfield Road
Created on the line of a footpath to Hampstead. The land was owned by the Earl Mansfield and was passed to the trustees of St Pancras Church Lands in 1876. House building started in 1879 and by 1882 the whole of the north side of Mansfield Road, including 10 shops completed..  The builder for the majority of the ‘Mansfield Road Estate’ was William Turner,
1 The Old Oak. A 1950s rebuilding of an original corner-sited building called the Old Oak Hotel which had been built as an integral part of the Oak Village estate in the 1850s. Closed
Gospel Oak Primary School. As the Mansfield Road Estate was developed by the St Pancras Church Lands trustees a school was seen as needed and in 1898 the School Board for London opened a temporary school on the site of the allotments next to Gospel Oak station. In 1900 they built a permanent school here, as Mansfield Road School’  Mansfield Road School became ‘Fleet Central School’ in 1933. In the Second World War the school was acting as a fire station and was completely destroyed by a flying bomb in 1944. Gospel Oak School was built in 1953 on the site, and a
17-79 long white range of houses, by former Camden architects Benson and Forsyth. With roof gardens. This is a mixture of public and private spaces, but have  not worn well. Built on the site of houses bombed in the Second World War ad subsequently demolished to be replaced by prefabs
Meru Close
Local authority housing on the site of Gospel Oak Brick works

Oak Village
Part of a mid 19th townscape centered on Lismore Circus later demolished for post war housing.  Houses here in were built by 1853. They are two story cottages with large timber framed sliding sash windows and wit small front gardens.

Parliament Hill Fields
The Southampton Estate wanted to put housing here in the 1840s but a big public campaign prevented that.  In 1889 Parliament Hill Fields were taken over by the Metropolitan Board of Works
Parliament Hill Lido. The baths were opened in 1938  by the London County Council designed by Harry Rowbotham and TL Smithson, There was a diving stage, shutes and a café, with areas for sunbathing and spectators and fountains at either end. This was the most expensive of LCC lidos built in the inter war period. Following an accident in 1976 the diving facilities were removed. In 1980s hot showers, cycle racks, paddling pool and CCTV were installed and in 1989 it was taken over by the Corporation of London. In 2005 a stainless steel pool lining was installed, the first of its kind for an outdoor pool in Britain. One of the few open-air swimming baths built by the LCC still in use.
Cricket ground
Adventure playground

Rona Road
On land was passed to the trustees of St Pancras Church Lands in 1876  by Earl Mansfield.. House by 1889 the road was built up

Savernake Road
On land was passed to the trustees of St Pancras Church Lands in 1876  by Earl Mansfield.. House by 1889 the road was built up
1-11 nursery school added in 1985 to Gospel Oak Primary School.



Bellgate Mews
Private gated development of the 1970s in an area which in 1885 was Dartmouth Park Nurseries.1


Bellina Mews
The road name relates to houses, Bellina Villas, which once stood in Fortess Road north of the turning.
Furniture factory. This was in the grounds of Bellina Villas

Burghley Road
The road more or less follows the line of the River Fleet flowing from Highgate Ponds to the junction with Highgate Hill.
The area was owned by St. John's College, Cambridge following a bequest of some farmland in the early 17th. It was developed in the 1860s by the College, laying out the roads and granted building leases. The earliest developer was Joseph Abbott in 1860 who built Burghley Terrace. The southern part was leased to Joseph Salter in 1865 – he was a local surveyor, and estate agent, as well as a Vestry auditor, Chairman of the Board of Works and a Poor Law Commissioner. The road was named after Elizabeth’s minister Lord Burghley who had been a student at and benefactor to St.John's
16, the vicarage to Kentish Town Parish Church. This was a Gothic House of 1863 by the estate surveyor. Henry Baker. The site is now a care home run by Bridge Housing Association with a large pyramidal block built in 2000
23-39 modern replacements on a Second World War bomb site.
91a new build flats on site of the factory of the London Fan and Motor Co.

Carrol Close
This is a service road to the council buildings. The name recalls Carrol Place built in 1810 by farmer Richard Mortimer and originally called Pleasant Place. It was demolished by the Midland Railway.

Chetwynd Road
Chetwynd is the family name of Lord Ingrestre
Sunday Schools behind the Baptist Church are by Dixon built in 1879

Churchill Road
12-17 Conservative Land Society in 1880s earliest housing from the 1860s
20 with a plaque, ‘Cambridge House’ set into a metal-covered coping.
Gospel Oak Churchill SNCI; private open space which is a Site of Nature Conservation Importance

College Lane
Once a cart track going to St.John's farm, it is now a back lane parallel to Highgate Road, with cottages which are said to have been for railway workers.  This was part of the St. John’s College estate and thus named for them. There are no houses at the southern end but the ghosts of old buildings remain in the walls.
22 has a date plaque of 1840
30 house built for himself by architect Martin Goalen.
13 war memorial. This is a shield with names of railwaymen from the lane who died in the Great War. The house was built in 1881 by local builder Nathan Cansick.
Kentish Town Railwaymens' Athletic and Social Club. This is now derelict and was severely damaged by fire in 2003
College Works. BB Tool Co, here in the 1960s


Dartmouth Park Road
This, western end of the road, was built in the late 1850s a development by Lawford on behalf of Lord Dartmouth
First House. Built 1990 - 93 by and for J. de Syllas of Avanti Architects in a contemporary style. It is brick with a curved aluminum roof.
Lamorna House. 1920s house in dark brick

Evangelist Road
On St.John's College land - the College is really that of St.John the Evangelist

Fortess Road
41 This was built as the presbytery to the Roman Catholic (later Methodist) church Our Lady the Help of Christians which was next door. The church was designed by Edward Pugin and it is likely that this was designed by the same architect
49-51 Phelps Pianos Ltd.founded 1895 by Frederick Phelps but since 1988 part of Markson Pianos.
67 Frederick Phelps Violin makers.
Our Lady the Help of Christians RC church. This was demolished in 2003. In the 1850s the Catholic Church built a church in Fortess Road, on a piece of freehold land. The funds for the new church were provided by Cardinal Wiseman and the building was designed, in a Gothic style, by Edward Pugin, son of the more famous Augustus Pugin. And it was ready in 1859. By the 1960s a much larger building was needed and a deal was done whereby the local Methodists and Catholics exchanged their buildings. After much negotiation in 1970 the Methodists moved here.


Fortess Yard
house converted from 19th stables


Gordon House Road
Created on the line of a footpath to Hampstead and named after the school in The Grove
Gordon House works of Samuel and Spencer, makers of brewers signs
St.Anargyrie. SS Cosmos and Damien. The building dates from the late 19th and was a Catholic Apostolic Church. It is now a Greek Orthodox church. The bricks on the frontage are known to have been made locally in Kiln Place.
St.Anargyrie House. Built in 1996 this provides community and hostel accommodation


Grove End
Grove End House. Detached brick house built in the early 19th now divided into flats.
Grove End Villa.  This was given to the London Baptist Association when the estate was sold
Grove End Lodge, latterly the Baptist manse.
Gordon House Academy.  This was at the end of The Grove and dated from the mid 18th and remained here until 1837.  It later became a College for Civil Engineers.
Ravenswood. In the early 20th this was the Medical and Surgical Nurses Home and Nurses' Co-operation. It is on the site of Emmanuel Hospital and is now the site of a council block named after it.
Emmanuel Hospital. This was a home for the blind which was burnt down before it opened in 1799

Grove Terrace
Houses built 1780-1824. The Race track was built on fields behind this.  The area was held by St.John's College, Cambridge and the houses were the copyhold of the Manor or Cantelowes.  The principal copyholder Lord Dartmouth, enclosed part of the common around Highgate Road in 1772. The road has its York stone paving and there are original coalhole covers with foundry marks still visible.
Common land - A remnant of common land survives as the strip fronting Grove Terrace
9 fire company plaque
13 fire company plaque
19 Blue plaque to landscape architect Geoffrey Jellicoe
21-22 entrance to Grove Terrace Mews with arched signboard


Highgate Road
This ancient highway was called Green Street until 1870 It e ne roughly follows the course of the Fleet.
Highgate Studios. These units are in some of the buildings which was originally Maple’s cabinet making and exhibition works. Maples were the large furniture store based in Tottenham Court Road.
Highgate Children’s Centre. This is in some of the buildings of the Shand Kyd Wallpaper factory moved here in 1906. Shand Kydd had been set up in 1891 making wallpaper wth bold lino block designs and matching friezes. They were closed here in 1960. The buildings became the International Oriental Carpet Centre housing carpet merchants from the east. Later it housed a TV studios, and many other funcitons, including carpet dealers and a Fitness Centre.
College Yard junction. There are granite setts crossing the pavement here, lying, just north of the point where the culverted River Fleet crosses Highgate Road. The Fleet joins a tributary in this area.
62-63 rebuilt in 2006-07 with stucco ground floors either side of a courtyard.
78 A heavy wooden North African wooden door has been put as the shop entrance. This shop sells Oriental goods and the camel round the corner is theirs.
80a, modern brick building with an arch filling the front elevation, with glass infill.
82 Media House. This is on the site of what would have been the ticket office for coach services from The Vine. It is now a brick building housing an advertising agency.
86 The Vine. This was once the oldest building in Kentish Town, established as a coaching inn, first licensed in 1751, and the first transport terminus in Kentish Town.  It was once called the White Horse, It was completely rebuilt in 1899 and the half timbering added in 1934. The forecourt was a feature of the old coaching inns and the Vine has retained it. The only original bit of the pub is an archway to a path goes into College Lane and this would have gone across the field to the race track; then to a footbridge over the Fleet.
94-96 sales of architectural sundries
Lane to the north of 96 paved in granite setts with York stone slab wheel tracks
95 Silver Lodge on the site of a boys club, connected to Aldenham School in Hertfordshire and called the Aldenham Club for Young Men and Lads. It was closed in the 1980s.
The Retreat. This was on the site of Carroll Close and owned in the 1850s by Edward Weston, music hall owner as a place of entertainment with extensive gardens.  It was taken over by the Midland Railway, used by them as employee housing and demolished.
97-119  Shops, including a post office, and flats which replaced Blenheim Terrace
98-108 Fitzroy Terrace. 19th houses with Gothic glazing to first-floor windows, and front doors below street level.
102 Sun Fire Insurance plaque
110-118 with a heraldic shield on no.110.  these were built as 1-5  Gospel Terrace and St.Alexis, Catholic Chapel was opened here in 1846.  This was a private venture and although a foundation stone was laid for a church here but was not built following a dispute which led to the collapse of the project.
120 in the early 20th this was the office for the Society for Organising Charitable Relief and the Repression of Mendacity
124 in the 19th this was Macdonald's Wax Chandlery which burnt down.
Highgate Road Station High Level. This was opened in 1868 by the Tottenham and Highgate Junction Railway. It was built on the viaduct west of Highgate Road. The trains which used it were on a circuitous route from Fenchurch Street via. Stratford and Tottenham but from 1872 when the link to Gospel Oak was installed.  It served trains from Gospel Oak Station.  At one time a link led to Kentish Town Station on the up Midland Main Line. From 1894 until 1903 it was called Highgate Road for Parliament Hill. It closed in 1915 through tramway competition. The station was demolished in 1919 but some of the booking hall remains and has been in industrial use – it was accessed through the arch under the railway bridge on the west side. Some elements of the platform area remain also
Highgate Road Station.  Low Level. Opened in 1900 by the Midland Railway, it lay in a cutting to the west of Highgate Road. It was on the then new Kentish Town Curve, a line which diverged from the Gospel Oak to Barking Line to the east of station. Links from it led to the up Midland Main Line and to the North London Line heading east. It closed in 1918 through tramway competition. The station was sited to the south of the railway bridge and on the west side of the road.
MandA Coachworks. Thus ‘prestige’ motor repair works is under the railway arches. With advertising lettering on the wall under the bridge. They date from 1973 when they were established by Michael Dionisiou and Adonis Kyriacou
137 Southampton House Academy. This was a 19th school. The building is in brick and built in 1821 by James Patterson.  The playground was taken over by the railway in the 1860s
139 Southampton Arms. On the west side of the road where Lord Southampton was a landowner. It is described as an Ale and Cider house. It was built in the front garden of a 19th house.
Grove Place. Site of Grove House School in 1867
Grove Terrace Green.  This is a Green Public Open Space protected under the London Squares Act of 1931. Railings were removed in the Second World War
Pocket of open land west side of Highgate Road is also protected under the London Squares Preservation Act, 1931. These Enclosures are the last link to the Kentish Town village green.  It was protected by covenant during the building of Lissenden Gardens.
Underground civil defence chambers. This is a monolithic concrete box with a long-sealed doorway leading to stairs. Built in 1953, this was the council’s Cold War bunker for when the bomb dropped. It was taken out of use when the Civil Defence Corps was disbanded in 1968 and the council’s bunker was rebuilt under the Town Hall in Euston Road. There are unusual manhole emergency exit covers and ventilation shafts around on the Highgate Enclosures.
150 Grove End House. This is a double-fronted detached 19th house now divided into flats.
175 a stock brick three-bay 19th villa.
Denyer House. These red brick flats were designed by Albert J Thomas and built in 1936.  They are on the site of St John’s Park House Ladies’ School. At the back is an external walkway connecting balconies.
Haddo House. 19th house which survived until the early 1960s.  In 1934 it was a Home for Working Boys in London.
Highgate Road Estate. Housing units built on the site of Haddo and Gordon Houses. They date from 1965 and were designed by Robert Bailie for St Pancras., as Haddo House, a seven story block with two storey blocks at the back and some houses. Another block was added in 1971.
Highgate Road Chapel. Baptist church.  In 1874 Grove End Villa was given to the London Baptist Association who built this Chapel on the site. It was designed by Satchell and Edwards in 1877. This is now flats


Ingestre Road
The original Ingestre Road is now under much of Acland Burghley School to the west.  It is named for John Chetwynd, Earl of Shrewsbury and Viscount Ingestre who carried out much charitable work here in the 19th.
Ingestre Estate. Built by London Borough of Camden in 1967-71 on the site of the railway hostel and iron works. Designed by J. Green it has two-storey houses with conservatory porches stepping and also maisonettes
Care home in the centre of the estate.
Ingestre Community Centre. This opened in 1973 and provides youth and other facilities.
Electric Generating Station. This belonged to the Midland Railway and was used for current for station lighting, etc
Harbar works. Thus replaced the electric generating station and made iron strip and bar and belonged to William Cooke and Sons. Fletcher Court is on the site. Major George Fletcher defused an unexploded land mine here in 1969
Hambrook Court.  Sergeant Stephen Hambrook defused an unexploded land mine here in 1969
London Midland and Scottish Railway. SR staff hostel. This was built in 1896 as Enginemen's Lodgings for railway workers who finished a shift away from their homes.


Lady Somerset Road
Site owned by St. John's College, Cambridge. Lady Somerset was a 17th benefactoress to the. It was the  site of the racetrack opened in 1733 by John Wiblin, publican of the White Horse pub (now the Vine). There were two race tracks here and he called it Little Newmarket Course
10 Graigian Society - non-Christian monks leading a green life style
25a a house by Rick Mather built in 1977-9 in brick, with a curved turret-like end,
Camel – this stands at the end of the street, next to a planter with some indiscreet cupids


Little Green Street
Highgate Road was known in the 18th as Green Street, so this appears to be a connection to that name. It has seven houses on its north side all apparently 18th. Some have bay windows and some have been used as shops. The fields beyond used for horse racing.
Wooden posts believed to have been the finishing posts or they are also said to be farm gateposts.

Mortimer Terrace.
This was named after local farmer, Richard Mortimer. St. John's College Farm was on either side of the road where it joins Gordon House Road
13 this was the here where Leigh Hunt lived  and where John Keats stayed as his tuberculosis worstened.


Railway
Highgate Road junction where the Midland Railway Tottenham South Curve from Kentish Town joined the Tottenham and Hampstead Junction Railway.
Highgate Road Junction Signal Box. A signal box stood in the Vee of the junction and was closed in 1965

Sanderson Close
Sanderson Close.  Housing built by London Borough of Camden in 1976.  This is a barrier block with lower terraces by Yorke, Rosenberg and Mardell. The original railway wall is in the playground area.
Kentish Town Locomotive Sheds. This is a collection if of large red brick sheds from the late 19th. They were the Locomotive Sheds for the Midland Railway built to the east of the Tottenham North and South Curves. The Midland Railway opened their passenger engine depot in 1867-8.  In the early 20th this depot dealt with 140 or so locomotives. The sheds were re-roofed in the 1950s but closed in 1963 following the introduction of diesel locomotives.  
Hiview House. Head office of building contractors J. Murphy and Sons.


Wesleyan Place
Site of Green Street Chapel. Wesley had preached here in the open air and local farm-workers formed a society in their homes.  They were offered the use of a barn here by farmer Richard Mortimer  This was the beginning of Green Street Chapel and this road is named for the site of their 'Wesleyan Chapel' which was used until 1864.


York Rise
York Rise Estate built as a garden estate by the St.Pancras Housing Association in 1937 by Ian Hamilton. These are five storey blocks arranged round courtyards which had ceramic-headed drying posts by Gilbert Bayes. The Society was founded in 1924, its aims to buy and convert poor quality old properties or build new housing for only a small profit. The London Midland & Scottish Railway invited the Society to build this estate on railway land and each of the blocks was named after a railway or engineering pioneer: Brunel, Faraday, Newcomen, Stephenson and Trevethick.


Bellgate Mews
Private gated development of the 1970s in an area which in 1885 was Dartmouth Park Nurseries.1


Bellina Mews
The road name relates to houses, Bellina Villas, which once stood in Fortess Road north of the turning.
Furniture factory. This was in the grounds of Bellina Villas

Burghley Road
The road more or less follows the line of the River Fleet flowing from Highgate Ponds to the junction with Highgate Hill.
The area was owned by St. John's College, Cambridge following a bequest of some farmland in the early 17th. It was developed in the 1860s by the College, laying out the roads and granted building leases. The earliest developer was Joseph Abbott in 1860 who built Burghley Terrace. The southern part was leased to Joseph Salter in 1865 – he was a local surveyor, and estate agent, as well as a Vestry auditor, Chairman of the Board of Works and a Poor Law Commissioner. The road was named after Elizabeth’s minister Lord Burghley who had been a student at and benefactor to St.John's
16, the vicarage to Kentish Town Parish Church. This was a Gothic House of 1863 by the estate surveyor. Henry Baker. The site is now a care home run by Bridge Housing Association with a large pyramidal block built in 2000
23-39 modern replacements on a Second World War bomb site.
91a new build flats on site of the factory of the London Fan and Motor Co.

Carrol Close
This is a service road to the council buildings. The name recalls Carrol Place built in 1810 by farmer Richard Mortimer and originally called Pleasant Place. It was demolished by the Midland Railway.

Chetwynd Road
Chetwynd is the family name of Lord Ingrestre
Sunday Schools behind the Baptist Church are by Dixon built in 1879

Churchill Road
12-17 Conservative Land Society in 1880s earliest housing from the 1860s
20 with a plaque, ‘Cambridge House’ set into a metal-covered coping.
Gospel Oak Churchill SNCI; private open space which is a Site of Nature Conservation Importance

College Lane
Once a cart track going to St.John's farm, it is now a back lane parallel to Highgate Road, with cottages which are said to have been for railway workers.  This was part of the St. John’s College estate and thus named for them. There are no houses at the southern end but the ghosts of old buildings remain in the walls.
22 has a date plaque of 1840
30 house built for himself by architect Martin Goalen.
13 war memorial. This is a shield with names of railwaymen from the lane who died in the Great War. The house was built in 1881 by local builder Nathan Cansick.
Kentish Town Railwaymens' Athletic and Social Club. This is now derelict and was severely damaged by fire in 2003
College Works. BB Tool Co, here in the 1960s


Dartmouth Park Road
This, western end of the road, was built in the late 1850s a development by Lawford on behalf of Lord Dartmouth
First House. Built 1990 - 93 by and for J. de Syllas of Avanti Architects in a contemporary style. It is brick with a curved aluminum roof.
Lamorna House. 1920s house in dark brick

Evangelist Road
On St.John's College land - the College is really that of St.John the Evangelist

Fortess Road
41 This was built as the presbytery to the Roman Catholic (later Methodist) church Our Lady the Help of Christians which was next door. The church was designed by Edward Pugin and it is likely that this was designed by the same architect
49-51 Phelps Pianos Ltd.founded 1895 by Frederick Phelps but since 1988 part of Markson Pianos.
67 Frederick Phelps Violin makers.
Our Lady the Help of Christians RC church. This was demolished in 2003. In the 1850s the Catholic Church built a church in Fortess Road, on a piece of freehold land. The funds for the new church were provided by Cardinal Wiseman and the building was designed, in a Gothic style, by Edward Pugin, son of the more famous Augustus Pugin. And it was ready in 1859. By the 1960s a much larger building was needed and a deal was done whereby the local Methodists and Catholics exchanged their buildings. After much negotiation in 1970 the Methodists moved here.


Fortess Yard
house converted from 19th stables


Gordon House Road
Created on the line of a footpath to Hampstead and named after the school in The Grove
Gordon House works of Samuel and Spencer, makers of brewers signs
St.Anargyrie. SS Cosmos and Damien. The building dates from the late 19th and was a Catholic Apostolic Church. It is now a Greek Orthodox church. The bricks on the frontage are known to have been made locally in Kiln Place.
St.Anargyrie House. Built in 1996 this provides community and hostel accommodation


Grove End
Grove End House. Detached brick house built in the early 19th now divided into flats.
Grove End Villa.  This was given to the London Baptist Association when the estate was sold
Grove End Lodge, latterly the Baptist manse.
Gordon House Academy.  This was at the end of The Grove and dated from the mid 18th and remained here until 1837.  It later became a College for Civil Engineers.
Ravenswood. In the early 20th this was the Medical and Surgical Nurses Home and Nurses' Co-operation. It is on the site of Emmanuel Hospital and is now the site of a council block named after it.
Emmanuel Hospital. This was a home for the blind which was burnt down before it opened in 1799

Grove Terrace
Houses built 1780-1824. The Race track was built on fields behind this.  The area was held by St.John's College, Cambridge and the houses were the copyhold of the Manor or Cantelowes.  The principal copyholder Lord Dartmouth, enclosed part of the common around Highgate Road in 1772. The road has its York stone paving and there are original coalhole covers with foundry marks still visible.
Common land - A remnant of common land survives as the strip fronting Grove Terrace
9 fire company plaque
13 fire company plaque
19 Blue plaque to landscape architect Geoffrey Jellicoe
21-22 entrance to Grove Terrace Mews with arched signboard


Highgate Road
This ancient highway was called Green Street until 1870 It e ne roughly follows the course of the Fleet.
Highgate Studios. These units are in some of the buildings which was originally Maple’s cabinet making and exhibition works. Maples were the large furniture store based in Tottenham Court Road.
Highgate Children’s Centre. This is in some of the buildings of the Shand Kyd Wallpaper factory moved here in 1906. Shand Kydd had been set up in 1891 making wallpaper wth bold lino block designs and matching friezes. They were closed here in 1960. The buildings became the International Oriental Carpet Centre housing carpet merchants from the east. Later it housed a TV studios, and many other funcitons, including carpet dealers and a Fitness Centre.
College Yard junction. There are granite setts crossing the pavement here, lying, just north of the point where the culverted River Fleet crosses Highgate Road. The Fleet joins a tributary in this area.
62-63 rebuilt in 2006-07 with stucco ground floors either side of a courtyard.
78 A heavy wooden North African wooden door has been put as the shop entrance. This shop sells Oriental goods and the camel round the corner is theirs.
80a, modern brick building with an arch filling the front elevation, with glass infill.
82 Media House. This is on the site of what would have been the ticket office for coach services from The Vine. It is now a brick building housing an advertising agency.
86 The Vine. This was once the oldest building in Kentish Town, established as a coaching inn, first licensed in 1751, and the first transport terminus in Kentish Town.  It was once called the White Horse, It was completely rebuilt in 1899 and the half timbering added in 1934. The forecourt was a feature of the old coaching inns and the Vine has retained it. The only original bit of the pub is an archway to a path goes into College Lane and this would have gone across the field to the race track; then to a footbridge over the Fleet.
94-96 sales of architectural sundries
Lane to the north of 96 paved in granite setts with York stone slab wheel tracks
95 Silver Lodge on the site of a boys club, connected to Aldenham School in Hertfordshire and called the Aldenham Club for Young Men and Lads. It was closed in the 1980s.
The Retreat. This was on the site of Carroll Close and owned in the 1850s by Edward Weston, music hall owner as a place of entertainment with extensive gardens.  It was taken over by the Midland Railway, used by them as employee housing and demolished.
97-119  Shops, including a post office, and flats which replaced Blenheim Terrace
98-108 Fitzroy Terrace. 19th houses with Gothic glazing to first-floor windows, and front doors below street level.
102 Sun Fire Insurance plaque
110-118 with a heraldic shield on no.110.  these were built as 1-5  Gospel Terrace and St.Alexis, Catholic Chapel was opened here in 1846.  This was a private venture and although a foundation stone was laid for a church here but was not built following a dispute which led to the collapse of the project.
120 in the early 20th this was the office for the Society for Organising Charitable Relief and the Repression of Mendacity
124 in the 19th this was Macdonald's Wax Chandlery which burnt down.
Highgate Road Station High Level. This was opened in 1868 by the Tottenham and Highgate Junction Railway. It was built on the viaduct west of Highgate Road. The trains which used it were on a circuitous route from Fenchurch Street via. Stratford and Tottenham but from 1872 when the link to Gospel Oak was installed.  It served trains from Gospel Oak Station.  At one time a link led to Kentish Town Station on the up Midland Main Line. From 1894 until 1903 it was called Highgate Road for Parliament Hill. It closed in 1915 through tramway competition. The station was demolished in 1919 but some of the booking hall remains and has been in industrial use – it was accessed through the arch under the railway bridge on the west side. Some elements of the platform area remain also
Highgate Road Station.  Low Level. Opened in 1900 by the Midland Railway, it lay in a cutting to the west of Highgate Road. It was on the then new Kentish Town Curve, a line which diverged from the Gospel Oak to Barking Line to the east of station. Links from it led to the up Midland Main Line and to the North London Line heading east. It closed in 1918 through tramway competition. The station was sited to the south of the railway bridge and on the west side of the road.
MandA Coachworks. Thus ‘prestige’ motor repair works is under the railway arches. With advertising lettering on the wall under the bridge. They date from 1973 when they were established by Michael Dionisiou and Adonis Kyriacou
137 Southampton House Academy. This was a 19th school. The building is in brick and built in 1821 by James Patterson.  The playground was taken over by the railway in the 1860s
139 Southampton Arms. On the west side of the road where Lord Southampton was a landowner. It is described as an Ale and Cider house. It was built in the front garden of a 19th house.
Grove Place. Site of Grove House School in 1867
Grove Terrace Green.  This is a Green Public Open Space protected under the London Squares Act of 1931. Railings were removed in the Second World War
Pocket of open land west side of Highgate Road is also protected under the London Squares Preservation Act, 1931. These Enclosures are the last link to the Kentish Town village green.  It was protected by covenant during the building of Lissenden Gardens.
Underground civil defence chambers. This is a monolithic concrete box with a long-sealed doorway leading to stairs. Built in 1953, this was the council’s Cold War bunker for when the bomb dropped. It was taken out of use when the Civil Defence Corps was disbanded in 1968 and the council’s bunker was rebuilt under the Town Hall in Euston Road. There are unusual manhole emergency exit covers and ventilation shafts around on the Highgate Enclosures.
150 Grove End House. This is a double-fronted detached 19th house now divided into flats.
175 a stock brick three-bay 19th villa.
Denyer House. These red brick flats were designed by Albert J Thomas and built in 1936.  They are on the site of St John’s Park House Ladies’ School. At the back is an external walkway connecting balconies.
Haddo House. 19th house which survived until the early 1960s.  In 1934 it was a Home for Working Boys in London.
Highgate Road Estate. Housing units built on the site of Haddo and Gordon Houses. They date from 1965 and were designed by Robert Bailie for St Pancras., as Haddo House, a seven story block with two storey blocks at the back and some houses. Another block was added in 1971.
Highgate Road Chapel. Baptist church.  In 1874 Grove End Villa was given to the London Baptist Association who built this Chapel on the site. It was designed by Satchell and Edwards in 1877. This is now flats


Ingestre Road
The original Ingestre Road is now under much of Acland Burghley School to the west.  It is named for John Chetwynd, Earl of Shrewsbury and Viscount Ingestre who carried out much charitable work here in the 19th.
Ingestre Estate. Built by London Borough of Camden in 1967-71 on the site of the railway hostel and iron works. Designed by J. Green it has two-storey houses with conservatory porches stepping and also maisonettes
Care home in the centre of the estate.
Ingestre Community Centre. This opened in 1973 and provides youth and other facilities.
Electric Generating Station. This belonged to the Midland Railway and was used for current for station lighting, etc
Harbar works. Thus replaced the electric generating station and made iron strip and bar and belonged to William Cooke and Sons. Fletcher Court is on the site. Major George Fletcher defused an unexploded land mine here in 1969
Hambrook Court.  Sergeant Stephen Hambrook defused an unexploded land mine here in 1969
London Midland and Scottish Railway. SR staff hostel. This was built in 1896 as Enginemen's Lodgings for railway workers who finished a shift away from their homes.


Lady Somerset Road
Site owned by St. John's College, Cambridge. Lady Somerset was a 17th benefactoress to the. It was the  site of the racetrack opened in 1733 by John Wiblin, publican of the White Horse pub (now the Vine). There were two race tracks here and he called it Little Newmarket Course
10 Graigian Society - non-Christian monks leading a green life style
25a a house by Rick Mather built in 1977-9 in brick, with a curved turret-like end,
Camel – this stands at the end of the street, next to a planter with some indiscreet cupids


Little Green Street
Highgate Road was known in the 18th as Green Street, so this appears to be a connection to that name. It has seven houses on its north side all apparently 18th. Some have bay windows and some have been used as shops. The fields beyond used for horse racing.
Wooden posts believed to have been the finishing posts or they are also said to be farm gateposts.

Mortimer Terrace.
This was named after local farmer, Richard Mortimer. St. John's College Farm was on either side of the road where it joins Gordon House Road
13 this was the here where Leigh Hunt lived  and where John Keats stayed as his tuberculosis worstened.


Railway
Highgate Road junction where the Midland Railway Tottenham South Curve from Kentish Town joined the Tottenham and Hampstead Junction Railway.
Highgate Road Junction Signal Box. A signal box stood in the Vee of the junction and was closed in 1965

Sanderson Close
Sanderson Close.  Housing built by London Borough of Camden in 1976.  This is a barrier block with lower terraces by Yorke, Rosenberg and Mardell. The original railway wall is in the playground area.
Kentish Town Locomotive Sheds. This is a collection if of large red brick sheds from the late 19th. They were the Locomotive Sheds for the Midland Railway built to the east of the Tottenham North and South Curves. The Midland Railway opened their passenger engine depot in 1867-8.  In the early 20th this depot dealt with 140 or so locomotives. The sheds were re-roofed in the 1950s but closed in 1963 following the introduction of diesel locomotives.  
Hiview House. Head office of building contractors J. Murphy and Sons.


Wesleyan Place
Site of Green Street Chapel. Wesley had preached here in the open air and local farm-workers formed a society in their homes.  They were offered the use of a barn here by farmer Richard Mortimer  This was the beginning of Green Street Chapel and this road is named for the site of their 'Wesleyan Chapel' which was used until 1864.


York Rise
York Rise Estate built as a garden estate by the St.Pancras Housing Association in 1937 by Ian Hamilton. These are five storey blocks arranged round courtyards which had ceramic-headed drying posts by Gilbert Bayes. The Society was founded in 1924, its aims to buy and convert poor quality old properties or build new housing for only a small profit. The London Midland & Scottish Railway invited the Society to build this estate on railway land and each of the blocks was named after a railway or engineering pioneer: Brunel, Faraday, Newcomen, Stephenson and Trevethick.

The North London Line (ex Hampstead Junction Railway) curves north west from Kentish Town West and runs westward from Gospel Oak Station

Elaine Grove

The road contains some of the survivors of the 19th Lismore Circus estate scheme. It was then called Arthur Grove.

Estelle Road

This is built on land which was passed to the trustees of St Pancras Church Lands in 1876 by Earl Mansfield. House by 1889 the road was built up

Glenhurst Avenue

Arts and Crafts dwellings in two-storey terraces built 1911-15,

Ravenswood is part of the 1960s Haddo House redevelopment.

Gordon House Road

Created on the line of a footpath to Hampstead. It is named after Gordon House Academy which stood at the junction with Highgate Road in the 18th.  It was widened and named only in the 1880s

Clanfield. Flats built in 1971with a sloping façade and raked balconies

32-34 Spectrum House. Large factory building.  In 2004 this was occupied by Hawkshead Retail and some others. It was built in the 1920s as the Heath Works for paper merchants D.O.Evans and Sons. It was later used by Southall based wallpaper manufacturers. John Line and Sons who in this period introduced flock wallpapers = as well as their famous ‘Hampstead’ designs. . Then in 1965 Soho based guitar and drum manufacturers, Rose-Morris.  At the entrance to the yard are two bollards and one has on it ‘George IV’.  There is a yard which goes to other works behind. The building is on site of Julius Barko’s nursery followed by William Thompson who was there until 1927.

Heathview.  Housing Co-operative in flats built in 1937 with green pantiled roof designed by Taperell and Haase.

14 Mark Fitzpatrick or Mortimer Terrace Nature Reserve. Managed by the London Wildlife Trust.  This is on what was a buffer zone between the Midland Railway coal depot and Gordon House Road, with a covenant on it to that end. Mark Fitzpatrick was a previous landowner. The site has varied habitats such as mini meadows and woodland. There is a pond with dipping platform and a rain catcher built by a local architecture students as part of their course and BCTV Green Gym work on the site

Gospel Oak entrance to Parliament Hill Fields. Plus car park entrance.

41 Shack Café. In the park entrance with interesting drawings on the walls

Railway bridges, Two brick skew arch bridges/, The most westerly is for the North London Line, built as the Hampstead Junction Line between Kentish Town West and Gospel Oak stations in 1867.  The eastern bridge is for the Tottenham and Hampstead Junction Railway opened in 1888.  Graffiti by Mr. P and His art crew, known as Ahead of The Game 2003 by creating a piece across the railway bridge which said “ATG Welcomes You To Gospel Oak”

Gospel Oak Station. The station lies between Hampstead Heath and Kentish Town West on the North London Line and is the terminus for trains from Upper Holloway. The station opened in 1860 as Kentish Town on the Hampstead Junction Railway from Camden Road running to what was then Old Oak Common Junction. It was renamed Gospel Oak in 1867 when a different station to the south was named Kentish Town - now Kentish Town West. A different station with its own buildings existed for the Tottenham and Hampstead Junction Railway  but this was not added until 1888, and then without a link to the North London Line due to opposition from other railway companies. The lines were joined for wartime reasons in 1916 and the link severed in 1922 and from 1926 to 1981, passengers could not change lines at this station - trains left the Barking line to go south to Kentish Town station. The buildings for the Barking line remained open until 1926, occasionally used by football special trains but were demolished by the 1980s when a spotters train called there. In 1981 the Barking trains were diverted to Gospel Oak with a terminal platform rebuilt on the north side and slightly higher than the existing station. The North London Line here was electrified in 1916 by the London and North West Railway changing to third rail in the 1970s.  The line is said to have been used by Midlands’s clerks on a day out to Epping.  The station was rebuilt in 1953.

Signal Box. A box on the line from Barking was burnt down in 1985 but replaced. A box on the North London line was opened by the London and North West railway in 1916 and closed in 1957.

Hemingway Close

Housing Association properties, Origin Housing, on the site of sidings and works.  The housing appears to be on the site of Gospel Oak Works, latterly in use by G.A.Shankland, metallic sign producers who left the site in the mid-1990s.

Highgate Road

Highgate enclosures. This consists of three landscaped areas which once formed part of a more extensive village green of Kentish Town. This was an area of common land gradually enclosed. It is shown as 'Green Street' on the Rocque map of 1746. When the Lissenden Gardens Estate was built the developer, Arthur William Armstrong, built a road and landscaped and planted the most northerly of the Enclosures. In the Second World War this area was the site of an air raid shelter consisting of a roofed over trench.

Parliament Hill Girls School. Built as a girls’ secondary school under the 1902 Education Act, a three storey building in red brick. It was developed on land previously occupied by detached 19th houses on the west side of Highgate Road known as The Grove.  It moved to this site in 1914 as a County Secondary School but had been founded elsewhere in 1900. It then had an entrance examination and a high reputation for arts and science; all girls were expected to get School Certificate. In 1956 an extension was opened by Edith Evans and a glazed front was added in 2006

Hodes Row

Tiny backland development containing one house, built by Mr. Hodes

Julia Street

Along with other surrounding streets this is the remains of part of the street scape planned around Lismore Circus in the 1850s.

Lamble Street

Kiln Place Tenants Hall

Elizabeth II pillar box with ‘E ll R’ on the door plus a crown.

Lissenden Gardens

Built on the site of Clevedon House a 19th house which was next to the remains of Kentish Town’s village green. Lissenden is a made up estate agents name. Built from 1900 by the Armstrong family as fashionable living. Most of the road consists of mansion-block development of 1900-06 by Bohemer and Gibbs Arts and Crafts designs. There are three blocks of five-stories in orange-red brick, with corner towers. Railings of wrought iron and Doulton tiled lobbies and Terracotta details in the design. Running hot and cold water was laid on, electroliers supplied rather than gas lighting, a coals hoist to kitchen service balcony, and caretakers for communal stair-halls. There are plane trees in all of the estate’s roads. The Armstrong family continued to own and manage the estate until 1972, London Borough of Camden is now the freeholder.

Parliament Mansions. These overlook Parliament Hill Fields. There is a plaque to Richard Tawney ‘economic historian, Christian Socialist, and founding father of the welfare state’.  This was erected in 2003 by the Lissenden Garden Tenants Association.

Clevedon. Mansions . There is a plaque to composer Martin Shaw

Lissenden Mansions. Plaque to painter Anthony Green

Garden. This was laid out in 1899 and enclosed by railings to be gardeners employed by the Trustees of the Estate. Tennis courts may have been laid out as early as 1906.

Salcombe Lodge by Ted Levy and Partners built in  1974 a five storey block in red brick with concrete bands. This is on the site of a nursery which was replaced by Defoe Garage, and later replaced by Lissenden Motors. It was subsequently a factory for British Vacuum Flask Co. On the side is a plaque with a hand pointing to 'Church Lands' which is part of Parliament Hill Fields.

The British Vacuum Flask Co. Had been set up in 1947 by Rothermel, a Kilburn based electrical importer, with factories ere and in Liverpool. They were  able to use newly developer plastics and coatings for flasks of varying sizes and uses.

Chester Court. A five storey red brick block. This was built following bomb damage in the Second World War and as a result the south part of Parliament Hill Mansions were replaced in 1949

The cottage. This was the estate office and members of the Armstrong family lived there.

2 Nordorff Robbins Music Therapy Centre in a converted electricity substation.  Terracotta sculpture of a boy playing a drum.  The centre was founded by Paul Nordoff, an American composer and pianist and Clive Robbins, a special education teacher. Their first work was at Goldie Leigh Hospital in Plumstead set up in 1970 and the first centre was set up in 1982. In 1991the London Centre at Lissenden Gardens was setup  funded by a rock concert at Knebworth Park. The centre is validated by City University and award degrees in Music Therapy

6 Gordon House, Now a  business cenrre,

Mansfield Road

Created on the line of a footpath to Hampstead. The land was owned by the Earl Mansfield and was passed to the trustees of St Pancras Church Lands in 1876. House building started in 1879 and by 1882 the whole of the north side of Mansfield Road, including 10 shops completed..  The builder for the majority of the ‘Mansfield Road Estate’ was William Turner,

1 The Old Oak. A 1950s rebuilding of an original corner-sited building called the Old Oak Hotel which had been built as an integral part of the Oak Village estate in the 1850s. Closed

As the Mansfield Road Estate was developed by the St Pancras Church Lands trustees a school was seen as needed and in 1898 the School Board for London opened a temporary school on the site of the allotments next to Gospel Oak station. In 1900 they built a permanent school here, as Mansfield Road School’  Mansfield Road School became ‘Fleet Central School’ in 1933. In the Second World War the school was acting as a fire station and was completely destroyed by a flying bomb in 1944. Gospel Oak School was built in 1953 on the site, and a

17-79 long white range, by former Camden architects Benson and Forsyth. With roof gardens. This is a mixture of public and private spaces, but have  not worn well. Built on the site of houses bombed in the Second World War ad subsequently demolished to be replaced by prefabs

Meru Close

Local authority housing on the site of Gospel Oak Brick works

The North London Line (ex Hampstead Junction Railway) curves north west from Kentish Town West and runs westward from Gospel Oak Station

Elaine Grove

The road contains some of the survivors of the 19th Lismore Circus estate scheme. It was then called Arthur Grove.

Estelle Road

This is built on land which was passed to the trustees of St Pancras Church Lands in 1876 by Earl Mansfield. House by 1889 the road was built up

Glenhurst Avenue

Arts and Crafts dwellings in two-storey terraces built 1911-15,

Ravenswood is part of the 1960s Haddo House redevelopment.

Gordon House Road

Created on the line of a footpath to Hampstead. It is named after Gordon House Academy which stood at the junction with Highgate Road in the 18th.  It was widened and named only in the 1880s

Clanfield. Flats built in 1971with a sloping façade and raked balconies

32-34 Spectrum House. Large factory building.  In 2004 this was occupied by Hawkshead Retail and some others. It was built in the 1920s as the Heath Works for paper merchants D.O.Evans and Sons. It was later used by Southall based wallpaper manufacturers. John Line and Sons who in this period introduced flock wallpapers = as well as their famous ‘Hampstead’ designs. . Then in 1965 Soho based guitar and drum manufacturers, Rose-Morris.  At the entrance to the yard are two bollards and one has on it ‘George IV’.  There is a yard which goes to other works behind. The building is on site of Julius Barko’s nursery followed by William Thompson who was there until 1927.

Heathview.  Housing Co-operative in flats built in 1937 with green pantiled roof designed by Taperell and Haase.

14 Mark Fitzpatrick or Mortimer Terrace Nature Reserve. Managed by the London Wildlife Trust.  This is on what was a buffer zone between the Midland Railway coal depot and Gordon House Road, with a covenant on it to that end. Mark Fitzpatrick was a previous landowner. The site has varied habitats such as mini meadows and woodland. There is a pond with dipping platform and a rain catcher built by a local architecture students as part of their course and BCTV Green Gym work on the site

Gospel Oak entrance to Parliament Hill Fields. Plus car park entrance.

41 Shack Café. In the park entrance with interesting drawings on the walls

Railway bridges, Two brick skew arch bridges/, The most westerly is for the North London Line, built as the Hampstead Junction Line between Kentish Town West and Gospel Oak stations in 1867.  The eastern bridge is for the Tottenham and Hampstead Junction Railway opened in 1888.  Graffiti by Mr. P and His art crew, known as Ahead of The Game 2003 by creating a piece across the railway bridge which said “ATG Welcomes You To Gospel Oak”

Gospel Oak Station. The station lies between Hampstead Heath and Kentish Town West on the North London Line and is the terminus for trains from Upper Holloway. The station opened in 1860 as Kentish Town on the Hampstead Junction Railway from Camden Road running to what was then Old Oak Common Junction. It was renamed Gospel Oak in 1867 when a different station to the south was named Kentish Town - now Kentish Town West. A different station with its own buildings existed for the Tottenham and Hampstead Junction Railway  but this was not added until 1888, and then without a link to the North London Line due to opposition from other railway companies. The lines were joined for wartime reasons in 1916 and the link severed in 1922 and from 1926 to 1981, passengers could not change lines at this station - trains left the Barking line to go south to Kentish Town station. The buildings for the Barking line remained open until 1926, occasionally used by football special trains but were demolished by the 1980s when a spotters train called there. In 1981 the Barking trains were diverted to Gospel Oak with a terminal platform rebuilt on the north side and slightly higher than the existing station. The North London Line here was electrified in 1916 by the London and North West Railway changing to third rail in the 1970s.  The line is said to have been used by Midlands’s clerks on a day out to Epping.  The station was rebuilt in 1953.

Signal Box. A box on the line from Barking was burnt down in 1985 but replaced. A box on the North London line was opened by the London and North West railway in 1916 and closed in 1957.

Hemingway Close

Housing Association properties, Origin Housing, on the site of sidings and works.  The housing appears to be on the site of Gospel Oak Works, latterly in use by G.A.Shankland, metallic sign producers who left the site in the mid-1990s.

Highgate Road

Highgate enclosures. This consists of three landscaped areas which once formed part of a more extensive village green of Kentish Town. This was an area of common land gradually enclosed. It is shown as 'Green Street' on the Rocque map of 1746. When the Lissenden Gardens Estate was built the developer, Arthur William Armstrong, built a road and landscaped and planted the most northerly of the Enclosures. In the Second World War this area was the site of an air raid shelter consisting of a roofed over trench.

Parliament Hill Girls School. Built as a girls’ secondary school under the 1902 Education Act, a three storey building in red brick. It was developed on land previously occupied by detached 19th houses on the west side of Highgate Road known as The Grove.  It moved to this site in 1914 as a County Secondary School but had been founded elsewhere in 1900. It then had an entrance examination and a high reputation for arts and science; all girls were expected to get School Certificate. In 1956 an extension was opened by Edith Evans and a glazed front was added in 2006

Hodes Row

Tiny backland development containing one house, built by Mr. Hodes

Julia Street

Along with other surrounding streets this is the remains of part of the street scape planned around Lismore Circus in the 1850s.

Lamble Street

Kiln Place Tenants Hall

Elizabeth II pillar box with ‘E ll R’ on the door plus a crown.

Lissenden Gardens

Built on the site of Clevedon House a 19th house which was next to the remains of Kentish Town’s village green. Lissenden is a made up estate agents name. Built from 1900 by the Armstrong family as fashionable living. Most of the road consists of mansion-block development of 1900-06 by Bohemer and Gibbs Arts and Crafts designs. There are three blocks of five-stories in orange-red brick, with corner towers. Railings of wrought iron and Doulton tiled lobbies and Terracotta details in the design. Running hot and cold water was laid on, electroliers supplied rather than gas lighting, a coals hoist to kitchen service balcony, and caretakers for communal stair-halls. There are plane trees in all of the estate’s roads. The Armstrong family continued to own and manage the estate until 1972, London Borough of Camden is now the freeholder.

Parliament Mansions. These overlook Parliament Hill Fields. There is a plaque to Richard Tawney ‘economic historian, Christian Socialist, and founding father of the welfare state’.  This was erected in 2003 by the Lissenden Garden Tenants Association.

Clevedon. Mansions . There is a plaque to composer Martin Shaw

Lissenden Mansions. Plaque to painter Anthony Green

Garden. This was laid out in 1899 and enclosed by railings to be gardeners employed by the Trustees of the Estate. Tennis courts may have been laid out as early as 1906.

Salcombe Lodge by Ted Levy and Partners built in  1974 a five storey block in red brick with concrete bands. This is on the site of a nursery which was replaced by Defoe Garage, and later replaced by Lissenden Motors. It was subsequently a factory for British Vacuum Flask Co. On the side is a plaque with a hand pointing to 'Church Lands' which is part of Parliament Hill Fields.

The British Vacuum Flask Co. Had been set up in 1947 by Rothermel, a Kilburn based electrical importer, with factories ere and in Liverpool. They were  able to use newly developer plastics and coatings for flasks of varying sizes and uses.

Chester Court. A five storey red brick block. This was built following bomb damage in the Second World War and as a result the south part of Parliament Hill Mansions were replaced in 1949

The cottage. This was the estate office and members of the Armstrong family lived there.

2 Nordorff Robbins Music Therapy Centre in a converted electricity substation.  Terracotta sculpture of a boy playing a drum.  The centre was founded by Paul Nordoff, an American composer and pianist and Clive Robbins, a special education teacher. Their first work was at Goldie Leigh Hospital in Plumstead set up in 1970 and the first centre was set up in 1982. In 1991the London Centre at Lissenden Gardens was setup  funded by a rock concert at Knebworth Park. The centre is validated by City University and award degrees in Music Therapy

6 Gordon House, Now a  business cenrre,

Mansfield Road

Created on the line of a footpath to Hampstead. The land was owned by the Earl Mansfield and was passed to the trustees of St Pancras Church Lands in 1876. House building started in 1879 and by 1882 the whole of the north side of Mansfield Road, including 10 shops completed..  The builder for the majority of the ‘Mansfield Road Estate’ was William Turner,

1 The Old Oak. A 1950s rebuilding of an original corner-sited building called the Old Oak Hotel which had been built as an integral part of the Oak Village estate in the 1850s. Closed

As the Mansfield Road Estate was developed by the St Pancras Church Lands trustees a school was seen as needed and in 1898 the School Board for London opened a temporary school on the site of the allotments next to Gospel Oak station. In 1900 they built a permanent school here, as Mansfield Road School’  Mansfield Road School became ‘Fleet Central School’ in 1933. In the Second World War the school was acting as a fire station and was completely destroyed by a flying bomb in 1944. Gospel Oak School was built in 1953 on the site, and a

17-79 long white range, by former Camden architects Benson and Forsyth. With roof gardens. This is a mixture of public and private spaces, but have  not worn well. Built on the site of houses bombed in the Second World War ad subsequently demolished to be replaced by prefabs

Meru Close

Local authority housing on the site of Gospel Oak Brick works

Oak Village

Part of a mid 19th townscape centered on Lismore Circus later demolished for post war housing.  Houses here in were built by 1853. They are two story cottages with large timber framed sliding sash windows and wit small front gardens.

Parliament Hill Fields

The Southampton Estate wanted tout housing here in the 1840s but a big public campaign prevented that.  In 1889 Parliament Hill Fields were taken over by the Metropolitan Board of Works

Parliament Hill Lido. The baths were opened in 1938  by the London County Council designed by Harry Rowbotham and TL Smithson, There was a diving stage, shutes and a café, with areas for sunbathing and spectators and fountains at either end. This was the most expensive of LCC lidos built in the inter war period. Following an accident in 1976 the diving facilities were removed. In 1980s hot showers, cycle racks, paddling pool and CCTV were installed and in 1989 it was taken over by the Corporation of London. In 2005 a stainless steel pool lining was installed, the first of its kind for an outdoor pool in Britain. One of the few open-air swimming baths built by the LCC still in use.

Cricket ground

Adventure playground

Rona road

On land was passed to the trustees of St Pancras Church Lands in 1876  by Earl Mansfield.. House by 1889 the road was built up

Savernake Road

On land was passed to the trustees of St Pancras Church Lands in 1876  by Earl Mansfield.. House by 1889 the road was built up

1-11 nursery school added in 1985 to Gospel Oak Primary School.


The Fleet flows south west through this area

Railway Gospel Oak to Barking
The Line runs north east from Gospel Oak Station and through Highgate Junction

This post covers only the north east section of this square
Post to the west Gospel Oak
Post to the south Kentish Town

Post square to the west South End and South End and Gospel Oak and Belsize Park

Post in the square to the south Camden MarketKentish Town West and Camden Railway Goods



Bellgate Mews
Private gated development of the 1970s in an area which in 1885 was Dartmouth Park Nurseries.1


Bellina Mews
The road name relates to houses, Bellina Villas, which once stood in Fortess Road north of the turning.
Furniture factory. This was in the grounds of Bellina Villas

Burghley Road
The road more or less follows the line of the River Fleet flowing from Highgate Ponds to the junction with Highgate Hill.
The area was owned by St. John's College, Cambridge following a bequest of some farmland in the early 17th. It was developed in the 1860s by the College, laying out the roads and granted building leases. The earliest developer was Joseph Abbott in 1860 who built Burghley Terrace. The southern part was leased to Joseph Salter in 1865 – he was a local surveyor, and estate agent, as well as a Vestry auditor, Chairman of the Board of Works and a Poor Law Commissioner. The road was named after Elizabeth’s minister Lord Burghley who had been a student at and benefactor to St.John's
16, the vicarage to Kentish Town Parish Church. This was a Gothic House of 1863 by the estate surveyor. Henry Baker. The site is now a care home run by Bridge Housing Association with a large pyramidal block built in 2000
23-39 modern replacements on a Second World War bomb site.
91a new build flats on site of the factory of the London Fan and Motor Co.

Carrol Close
This is a service road to the council buildings. The name recalls Carrol Place built in 1810 by farmer Richard Mortimer and originally called Pleasant Place. It was demolished by the Midland Railway.

Chetwynd Road
Chetwynd is the family name of Lord Ingrestre
Sunday Schools behind the Baptist Church are by Dixon built in 1879

Churchill Road
12-17 Conservative Land Society in 1880s earliest housing from the 1860s
20 with a plaque, ‘Cambridge House’ set into a metal-covered coping.
Gospel Oak Churchill SNCI; private open space which is a Site of Nature Conservation Importance

College Lane
Once a cart track going to St.John's farm, it is now a back lane parallel to Highgate Road, with cottages which are said to have been for railway workers.  This was part of the St. John’s College estate and thus named for them. There are no houses at the southern end but the ghosts of old buildings remain in the walls.
22 has a date plaque of 1840
30 house built for himself by architect Martin Goalen.
13 war memorial. This is a shield with names of railwaymen from the lane who died in the Great War. The house was built in 1881 by local builder Nathan Cansick.
Kentish Town Railwaymens' Athletic and Social Club. This is now derelict and was severely damaged by fire in 2003
College Works. BB Tool Co, here in the 1960s


Dartmouth Park Road
This, western end of the road, was built in the late 1850s a development by Lawford on behalf of Lord Dartmouth
First House. Built 1990 - 93 by and for J. de Syllas of Avanti Architects in a contemporary style. It is brick with a curved aluminum roof.
Lamorna House. 1920s house in dark brick

Evangelist Road
On St.John's College land - the College is really that of St.John the Evangelist

Fortess Road
41 This was built as the presbytery to the Roman Catholic (later Methodist) church Our Lady the Help of Christians which was next door. The church was designed by Edward Pugin and it is likely that this was designed by the same architect
49-51 Phelps Pianos Ltd.founded 1895 by Frederick Phelps but since 1988 part of Markson Pianos.
67 Frederick Phelps Violin makers.
Our Lady the Help of Christians RC church. This was demolished in 2003. In the 1850s the Catholic Church built a church in Fortess Road, on a piece of freehold land. The funds for the new church were provided by Cardinal Wiseman and the building was designed, in a Gothic style, by Edward Pugin, son of the more famous Augustus Pugin. And it was ready in 1859. By the 1960s a much larger building was needed and a deal was done whereby the local Methodists and Catholics exchanged their buildings. After much negotiation in 1970 the Methodists moved here.


Fortess Yard
house converted from 19th stables


Gordon House Road
Created on the line of a footpath to Hampstead and named after the school in The Grove
Gordon House works of Samuel and Spencer, makers of brewers signs
St.Anargyrie. SS Cosmos and Damien. The building dates from the late 19th and was a Catholic Apostolic Church. It is now a Greek Orthodox church. The bricks on the frontage are known to have been made locally in Kiln Place.
St.Anargyrie House. Built in 1996 this provides community and hostel accommodation


Grove End
Grove End House. Detached brick house built in the early 19th now divided into flats.
Grove End Villa.  This was given to the London Baptist Association when the estate was sold
Grove End Lodge, latterly the Baptist manse.
Gordon House Academy.  This was at the end of The Grove and dated from the mid 18th and remained here until 1837.  It later became a College for Civil Engineers.
Ravenswood. In the early 20th this was the Medical and Surgical Nurses Home and Nurses' Co-operation. It is on the site of Emmanuel Hospital and is now the site of a council block named after it.
Emmanuel Hospital. This was a home for the blind which was burnt down before it opened in 1799

Grove Terrace
Houses built 1780-1824. The Race track was built on fields behind this.  The area was held by St.John's College, Cambridge and the houses were the copyhold of the Manor or Cantelowes.  The principal copyholder Lord Dartmouth, enclosed part of the common around Highgate Road in 1772. The road has its York stone paving and there are original coalhole covers with foundry marks still visible.
Common land - A remnant of common land survives as the strip fronting Grove Terrace
9 fire company plaque
13 fire company plaque
19 Blue plaque to landscape architect Geoffrey Jellicoe
21-22 entrance to Grove Terrace Mews with arched signboard


Highgate Road
This ancient highway was called Green Street until 1870 It e ne roughly follows the course of the Fleet.
Highgate Studios. These units are in some of the buildings which was originally Maple’s cabinet making and exhibition works. Maples were the large furniture store based in Tottenham Court Road.
Highgate Children’s Centre. This is in some of the buildings of the Shand Kyd Wallpaper factory moved here in 1906. Shand Kydd had been set up in 1891 making wallpaper wth bold lino block designs and matching friezes. They were closed here in 1960. The buildings became the International Oriental Carpet Centre housing carpet merchants from the east. Later it housed a TV studios, and many other funcitons, including carpet dealers and a Fitness Centre.
College Yard junction. There are granite setts crossing the pavement here, lying, just north of the point where the culverted River Fleet crosses Highgate Road. The Fleet joins a tributary in this area.
62-63 rebuilt in 2006-07 with stucco ground floors either side of a courtyard.
78 A heavy wooden North African wooden door has been put as the shop entrance. This shop sells Oriental goods and the camel round the corner is theirs.
80a, modern brick building with an arch filling the front elevation, with glass infill.
82 Media House. This is on the site of what would have been the ticket office for coach services from The Vine. It is now a brick building housing an advertising agency.
86 The Vine. This was once the oldest building in Kentish Town, established as a coaching inn, first licensed in 1751, and the first transport terminus in Kentish Town.  It was once called the White Horse, It was completely rebuilt in 1899 and the half timbering added in 1934. The forecourt was a feature of the old coaching inns and the Vine has retained it. The only original bit of the pub is an archway to a path goes into College Lane and this would have gone across the field to the race track; then to a footbridge over the Fleet.
94-96 sales of architectural sundries
Lane to the north of 96 paved in granite setts with York stone slab wheel tracks
95 Silver Lodge on the site of a boys club, connected to Aldenham School in Hertfordshire and called the Aldenham Club for Young Men and Lads. It was closed in the 1980s.
The Retreat. This was on the site of Carroll Close and owned in the 1850s by Edward Weston, music hall owner as a place of entertainment with extensive gardens.  It was taken over by the Midland Railway, used by them as employee housing and demolished.
97-119  Shops, including a post office, and flats which replaced Blenheim Terrace
98-108 Fitzroy Terrace. 19th houses with Gothic glazing to first-floor windows, and front doors below street level.
102 Sun Fire Insurance plaque
110-118 with a heraldic shield on no.110.  these were built as 1-5  Gospel Terrace and St.Alexis, Catholic Chapel was opened here in 1846.  This was a private venture and although a foundation stone was laid for a church here but was not built following a dispute which led to the collapse of the project.
120 in the early 20th this was the office for the Society for Organising Charitable Relief and the Repression of Mendacity
124 in the 19th this was Macdonald's Wax Chandlery which burnt down.
Highgate Road Station High Level. This was opened in 1868 by the Tottenham and Highgate Junction Railway. It was built on the viaduct west of Highgate Road. The trains which used it were on a circuitous route from Fenchurch Street via. Stratford and Tottenham but from 1872 when the link to Gospel Oak was installed.  It served trains from Gospel Oak Station.  At one time a link led to Kentish Town Station on the up Midland Main Line. From 1894 until 1903 it was called Highgate Road for Parliament Hill. It closed in 1915 through tramway competition. The station was demolished in 1919 but some of the booking hall remains and has been in industrial use – it was accessed through the arch under the railway bridge on the west side. Some elements of the platform area remain also
Highgate Road Station.  Low Level. Opened in 1900 by the Midland Railway, it lay in a cutting to the west of Highgate Road. It was on the then new Kentish Town Curve, a line which diverged from the Gospel Oak to Barking Line to the east of station. Links from it led to the up Midland Main Line and to the North London Line heading east. It closed in 1918 through tramway competition. The station was sited to the south of the railway bridge and on the west side of the road.
MandA Coachworks. Thus ‘prestige’ motor repair works is under the railway arches. With advertising lettering on the wall under the bridge. They date from 1973 when they were established by Michael Dionisiou and Adonis Kyriacou
137 Southampton House Academy. This was a 19th school. The building is in brick and built in 1821 by James Patterson.  The playground was taken over by the railway in the 1860s
139 Southampton Arms. On the west side of the road where Lord Southampton was a landowner. It is described as an Ale and Cider house. It was built in the front garden of a 19th house.
Grove Place. Site of Grove House School in 1867
Grove Terrace Green.  This is a Green Public Open Space protected under the London Squares Act of 1931. Railings were removed in the Second World War
Pocket of open land west side of Highgate Road is also protected under the London Squares Preservation Act, 1931. These Enclosures are the last link to the Kentish Town village green.  It was protected by covenant during the building of Lissenden Gardens.
Underground civil defence chambers. This is a monolithic concrete box with a long-sealed doorway leading to stairs. Built in 1953, this was the council’s Cold War bunker for when the bomb dropped. It was taken out of use when the Civil Defence Corps was disbanded in 1968 and the council’s bunker was rebuilt under the Town Hall in Euston Road. There are unusual manhole emergency exit covers and ventilation shafts around on the Highgate Enclosures.
150 Grove End House. This is a double-fronted detached 19th house now divided into flats.
175 a stock brick three-bay 19th villa.
Denyer House. These red brick flats were designed by Albert J Thomas and built in 1936.  They are on the site of St John’s Park House Ladies’ School. At the back is an external walkway connecting balconies.
Haddo House. 19th house which survived until the early 1960s.  In 1934 it was a Home for Working Boys in London.
Highgate Road Estate. Housing units built on the site of Haddo and Gordon Houses. They date from 1965 and were designed by Robert Bailie for St Pancras., as Haddo House, a seven story block with two storey blocks at the back and some houses. Another block was added in 1971.
Highgate Road Chapel. Baptist church.  In 1874 Grove End Villa was given to the London Baptist Association who built this Chapel on the site. It was designed by Satchell and Edwards in 1877. This is now flats


Ingestre Road
The original Ingestre Road is now under much of Acland Burghley School to the west.  It is named for John Chetwynd, Earl of Shrewsbury and Viscount Ingestre who carried out much charitable work here in the 19th.
Ingestre Estate. Built by London Borough of Camden in 1967-71 on the site of the railway hostel and iron works. Designed by J. Green it has two-storey houses with conservatory porches stepping and also maisonettes
Care home in the centre of the estate.
Ingestre Community Centre. This opened in 1973 and provides youth and other facilities.
Electric Generating Station. This belonged to the Midland Railway and was used for current for station lighting, etc
Harbar works. Thus replaced the electric generating station and made iron strip and bar and belonged to William Cooke and Sons. Fletcher Court is on the site. Major George Fletcher defused an unexploded land mine here in 1969
Hambrook Court.  Sergeant Stephen Hambrook defused an unexploded land mine here in 1969
London Midland and Scottish Railway. SR staff hostel. This was built in 1896 as Enginemen's Lodgings for railway workers who finished a shift away from their homes.


Lady Somerset Road
Site owned by St. John's College, Cambridge. Lady Somerset was a 17th benefactoress to the. It was the  site of the racetrack opened in 1733 by John Wiblin, publican of the White Horse pub (now the Vine). There were two race tracks here and he called it Little Newmarket Course
10 Graigian Society - non-Christian monks leading a green life style
25a a house by Rick Mather built in 1977-9 in brick, with a curved turret-like end,
Camel – this stands at the end of the street, next to a planter with some indiscreet cupids


Little Green Street
Highgate Road was known in the 18th as Green Street, so this appears to be a connection to that name. It has seven houses on its north side all apparently 18th. Some have bay windows and some have been used as shops. The fields beyond used for horse racing.
Wooden posts believed to have been the finishing posts or they are also said to be farm gateposts.

Mortimer Terrace.
This was named after local farmer, Richard Mortimer. St. John's College Farm was on either side of the road where it joins Gordon House Road
13 this was the here where Leigh Hunt lived  and where John Keats stayed as his tuberculosis worstened.


Railway
Highgate Road junction where the Midland Railway Tottenham South Curve from Kentish Town joined the Tottenham and Hampstead Junction Railway.
Highgate Road Junction Signal Box. A signal box stood in the Vee of the junction and was closed in 1965

Sanderson Close
Sanderson Close.  Housing built by London Borough of Camden in 1976.  This is a barrier block with lower terraces by Yorke, Rosenberg and Mardell. The original railway wall is in the playground area.
Kentish Town Locomotive Sheds. This is a collection if of large red brick sheds from the late 19th. They were the Locomotive Sheds for the Midland Railway built to the east of the Tottenham North and South Curves. The Midland Railway opened their passenger engine depot in 1867-8.  In the early 20th this depot dealt with 140 or so locomotives. The sheds were re-roofed in the 1950s but closed in 1963 following the introduction of diesel locomotives.  
Hiview House. Head office of building contractors J. Murphy and Sons.


Wesleyan Place
Site of Green Street Chapel. Wesley had preached here in the open air and local farm-workers formed a society in their homes.  They were offered the use of a barn here by farmer Richard Mortimer  This was the beginning of Green Street Chapel and this road is named for the site of their 'Wesleyan Chapel' which was used until 1864.


York Rise
York Rise Estate built as a garden estate by the St.Pancras Housing Association in 1937 by Ian Hamilton. These are five storey blocks arranged round courtyards which had ceramic-headed drying posts by Gilbert Bayes. The Society was founded in 1924, its aims to buy and convert poor quality old properties or build new housing for only a small profit. The London Midland & Scottish Railway invited the Society to build this estate on railway land and each of the blocks was named after a railway or engineering pioneer: Brunel, Faraday, Newcomen, Stephenson and Trevethick.


The Fleet flows south west through this area

Railway Gospel Oak to Barking
The Line runs north east from Gospel Oak Station and through Highgate Junction

This post covers only the north east section of this square
Post to the west Gospel Oak
Post to the south Kentish Town

Post square to the west South End and South End and Gospel Oak and Belsize Park

Post in the square to the south Camden MarketKentish Town West and Camden Railway Goods



Bellgate Mews
Private gated development of the 1970s in an area which in 1885 was Dartmouth Park Nurseries.1


Bellina Mews
The road name relates to houses, Bellina Villas, which once stood in Fortess Road north of the turning.
Furniture factory. This was in the grounds of Bellina Villas

Burghley Road
The road more or less follows the line of the River Fleet flowing from Highgate Ponds to the junction with Highgate Hill.
The area was owned by St. John's College, Cambridge following a bequest of some farmland in the early 17th. It was developed in the 1860s by the College, laying out the roads and granted building leases. The earliest developer was Joseph Abbott in 1860 who built Burghley Terrace. The southern part was leased to Joseph Salter in 1865 – he was a local surveyor, and estate agent, as well as a Vestry auditor, Chairman of the Board of Works and a Poor Law Commissioner. The road was named after Elizabeth’s minister Lord Burghley who had been a student at and benefactor to St.John's
16, the vicarage to Kentish Town Parish Church. This was a Gothic House of 1863 by the estate surveyor. Henry Baker. The site is now a care home run by Bridge Housing Association with a large pyramidal block built in 2000
23-39 modern replacements on a Second World War bomb site.
91a new build flats on site of the factory of the London Fan and Motor Co.

Carrol Close
This is a service road to the council buildings. The name recalls Carrol Place built in 1810 by farmer Richard Mortimer and originally called Pleasant Place. It was demolished by the Midland Railway.

Chetwynd Road
Chetwynd is the family name of Lord Ingrestre
Sunday Schools behind the Baptist Church are by Dixon built in 1879

Churchill Road
12-17 Conservative Land Society in 1880s earliest housing from the 1860s
20 with a plaque, ‘Cambridge House’ set into a metal-covered coping.
Gospel Oak Churchill SNCI; private open space which is a Site of Nature Conservation Importance

College Lane
Once a cart track going to St.John's farm, it is now a back lane parallel to Highgate Road, with cottages which are said to have been for railway workers.  This was part of the St. John’s College estate and thus named for them. There are no houses at the southern end but the ghosts of old buildings remain in the walls.
22 has a date plaque of 1840
30 house built for himself by architect Martin Goalen.
13 war memorial. This is a shield with names of railwaymen from the lane who died in the Great War. The house was built in 1881 by local builder Nathan Cansick.
Kentish Town Railwaymens' Athletic and Social Club. This is now derelict and was severely damaged by fire in 2003
College Works. BB Tool Co, here in the 1960s


Dartmouth Park Road
This, western end of the road, was built in the late 1850s a development by Lawford on behalf of Lord Dartmouth
First House. Built 1990 - 93 by and for J. de Syllas of Avanti Architects in a contemporary style. It is brick with a curved aluminum roof.
Lamorna House. 1920s house in dark brick

Evangelist Road
On St.John's College land - the College is really that of St.John the Evangelist

Fortess Road
41 This was built as the presbytery to the Roman Catholic (later Methodist) church Our Lady the Help of Christians which was next door. The church was designed by Edward Pugin and it is likely that this was designed by the same architect
49-51 Phelps Pianos Ltd.founded 1895 by Frederick Phelps but since 1988 part of Markson Pianos.
67 Frederick Phelps Violin makers.
Our Lady the Help of Christians RC church. This was demolished in 2003. In the 1850s the Catholic Church built a church in Fortess Road, on a piece of freehold land. The funds for the new church were provided by Cardinal Wiseman and the building was designed, in a Gothic style, by Edward Pugin, son of the more famous Augustus Pugin. And it was ready in 1859. By the 1960s a much larger building was needed and a deal was done whereby the local Methodists and Catholics exchanged their buildings. After much negotiation in 1970 the Methodists moved here.


Fortess Yard
house converted from 19th stables


Gordon House Road
Created on the line of a footpath to Hampstead and named after the school in The Grove
Gordon House works of Samuel and Spencer, makers of brewers signs
St.Anargyrie. SS Cosmos and Damien. The building dates from the late 19th and was a Catholic Apostolic Church. It is now a Greek Orthodox church. The bricks on the frontage are known to have been made locally in Kiln Place.
St.Anargyrie House. Built in 1996 this provides community and hostel accommodation


Grove End
Grove End House. Detached brick house built in the early 19th now divided into flats.
Grove End Villa.  This was given to the London Baptist Association when the estate was sold
Grove End Lodge, latterly the Baptist manse.
Gordon House Academy.  This was at the end of The Grove and dated from the mid 18th and remained here until 1837.  It later became a College for Civil Engineers.
Ravenswood. In the early 20th this was the Medical and Surgical Nurses Home and Nurses' Co-operation. It is on the site of Emmanuel Hospital and is now the site of a council block named after it.
Emmanuel Hospital. This was a home for the blind which was burnt down before it opened in 1799

Grove Terrace
Houses built 1780-1824. The Race track was built on fields behind this.  The area was held by St.John's College, Cambridge and the houses were the copyhold of the Manor or Cantelowes.  The principal copyholder Lord Dartmouth, enclosed part of the common around Highgate Road in 1772. The road has its York stone paving and there are original coalhole covers with foundry marks still visible.
Common land - A remnant of common land survives as the strip fronting Grove Terrace
9 fire company plaque
13 fire company plaque
19 Blue plaque to landscape architect Geoffrey Jellicoe
21-22 entrance to Grove Terrace Mews with arched signboard


Highgate Road
This ancient highway was called Green Street until 1870 It e ne roughly follows the course of the Fleet.
Highgate Studios. These units are in some of the buildings which was originally Maple’s cabinet making and exhibition works. Maples were the large furniture store based in Tottenham Court Road.
Highgate Children’s Centre. This is in some of the buildings of the Shand Kyd Wallpaper factory moved here in 1906. Shand Kydd had been set up in 1891 making wallpaper wth bold lino block designs and matching friezes. They were closed here in 1960. The buildings became the International Oriental Carpet Centre housing carpet merchants from the east. Later it housed a TV studios, and many other funcitons, including carpet dealers and a Fitness Centre.
College Yard junction. There are granite setts crossing the pavement here, lying, just north of the point where the culverted River Fleet crosses Highgate Road. The Fleet joins a tributary in this area.
62-63 rebuilt in 2006-07 with stucco ground floors either side of a courtyard.
78 A heavy wooden North African wooden door has been put as the shop entrance. This shop sells Oriental goods and the camel round the corner is theirs.
80a, modern brick building with an arch filling the front elevation, with glass infill.
82 Media House. This is on the site of what would have been the ticket office for coach services from The Vine. It is now a brick building housing an advertising agency.
86 The Vine. This was once the oldest building in Kentish Town, established as a coaching inn, first licensed in 1751, and the first transport terminus in Kentish Town.  It was once called the White Horse, It was completely rebuilt in 1899 and the half timbering added in 1934. The forecourt was a feature of the old coaching inns and the Vine has retained it. The only original bit of the pub is an archway to a path goes into College Lane and this would have gone across the field to the race track; then to a footbridge over the Fleet.
94-96 sales of architectural sundries
Lane to the north of 96 paved in granite setts with York stone slab wheel tracks
95 Silver Lodge on the site of a boys club, connected to Aldenham School in Hertfordshire and called the Aldenham Club for Young Men and Lads. It was closed in the 1980s.
The Retreat. This was on the site of Carroll Close and owned in the 1850s by Edward Weston, music hall owner as a place of entertainment with extensive gardens.  It was taken over by the Midland Railway, used by them as employee housing and demolished.
97-119  Shops, including a post office, and flats which replaced Blenheim Terrace
98-108 Fitzroy Terrace. 19th houses with Gothic glazing to first-floor windows, and front doors below street level.
102 Sun Fire Insurance plaque
110-118 with a heraldic shield on no.110.  these were built as 1-5  Gospel Terrace and St.Alexis, Catholic Chapel was opened here in 1846.  This was a private venture and although a foundation stone was laid for a church here but was not built following a dispute which led to the collapse of the project.
120 in the early 20th this was the office for the Society for Organising Charitable Relief and the Repression of Mendacity
124 in the 19th this was Macdonald's Wax Chandlery which burnt down.
Highgate Road Station High Level. This was opened in 1868 by the Tottenham and Highgate Junction Railway. It was built on the viaduct west of Highgate Road. The trains which used it were on a circuitous route from Fenchurch Street via. Stratford and Tottenham but from 1872 when the link to Gospel Oak was installed.  It served trains from Gospel Oak Station.  At one time a link led to Kentish Town Station on the up Midland Main Line. From 1894 until 1903 it was called Highgate Road for Parliament Hill. It closed in 1915 through tramway competition. The station was demolished in 1919 but some of the booking hall remains and has been in industrial use – it was accessed through the arch under the railway bridge on the west side. Some elements of the platform area remain also
Highgate Road Station.  Low Level. Opened in 1900 by the Midland Railway, it lay in a cutting to the west of Highgate Road. It was on the then new Kentish Town Curve, a line which diverged from the Gospel Oak to Barking Line to the east of station. Links from it led to the up Midland Main Line and to the North London Line heading east. It closed in 1918 through tramway competition. The station was sited to the south of the railway bridge and on the west side of the road.
MandA Coachworks. Thus ‘prestige’ motor repair works is under the railway arches. With advertising lettering on the wall under the bridge. They date from 1973 when they were established by Michael Dionisiou and Adonis Kyriacou
137 Southampton House Academy. This was a 19th school. The building is in brick and built in 1821 by James Patterson.  The playground was taken over by the railway in the 1860s
139 Southampton Arms. On the west side of the road where Lord Southampton was a landowner. It is described as an Ale and Cider house. It was built in the front garden of a 19th house.
Grove Place. Site of Grove House School in 1867
Grove Terrace Green.  This is a Green Public Open Space protected under the London Squares Act of 1931. Railings were removed in the Second World War
Pocket of open land west side of Highgate Road is also protected under the London Squares Preservation Act, 1931. These Enclosures are the last link to the Kentish Town village green.  It was protected by covenant during the building of Lissenden Gardens.
Underground civil defence chambers. This is a monolithic concrete box with a long-sealed doorway leading to stairs. Built in 1953, this was the council’s Cold War bunker for when the bomb dropped. It was taken out of use when the Civil Defence Corps was disbanded in 1968 and the council’s bunker was rebuilt under the Town Hall in Euston Road. There are unusual manhole emergency exit covers and ventilation shafts around on the Highgate Enclosures.
150 Grove End House. This is a double-fronted detached 19th house now divided into flats.
175 a stock brick three-bay 19th villa.
Denyer House. These red brick flats were designed by Albert J Thomas and built in 1936.  They are on the site of St John’s Park House Ladies’ School. At the back is an external walkway connecting balconies.
Haddo House. 19th house which survived until the early 1960s.  In 1934 it was a Home for Working Boys in London.
Highgate Road Estate. Housing units built on the site of Haddo and Gordon Houses. They date from 1965 and were designed by Robert Bailie for St Pancras., as Haddo House, a seven story block with two storey blocks at the back and some houses. Another block was added in 1971.
Highgate Road Chapel. Baptist church.  In 1874 Grove End Villa was given to the London Baptist Association who built this Chapel on the site. It was designed by Satchell and Edwards in 1877. This is now flats


Ingestre Road
The original Ingestre Road is now under much of Acland Burghley School to the west.  It is named for John Chetwynd, Earl of Shrewsbury and Viscount Ingestre who carried out much charitable work here in the 19th.
Ingestre Estate. Built by London Borough of Camden in 1967-71 on the site of the railway hostel and iron works. Designed by J. Green it has two-storey houses with conservatory porches stepping and also maisonettes
Care home in the centre of the estate.
Ingestre Community Centre. This opened in 1973 and provides youth and other facilities.
Electric Generating Station. This belonged to the Midland Railway and was used for current for station lighting, etc
Harbar works. Thus replaced the electric generating station and made iron strip and bar and belonged to William Cooke and Sons. Fletcher Court is on the site. Major George Fletcher defused an unexploded land mine here in 1969
Hambrook Court.  Sergeant Stephen Hambrook defused an unexploded land mine here in 1969
London Midland and Scottish Railway. SR staff hostel. This was built in 1896 as Enginemen's Lodgings for railway workers who finished a shift away from their homes.


Lady Somerset Road
Site owned by St. John's College, Cambridge. Lady Somerset was a 17th benefactoress to the. It was the  site of the racetrack opened in 1733 by John Wiblin, publican of the White Horse pub (now the Vine). There were two race tracks here and he called it Little Newmarket Course
10 Graigian Society - non-Christian monks leading a green life style
25a a house by Rick Mather built in 1977-9 in brick, with a curved turret-like end,
Camel – this stands at the end of the street, next to a planter with some indiscreet cupids


Little Green Street
Highgate Road was known in the 18th as Green Street, so this appears to be a connection to that name. It has seven houses on its north side all apparently 18th. Some have bay windows and some have been used as shops. The fields beyond used for horse racing.
Wooden posts believed to have been the finishing posts or they are also said to be farm gateposts.

Mortimer Terrace.
This was named after local farmer, Richard Mortimer. St. John's College Farm was on either side of the road where it joins Gordon House Road
13 this was the here where Leigh Hunt lived  and where John Keats stayed as his tuberculosis worstened.


Railway
Highgate Road junction where the Midland Railway Tottenham South Curve from Kentish Town joined the Tottenham and Hampstead Junction Railway.
Highgate Road Junction Signal Box. A signal box stood in the Vee of the junction and was closed in 1965

Sanderson Close
Sanderson Close.  Housing built by London Borough of Camden in 1976.  This is a barrier block with lower terraces by Yorke, Rosenberg and Mardell. The original railway wall is in the playground area.
Kentish Town Locomotive Sheds. This is a collection if of large red brick sheds from the late 19th. They were the Locomotive Sheds for the Midland Railway built to the east of the Tottenham North and South Curves. The Midland Railway opened their passenger engine depot in 1867-8.  In the early 20th this depot dealt with 140 or so locomotives. The sheds were re-roofed in the 1950s but closed in 1963 following the introduction of diesel locomotives.  
Hiview House. Head office of building contractors J. Murphy and Sons.


Wesleyan Place
Site of Green Street Chapel. Wesley had preached here in the open air and local farm-workers formed a society in their homes.  They were offered the use of a barn here by farmer Richard Mortimer  This was the beginning of Green Street Chapel and this road is named for the site of their 'Wesleyan Chapel' which was used until 1864.


York Rise
York Rise Estate built as a garden estate by the St.Pancras Housing Association in 1937 by Ian Hamilton. These are five storey blocks arranged round courtyards which had ceramic-headed drying posts by Gilbert Bayes. The Society was founded in 1924, its aims to buy and convert poor quality old properties or build new housing for only a small profit. The London Midland & Scottish Railway invited the Society to build this estate on railway land and each of the blocks was named after a railway or engineering pioneer: Brunel, Faraday, Newcomen, Stephenson and Trevethick.

Sources
British History on line. Camden. Web site
British Listed Buildings. Web site
Camden History Review 
Camden History Society. Streets of Kentish Town
Connor. Forgotten Stations
Connor. Pancras to Barking
Disused Stations. Web site
GLIAS  Newsletter, 
Hillman. London Under London
Kentish Towner. Blog.
London Borough of Camden. Web site
Nairn. Nairn’s London
Pevsner and Cherry.  London North
Summerson. Georgian London
Tindall. The Fields Beneath
Vine. Web site
S

Comments

Unknown said…
Mansfield Road School must have become Fleet Central School before 1933. I have a book awarded to my father as a prize by the LCC's Fleet Central School dated 15 June 1928.
Unknown said…
We have many family memories associated with this area, particularly during the war.
My mother remembers sitting on the stairs of 88 Mansfield Road when the mine exploded at Gospel Oak School about 300 metres away.
My father was also buried alive in house in Haverstock Road when the house next door took a direct hit from a German bomb in 1941.
All his family survived but two elderly neighbours died being gassed by a ruptured gas main.
Bikram said…
Thanks for your super blog.
The sign you refer to (pointing to 'Church Lands') on the side of Salcombe Lodge seems to have disappeared.
Is the nursery you mention the same as the Julius Barko nursery or a different one? Where could I find more information on the nursery as well as Defoe Garage and Lissenden Motors?

Popular posts from this blog

Bromley by Bow

South Norwood

River Lea/Bow Creek Canning Town