Grays Inn

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Post to the north Canonbury

Acton Street

Built 1835 onwards.

66 Queen's Head

Ampton Street

33 Thomas Carlyle home London County Council plaque

Cubitt original yard still used

22 Alexeyev flat friend of Lenin

21-37

Ampton Place

Group with pediments

Argyle Square

One of the last areas to be built laid out on the site of the unsuccessful Royal Panharmonium Gardens opened in 1830. Four-storey terraces on three sides. Mouldings around the upper windows betray the date: c. 1840. Features in films 'The Ladykillers’

Site of Royal Panharmonium

14-16 Montana Hotel.Features in films 'The Great Rock and Roll Swindle’z

44-46 Macdonald’s Hotel.Features in films 'Schizo’

New Jerusalem church

Dutton Street (possibly part of Argyle Square) Gas Works, 1820-1825. Private, belonged to William Caslon. Bought by Imperial in 1823. Operational until Pancras Station went on line. 1829 plant went to Fulham

Flats same as in Cromer Street Four others by the same architects between

Argyle Street

Built up from 1826. Bombed. Features in films 'The Ladykillers’

Birkenhead Street

Built up from 1825

Britannia Street

Smithy’s Wine Bar. Back floor rises, iron rafters, and ring butts. It was the London General Omnibus Co. stables

Burton Street

Has some minor terraces.

**Calthorpe Street

A development by Thomas Cubitt planned from 1816, but built up slowly between 1821-1849 - as the different designs of the houses in the street show. The area is part of the Calthorpe Estate which originally belonged to the Priory of St.Bartholomew and then passed into the hands of the Calthorpe family. In the early 1820s part of it was leased to developer Cubitt whose building works was nearby. Named for the estate and for Sir Henry Gough Calthorpe.

20 plaque on the home of William Lethaby 1857-1931 which says 'architect lived here 1880-1891'. Lethaby was the chief assistant to architect, Norman Shaw. In 1902 he became Principal of the Central School in Holborn and there is another plaque to him there.

Model dwellings

Cartwright Gardens

The best survival of his time, generous crescent. Now largely university halls of residence. Two quadrants of houses; stuccoed ground floors with arched windows.

Cartwright statue. Resident of the square Major John Cartwright, 1831 by George Clarke. Seated bronze.

9 Galt

26 Smith

34 Smith

Burton Place 4-7 two houses disguised as one. Between Greek Doric porches on the flanks of each quadrant. Built as four houses disguised as a single one. Converted to flats, 1986 by Anthony Richardson & Partners.

Commonwealth Hall, planned 1949, built 1960-3, by K. Urquart of Adams, Holden & Pearson,

Hughes Parry Hall, 1967-9 by Booth, Ledeboer & Pinckheard

Cheney Road

King's Cross suburban station

Warehouse of the same name

Colonnade

The Horse Hospital. Two storey urban stable converted to hold a gallery and a fashion museum. By james Burton 1797. converted to solar energy and efficiency.

Coram Street

Kistner's Bakery

13 Thackeray

49 Le Gallienne

Russell Literary and Scientific Institution

Coram's Fields

Coram’s Fields Park After the buildings of the Foundling Hospital were demolished, an infant welfare centre was built at the end of the site, and the rest of the grounds were laid out in 1936 as a children's park by the LCC Parks Department. There are buildings of stuccoed concrete by L. H. Bucknell -a Central pavilion with circular conical roof and clock, quite original, with a white terracotta frieze with reliefs of children playing by Marone Meggitt. Flanking the entrance are two discreet low halls for Scouts and Guides. The Doric colonnades along the walls are part of the original scheme, but were much rebuilt in 1964-8. 'No adults unaccompanied by children' reads the sign on the gate, making this children's park a godsend tor Londoners with children. peaceful lawns and play areas are flanked by rows of squat buildings that now house some of the resident sheep. Majestic plane trees provide shade in summer and the atmosphere is surprisingly tranquil considering the number of children usually playing on the well designed swings and monkey gym, and the floodlit football pitch at the far end. The flowering cherry trees around the entrance make it a local landmark in spring, as does the incongruous sight of sheep grazing behind the railings on Downe Terrace.

Harmsworth Memorial Playground. ILEA Playcentre, etc.

Wolfson Centre for Child Development

40 William Ellis School ARP post

Farm Chapel 37th Middlesex Rifle Volunteer Corps

25 Swinburne

38 Marsh

Drinking fountain woman of Samaria

42 W.R.Teulon

77 Smith

81 Schreiner

88 Reynolds

Crestfield Street

Built up from 1825.

King's Cross church. 1825, enlarged 1865-6. Among the first trustees were W.H. Smith, founder of the firm of stationers and booksellers and John Thurston whose name is associated with a well-known make of billiard tables. The first Trust Secretary and possibly the builder of the church as Robert Eckett, who became associated with the movement for reform in the 1830s, joined the Wesleyan Methodist Association and entered its ministry in 1838. In 1857 he led the Association into a union with the Wesleyan Reformers and became the first secretary of the United Methodist Free Churches. The King's Cross premises now house the German Mission, which began in Spitalfields in 1864 and at its height had several churches in London. Its work includes a hostel for young Germans living in London.

Northumberland Hotel Features in films 'The Crying Game’

Cromer Street

Was Street

Holy Cross 1887. By Joseph Peacock. Plain tower-less exterior of stock brick with lancets and bellcote. Dignified, lofty interior: stone arcades, polychrome brick walls, more restrained than some of Peacock's work, although with some odd features, especially the low-starting flying buttresses in the narrow aisles and the demi-strainer arch separating nave from bay. End more elaborate, with trefoil-headed arcading and a little carving. Font in Norman style by J.L. Pearson. Many Anglo-Catholic fittings of the early c.20; rood by Sir Charles Nicholson, 1913, tile and mosaic Stations of the Cross. Other fittings from Peacock's St Jude, Gray's Inn Road. Demolished 1936. Stained glass Good Shepherd window, aisle 1920 by Martin Travers; deep colours, heavily leaded.

Flats. 1940s St.Pancras Borough flats. Striking sequence of nine six story slabs. Offers an earlier, more formal alternative to the traditional street: a striking sequence by Hening & Chitty placed at right angles to the street, lawns alternating with service courts, to provide plenty of light and air. Pevsner singled them out in 1952 as some the good post-war flats. Projecting staircase towers; decorative balconies. Two blocks elaborately refurbished c. 1996.

Bedefield

Chadswell

Fleetfield

Fleetway

Gatesden

Great Croft

Hollisfield

Mulletsfield

Peperfield

Sandfield

Cumberland Gardens

Houses in a pair of 1840s semi-detached houses built to match a pair belonging to the Lloyd Baker Estate opposite

Cubitt Street

Site of Cubitt building yard

Field Lane Community Centre. Baptist Chapel 1861. Two-storey three-bay front, all windows arched

Duke’s Road

127 The Place Theatre built for Middlesex Artists Rifle Volunteers.

Flaxman Terrace. Early St.Pancras flats. 1907-8 by Joseph & Smithem. Six storeys, with much consciously pretty detail: roughcast top floor, domed comer towers and Art Nouveau railings.

Lodge - engaging lime caretaker's lodge at the corner of Burton Street.

Shops. Not to be missed, three-storey Grecian frontages and shop windows belonging to the original Cubitt design of c. 1822. The shops have curved bay windows; the upper windows are tripartite, smartly decorated with paterae. Built for the Bedford Estate, on its border, so that the shops would not disturb the prime residential areas.

17, The Place Theatre. Built as the drill hall of the Middlesex (Artists') Rifle volunteers, 1888-9 by their colonel R. W. Edis. Attractive terracotta front with free Renaissance detail, and a medallion of Mars and Minerva by |Thomas Brock.

Duke’s Walk

Built for the Bedford Estate

Elm Street

Euston Road

Flute business of Joseph Wallis

Penton Primary School. Queen Anne style

Euston Music Hall

St.Pancras Station. Enormous, the second chief terminus of the London Midland Region, was built in 1868- 74 by Sir George Gilbert Scott and displays the romantic spirit of the Victorians in its most effusive manner. The Great Northern Railway's great rival. Train shed and booking hall. The vault over the platforms behind (by W. H. Barlow), severely functional in comparison, has a length of 690 ft and an exceptional span of over 240 ft. Steep gradient and very dangerous. Cellars underneath used for storage of beer from Burton. Printing works in the basement. Corbels on the west wall are interesting. Private roadway entrance. Line to Bedford opened 1868. Retaining wall and shops. Shires Bar. Bombed. The barrier of the Regent's Canal was to give problems to three major railway companies when they came to force their ways from the north into the new terminals of Euston, King's Cross and St. Pancras. Considerable engineering feats were involved. Trains into Euston cross the canal and then descend sharply down Camden Bank. The railway into King's Cross burrows under the Canal in ‘‘ a tunnel, and the Midland Railway's trains crossed the Canal so close to the terminus that St. Pancras, unavoidably, had to be 15. Feet above street level. It occurred to the designer of the train shed at St. Pancras, W. H. Barlow that in view of the Midland Railway's close connections with Burton, the space underneath the platforms might be used for storing beer- barrels. The length of a beer barrel had a direct influence on the spacing of the columns supporting the train shed, and no large-diameter pillars could be included in the design. This meant that Barlow had to forego supporting pillars for his roof. The result was a single span of 240 feet, at that time an unprecedented width. The vault, which abolished the conventional distinction between the walls and the roof, is 105 feet high at its apex, and 690 feet long. It is slightly bowed in order to relieve tension from contraction and expansion. The outward thrust of the vault was checked by tie- beams connecting the base of each pair of ribs; these tie-beams under the platforms were also the girders forming the roof of the warehouse below. The station was opened in October 1868. Features in films 'McVicar’, ‘The Servant’, ‘Smashing Time’, ‘Brannigan’, ’The Fourth Protocol’, ‘Just Ask for Diamond’, ‘Shirley Valentine’, I Hired a Contract Killer’, ‘Chaplin’, ‘Howard’s End’, King Ralph’, ‘Shining Through’.’Keep the Aspidistra Flying’, 102 Dalmations’, Spider’,’Five Seconds to Spare’, ‘The Golden Bowl’.

St.Pancras Chambers - Midland Grand Hotel opened 1873. Closed 1935 to become offices. Two towers. Designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott. Space for 600 guests. Gothic bulk. Its great facade embodies details from French and Italian Gothic architecture, and it has a soaring clock-tower 300 ft high. The west tower rises to 270 ft. Possibly site of a separate Hydraulic Pumping Station. The Hotel was finished subsequently (1873-6), with a fine disregard for site-mate. Note the way in which the windows at the back make no concessions to the line of Barlow's arched roof. Still the generator of heated and conflicting opinions and enthusiasms, it was designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott who only reluctantly, and under pressure from friends, entered the competition with a design specifying two storeys more than the Midland's Directors requested. He won, nevertheless, and subsequently (and characteristically) wrote in his autobiography that the hotel was possibly 'too good for its purpose'. Fortunately we can still admire the profusion of Gothic details and the steep pinnacled towers, which from a distance in the evening give an almost Wagnerian grandeur to a prosaic part of London. Features in films 'Voyage of the Dammed’, ‘The Secret Garden’, ‘Batman Begins’, ‘Chaplin’, ‘Richard III’

Water tower part of old pumping station. Site of Hydraulic Pumping Station. Which was under viaduct, site can be recognised north of station by footings of accumulator tower

Somers Town goods site. Northern coal site. Goods yard 1887 for the Midland railway. By 1900 it was a single depot for the inward traffic. St.Pancras goods yard took the outward traffic. Hydraulic Pumping station and accumulator still there in 1979. Engine house is under the switchgear electricity goes to the engine beds. Red brick to match the rest of the building

237 3rd City of London Regiment

Fleet Square

Low-key neo-vernacular housing of the 1980s fills the area

Frederick Street

Part of ambitious layout by Cubit. 1827-32 His building yard lay just to the south off Cubitt Street. Minor grandeur in Nash manner is achieved by the exploitation of vistas and by of groups with giant pilasters, or with stuccoed pediments on-floor windows.

48-52 have elegant covered balconies

Where Lenin's friend Alexeyev lived

Gloucester Street

19 Edward Irving, the preacher. His followers built the Irvinite cathedral in Gordon Square

Gough Street

Green Yard. Worth a special look sympathetically scaled infilling by Pollard Thomas & Edwards completed 1990: stock brick comer house with mews houses behind. Perky but not over obtrusive late c20 details of early Modernist derivation. Ground-floor portholes and mesh balconies.

1 Henry de Costa, 1861

50

Granville Square

Lloyd Baker Estate – Baker had married the niece of the anti slavery campaigner, Granville Sharpe. Routine three-storey 1841-3. The square was the last part to be built of the Lloyd Baker estate planned in 1826 but not realised until 1841, on ground, which had been used as a rubbish tip by the builders of surrounding streets. At first it was named Sharp Square, after Thomas Lloyd Baker's wife, niece to William Granville Sharp, Esq. but probably for euphony, the philanthropist's middle name was adopted Granville Square's peculiarly oddity in layout was that, although it lies NE/SW along the estate's main axis, because of the tapering-off of the site it was entirely enclosed by Wharton and Lloyd Baker Streets, clasping it like pincers and making it accessible by road only by short entries through the middle of its long sides. The resulting effect is cosy, or depressing, depending on its current fortunes. It was connected with King's Cross Road by a flight of 20 granite steps. Note Arnold Bennett's novel in which the square itself is named "Riceyman Square.” In the 1940s, the square was almost as shabby and slatternly as Bennett described them. Tram cars still ground uphill to Mount Pleasant, as did the shabby men on their way to a kip at Rowton House the square's fortunes have not been greatly favoured. For its first few years the rubbish tip still remained: as late as 1906, apart from the architecture of church, square and surroundings was sadly unfashionable, "dismal space of uncared-for ground, covered with rubble, bricks and rubbish.” By the 1980s, after the Council had acquired the houses subsidence was again a threat, and piece-by-piece the whole square has been dismantled and carefully reconstructed, and the houses converted to flats and maisonettes. Alone among the streets of the Lloyd Baker estate, Granville Square was built in conventional terrace style, its houses in groups of six, the corner houses standing clear of each other. Indeed it would have been almost impossible to build in any other form, for while the restricted space allowed for neatly slotting in a small square it would not have accommodated such idiosyncrasies as the Lloyd Square villas. Squeezed between two converging streets, the square abuts slantwise against Wharton Street, which cuts off garden space. The square is the orthodox result of thought on the Lloyd Baker Estate, conforming even in style to normal terrace form, whereas the other streets on the estate are unusual to the bizarre. A close look at the site shows how only such a tight plan would cut space, the back of Granville Square's corner actually poking out into Wharton Street.

1-6 carefully rebuilt by Islington

1 front door in wide recessed frames with a spacious effect. Houses are necessarily low-rise, three floors and basement: front doors are simple double-panelled; and typically for its date, all features, including the lacy, Gothicky fanlights, are square

23 home of Grego, art critic

26 Lenin used for communications with Iskra editors

25/26 has fanlights of three circles and segments. Windows have 'balconettes'; on the ground floor they have margin panes, on the first and second, heavy surrounds. The sole distinguishing features are slight advances of the centre and end houses, which have stringcourses above the first floors.

27-40 have been rebuilt, 1985-7, in keeping with the 1860s rebuilding, with triple ground-floor windows, brackets, small window-guards, bracketed cornice, and parapet.

28-38 these are of a slightly later date than the rest of the square, possibly because they may have been rebuilt after the construction of the Metropolitan -Underground Railway in 1861. Lurid stories of the time speak of the bursting of the Fleet Seuer into the railway workings; of men being drowned; of moments of terror and horror. In his History of Clerkenwell (1881), Pinks says:"The railway from Wharton Street to the corner of Exmouth Street is completely shut off from the public and a high hoarding prevented all inspection of the works which were going on ..... most inconvenient, state for traffic, for struts-were placed against most of the houses to keep them from falling in, and the pavement in many places was sunken, making the path dangerously uneven ..... Many houses, having been reported by the police surveyor as unsafe. Were vacated by their occupants."

29-38 In the 1850s the Metropolitan Railway was built beneath the site, and the railway company acquired and demolished the whole corner.

30 the square's most famous resident was the assiduous young historian William Pinks, who spent six years compiling his History of Clerkenwell at Mr Green's, and died with it still unfinished on 12 November 1860, aged only 31.

39/40, fanlights of three circles and segments. Windows have 'balconettes'; on the ground floor they have margin panes, on the first and second, heavy surrounds. The sole distinguishing features are slight advances of the centre and end houses, which have string courses above the first floors.

41 front door in wide recessed frames with a spacious effect. Necessarily low-rise, three floors and basement: front door simple double-panelled; and typically for its date, all features, including the lacy, Gothicky fanlights, are square

Randall’s' tile kilns had stood at what is now the short South west end of the square where the ground fell sharply away, George Randell's tile kilns were near Bagnigge Wells, on the banks of the River Fleet below. The kilns appear not to have been worked after 1824, but Randell's occupied the site until 1831, by which time his Maiden Lane kilns had been set up north of Battle Bridge. Meanwhile, sales were still carried on at the old works, though by 1829 negotiations were in hand for filling in the excavations. By that time, new suburbs were rising above old Bagnigge Wells’s pleasure gardens, and the Fleet was already a polluted ditch. From the 1770s two large tile kilns at the roadside belonging to Gorham & Co and then 1783-1803 to George Randell. He excavated the hillside earth to an extent that created a steep slope. These artificial cliffs were of burning red and brown hue, lending a strange distinction to the surroundings of Bagnigge Wells. In the 1820s, at least partly under pressure from the Lloyd estate on 'environmental' grounds, the firm moved their kilns to Maiden Lane where in time they were themselves dug out by the encroaching railways.

Riceyman Steps. Built in 1826. A double archway through the Ryan Hotel in King's Cross Road, leads to a flight of steps "divided by a half-landing". Go up to the last bit of Lloyd-Baker Estate. Flight of 20 granite steps. Known locally as "Plum Pudding Steps", but nowadays are more popularly called Riceyman Steps" after Arnold Bennett's novel of that name 1923.

St.Philip's, 1832. The church round, which the square was laid out, preceded building. W J Booth, architect of the estate, had been invited to submit designs, but the commanding central site required too great attention for the miserable sum of £4,418 including fee. The church was instead designed by Edward Buckton 1831-3, as a simple Commissioners' affair of light stock brick. It was without tower or spire, adorned merely with large pinnacles and a massive cross above the West front. Nave and short chancel of the same width, with a carved stone reredos, and a west gallery. A clumsy three-decker pulpit obscured the unimpressive sanctuary, and the church was filled with the usual heavy pews, for which parishioners were charged a fee. In 1854 the Rev Warwick Reed Wroth, a 30-year-old clergyman of 'Puseyan' views, was appointed perpetual curate, and St Philip's entered a period of some notoriety after he began to work gently but inexorably towards 'improvements' in line with the Oxford Movement. In 1859, he declared the pew rents abolished - the first church where this was done. He was also eager to introduce those liturgical changes, which at that time caused a great outcry against 'papistical' practices. The church, only a quarter of a century old, had been undermined by the building of the Metropolitan Railway and the clergyman called in William Butterfield for repairs and a restyling of the internal arrangements. In January 1860 St Philip's reopened with a new 'ritual chancel', oak clergy- and choir-stalls, the organ re-installed north of the choir, a better proportioned altar to draw the eye and a low pulpit so as not to obscure it. Low open seats for the congregation replaced the pews, and the dreaded polychrome appeared, in elaborately coloured marble inlay font. The press attacked "Puseyism in Clerkenwell.” Wroth weathered the noisy opposition, but at the cost of his health, and he was shortly obliged to retire, dying a few months afterwards in April 1867. ; Seventy years later all passion was spent, the once dense population had fallen, and in 1935 St Philip's was combined with the Church of the Holy Redeemer in Exmouth Street; but after being used for some time as a Council day nursery, it was demolished as redundant in 1938. Saint Philip's Church, designed by the architect, Mr. Armitage, has built in the square in 1832. It was demolished after the 1st World War. There was seating for eleven hundred and six-people. The fabric of the church was chiefly yellow brick with free-stone dressings at the angles. It is interesting to note that when houses 1 to 6 were rebuilt in 1984, great care was taken to retain the character of the front elevation and on this the Islington Council should be congratulated.

Coal hole covers lots of covers in York stone paving

Great Percy Street

Gradient is the Fleet bank

18 26 Percy Arms

Sanders House

Clerkenwell Magistrates Court. 1906. by J.D. Butler, a fine design, with his typical oversize keystones and a recessed centre with semicircular pediment.

Grenville Street

8 Barrie

11 Knight Frank and Rutley. Foundling Estate office

Gwynne Place

Originally Granville Place

"Riceyman's" second-hand bookshop below the steps was a seedy establishment

In the 1970s amid general local demolition Gwynn Place was pulled down make a car park, although the Steps were retained and the square restored. The London Ryan Hotel was insensitively planned to straddle the protected steps, which had by now become historic.

Hastings Street

are part of the endowment of Tonbridge School bequeathed by its founder, Sir

Andrew Judde

Features in films 'Shadowlands’.

Heathcote Street

Herbrand Street

London Taxi Centre built as Daimler Garage. Art Deco. Lovable landmark of the 1931 by Wallis, Gilbert & Partners. Stuccoed concrete, with a bold spiral ramp continuing to the roof, as if more were intended; abstract Art Deco ornament around windows and staircase entrance. Daimler-owned cars were kept on the upper floor, private cars below, with waiting rooms below.

Peabody Estate in the usual brick contrasts with three red brick gabled ranges of flats

Holford Square

Last square in Islington to be developed. 1847. Swallowed up what had been Myddleton Gardens. Allotments to the north. Early development dismissed as ‘respectable’. Bombed flat in the Second World War.

Myddleton Gardens had contained the Voelcker gymnasium

Bowling Green opened 1934. Balloon site in the Second World War. Heavily bombed.

Holford Square Estate. Designed by Lubetkin. Tecton. Site of Holford Square. Last square to be built in Clerkenwell. Bombed. Addresses are in Cruikshank Street

30 where Lenin lived. Lenin bust by Lubetkin is now in the Town Hall

Reservoir at the southern end

Judd Street

part of the endowment of Tonbridge School bequeathed by its founder, Sir Andrew Judde

87-103 Skinners Estate housing taller stretch

95 with a Corinthian-columned shop front.

Salvation Army museum. 'The Salvation Army story'. Opened by Booth in 1911. Photos of the Booth family. Stead uniform. Salvation Army Publishing headquarters is a permanent exhibition illustrating the history and work of the movement from the days when William Booth left the Methodist New Connexion to launch his 'Christian Mission' in the East End. A photograph of the Fry family of Salisbury is a reminder that the first Army bandsmen were Wesleyans who turned out to give support to the persecuted Salvationists in that cathedral city.

Telephone Exchange

Clifton House on site of Euston Market

Regent Theatre destroyed in the blitz

Central London Eye Hospital now Institute of Ophthalmology

114 Skinners Arms. Independent pub, ex Greene King.

165 Medway Court. Experimental point block for St.Pancras 1949. In this area planned working-class housing began to replace the older terraces from the end of the c9, continued by a variety of new housing types after the Second World War. By Denis Clarke-Hall two others were intended. Nine storeys, made interesting by lively massing detail. Above a ground floor with shops the plan has three wings with only two flats to each access balcony. Concave and convex sides, and much use of patterning and colour.

Judd Place. Pond and sinking houses

Camden Town Hall. Formerly St Pancras Town Hall. St.Pancras Borough Council erected this building in 1935~7 competition winning design by Albert J. Thomas, Lutyens’ office manager. It has a steel frame with Portland stone. The principal facade has a third floor with columns above it decorated with carved keystones by I H King. The principal spaces include a marble lined entrance hall and stair. A controversial eight-storey office block was added in 1973~7 by Camden Architect's Department after the council decided to centralise its offices in the Euston Road. Features in films 'A Cry from the Streets’, ‘Bad Behaviour’.

Kenton Street

Housing by the Foundling Hospital estate. Working-class five-storey blocks with decent Neo-Georgian detail, refurbished in 1978

King's Cross Bridge

Short road covering the railway and with underground lines beneath

King's Cross Road

Was previously Bagnigge Wells Road. Changed in 1863. Bagnigge Wells was previously Black Mary’s Wells. Caledonian Road of 1826 was extended by King's Cross Road, created in 1910-12 over the line of the Metropolitan Railway of 1863.

61 Baggnigge Wells. Terrace of houses, all with balconies at first-floor level is the site of Bagnigge Wells. The Fleet flowed through the spa gardens.

63 Today the only relic is the inscribed stone set into the front wall of the first house in the terrace, thought to mark the north- western boundary of the gardens. The stone is dated 1680, which is particularly interesting because this is about the time when Bagnigge House was used as a summer retreat by Charles II's mistress, Nell Gwynne. Nell's association with the area is commemorated in Gwynne Place on the opposite side of the road. The 'Pinder a Wakefeilde' mentioned on the plaque refers to a famous old pub called the Pindar of Wakefield on nearby Gray's Inn Road.

100 Kings Cross Hotel. Plaque to Lenin.

Royal Scot Hotel, unappealingly bulky. Occupies a triangular site behind the road. By Treheame & Norman, Preston & Partners complete 1972.

128-136 Cobden Buildings

170 Susan Lawrence Hostel

76 Traffic Warden Centre. A former Police Station 1869-70 by T. C. Sorby; five storeys, Italianate with big cornice. Bold stuccoed entrance with royal arms. Low cell block to the rear. Stables for horses behind. Beyond the magistrates' court and the police station, the road changes direction and swings round to the left, keeping close to the river's meandering course.

Fleet River ran across the pub grounds, between King's Cross Road and Gray's Inn Road. The route is now used by the Metropolitan Line. There were earthworks either side of it in this area during the Civil War. Tubinisation of the Metropolitan Railway took place in between November 1860 and May 1862. 29 ft wide 59 ft deep. The Fleet is now in a pipe. The tunnel is built on rubble in the river bed.

Lord Cobham's Head

Sir John Oldcastle

Site of 175 H.V.Brimson, non ferrous foundry

Site of Tile kilns of George Gorham and Randall

173 Part of a c1799 terrace with shops on ground floor.

Lansdowne Terrace

1-4 original terraces 1794

5 Payne

Leeke Street

Vail & Co.

Leigh Street

Skinners Estate a complete terrace survives with shops,

Lloyd Baker Estate

In private hands until 1978. Adjacent to the New River Estate, wedge-shape between Amwell Street and King's Cross Road. Planned from 1818 but begun only in 1825, to designs chiefly by W.J. Booth, son of the family estate surveyor. It is especially attractive and complete. Mainly semi-detached two-storeyed stock brick villas with emphatic Greda detail. The heavy shared pediments compose effectively in the sloping views. Three large fields developed in the 1820s by the son of the owner.

Mabledon Place

Hamilton House National Union of Teachers. Stately premises Edwardian classical by W.H. Woodruffe, 1913-14. Assembly hall added in the central courtyard 1961-2 by Hulme Chadwick

Marchmont Street

A service street for Brunswick Square preserves on its w side a long terrace of c. 1801-6 with a flourishing mixture of small shops and pubs. The contrast with the 'neighbouring Brunswick shopping centre should be pondered on.

Office block.

26 Shelley

Warehouse building. Mary Ward – Mrs Humphrey Ward tried first to start a settlement in Gordon Square which failed but the more imaginative residents of the new settlement rented a humble little building behind Marchmont Street, still used as a warehouse. Lectures and discussions there attracted a few working men but Mrs Humphry Ward could not rest until a real residential settlement was built.

Mecklenburg Street

Some plainer original houses

Millman Street

This area makes an interesting study in changing approaches to historic streetscape. On the side another terrace of 1721, which collapsed in 1971.Terrace collapsed 1970s and replaced by housing by Camden

1-25 rebuilt 1888 by the Rugby Estate pale brick with bands of coloured tiles, and restored by Donald Insall & Partners for Camden after 1975, when the borough bought some of the Rugby Estate property in order to set the pattern for much needed repairs

Camden Housing 1974 terraced housing by Farrell & Grimshaw, firmly c20, a little dour with its facing of hard uncoursed red brick. The minimal Georgian echoes in the form of simple round-arched doorways and stuccoed ground floors, unusual for public housing at the time, reflected the shift towards sympathetic infilling in historic settings

16 Borrow

52-58 sheltered housing for Camden, by Hunt Thompson Associates, 1991-2. A pleasantly proportioned block of yellow brick, with entrance under an oriel sparkling with glass bricks.

New Millman Street?

9 Bellingham's lodging

North Mews

Northington Street

8 18^thhas a modest c18 front with pair of doors and bowed shop front neatly set

61-71

13 cheerful coach house with flamboyant segmental gables and tapering chimneys by Henry Finch, J.P

Pakenham Street

Cubitt development. With a modest early c19 terrace

Model cottages

1 Pakenham Arms

Penton Place

Penton Primary School, old for school, Queen Anne style

Sir Philip Magnus School

Percy Circus

This 'residential circus' is an oddity indeed, all but unique in London - the vanished Polygon in Euston was probably the nearest parallel - and it is built on a steep hill, increased by digging out hillside clay for George Randell's tile kilns. It was one of the last additions to the New River estate, 1841- 1843, and laid out by William Chadwell Mylne. It was named after Robert Percy Smith d.1845, one of the Company's governors, ex-Attorney General and elder brother of the wit Sydney Smith, Dean of St Paul's.

An unusual feature of the circus is its number of entrants, five in all, radiating like spokes from a centre. They divided the houses unequally, with 12 (in two sets of six) on its longest side, and continuing clockwise, respectively 3, 6, 3, and 3.

The site, north of where the Lloyd Baker estate had recently been built, was at that time cultivated in allotments known as Myddelton Gardens. This was then an innovatory idea, offering local inhabitants the opportunity to rent small plots for growing flowers, fruit and vegetables which their restricted town gardens did not admit.

A small reservoir occupied the new street's southern end, and the northern was only built up in the 1880s.

Unfortunately Percy Circus suffered severely in the Second World War. Even more unfortunately, two segments having been destroyed by bombing,

When Percy Circus was complete the effect must have been a little florid. Today much the most impressive is the long 12-house segment, an idiosyncratic rhythm alternating floors, with high parapets, plus basement, with three floors plus attic and basement; while alternate pairs have tripartite and 'plain' ground-floor windows, all with mock keystones. The end houses have single bays and pedimented first-floor windows, and side porches. The shorter segments are single- bay, without pediments, and their outer houses have tripartite ground-floor windows. All houses have simple rectangular fanlights and ring-course below the top floor. The ground floors are finished in channelled stucco.

1-6 only two occupied in 1842

4 are elaborate, with bracketed cornice and frieze.

16 Bomb destroyed the house became part of the Royal Scott Hotel. in 1968 a third was sacrificed for building the Royal Scot Hotel, the sole compensation being replacement of the circus facade in unconvincing pastiche. Where Lenin and his wife stayed for a couple of weeks in 1905, returning to the neighbourhood where he had lived in 1902. In the 1920s and '30s it was the vicarage for St Philip's, Granville Square; and later, for some years before and after the Second World War, was the home of two noted City booksellers, Justin and Adelaide Clarke Hall. Bears a plaque commemorating Lenin, originally erected by the LCC in 1961.

Sir Philip Magnus School

Holford Garden, was a bowling green opened 1934

Percy Square

Phoenix Place

Hill, probably artificial intended to graduate the incline of Calthorpe Street up the west side of the Fleet valley.

Calthorpe House

Mount Pleasant. Phoenix garage and Cambrian docks. Private bus in the 1920s. 1921/5 1977 building contractors. Saw Mills 1860s

Pride Street?

White Tower

Prideaux Place

Was Vernon Street

On one of the largest of the allotment gardens, in 1826, an enterprising German professor of gymnastics named Voelcker started an open-air gymnasium, for the newly founded London Gymnastic Society. Within three months nearly 900 students enrolled, young men working in the City and neighbourhood, subscribing half-a- crown a month or a guinea a year, careless of warnings that slogging all week on office stools might not be the best preparation for violent exercise. Voelcker's success led to branches opening in Marylebone, Hackney and Old Kent Road, but the fate of the Pentonville hill sports centre is not known, save that it gave way to Vernon Street laid out on the site in 1843.

Prideaux House

Vernon House

Regent Square

Badly bombed

St Peter

1-17 quiet palace front with slightly projecting centre distinguished by arched first-floor windows.

14 Coventry Patmore

20 flat of Tars, friend of Lenin

Flats. Badly damaged in World War II; post-war flats. c. 1958 Davies Or Arnold, with blocks of flats of different heights, the type of mixed development advocated by the LCC; one twelve-storey point block, others of four to seven storeys.

36 Huxley

Roger Street

12th County of London Regiment

Sandwich Street

Skinners Estate Minor terraces survive

Schools

Seaford Street

St.Peter's Court

Sidmouth Street

Flat belonging to Iskra commune

Scotch Church

St Chad Street

Was previously Derby Street. Site of St.Chad’s well. Built up from 1827

Bridge. Standing at the lowest point, you can see over the wall into King's Cross Thameslink Station in the cutting below. The building of the underground line through this district in the 1860s destroyed the last remaining part of St Chad's Gardens, a pleasure ground surrounding a once popular medicinal well which in the eighteenth century attracted up to a thousand people a week to drink its waters

Flats same as in Cromer Street Four others by the same architects between

St.Pancras

Aldenham Institute

Swinton Street

51-59 are late c18,

77, 78, 79 Swinton Works 1790s Huskisson fine chemicals

61 King's Head

Tankerton Street

East End Dwellings Co. Small early c19 streets run-down and overcrowded at the end of the century were replaced by flats put up by the East End Dwellings Company. Their depressingly grim early blocks arranged around cramped internal courts, 1893

Tavistock Place

Ground leases by Bedford Estate and Foundling hospital, built up in 1831. Hit by a V2. Divides Foundling Estate development from the rest.

2-14 a facsimile frontage of c. 1975, an early example of the move towards contextual infilling.

9 school for invalid children by the same architects as the settlement.

18-46 original

21 Lenin stayed

31 Galt

86 Tavistock Bookshop

Mary Ward Centre. National Institute for Social Work Training. From 1961 Built in 1895-7 for the University Settlement founded by Mary Ward, the novelist Mrs. Humphrey Ward with funds provided by Passmore Edwards. The young architects who won the competition were A. Dunbar Smith and Brewer. One of the most charming pieces of architecture designed at that time in England. The detail is remarkably original; connections with Voysey - cornice and roof, Townsend and Lethaby -entrance - and the Shaw tradition – tripartite windows - are evident, but the grace of handling and the combination of formal symmetry with intimate scale are the architects' personal contribution. The building provided the neighbourhood with hall, library, gymnasium, and common rooms; on the second floor are small, rather monastic rooms for the residential students running the settlement. This is clearly expressed on the outside. Barrel-vaulted first-floor hall in the centre, of brick with roughcast below the eaves, lit by dormers and a big Venetian window, small rising windows to the staircases up to the hall. To the road a big stone porch, dignified by two eggs symbolizing creation providing the entrance to the common rooms. On the side, approached through spirited iron gates, a separate entrance for the residents, their rooms indicated by the small windows above. Inside as well as out, the details repay study. Rooms are tightly planned around a plain courtyard with glass-roofed gymnasium. Low doors, excellent door furniture with monograms indicating donors, and a series of delightful tiled fireplaces designed by the architects' friends, Lethaby, Troup, Voysey, Dawber, Newton; individual attributions are uncertain, but the spirit of Voysey is evident. Common room at the back, with cupboards for storing away the tables designed by the architects. On the side, drawing room and library, each with a big bow window. Library with stone fireplace, a memorial to T. H. Green, and original fittings. In the hall, busts to notable c19 thinkers, given by Passmore Edwards, and a memorial to Mary Ward. The second-floor corridors were boldly decorated, with red walls and green paintwork. Alterations to improve circulation with lift and new roof to the courtyard, by Karen Butti of Patricia Brock Associates, under discussion 1998. Mrs Humphry Ward could not rest until a real residential settlement was built. She got the support of John Passmore Edwards, The settlement was called after him until Mrs Humphry Ward's death, when it was renamed the Mary Ward Settlement The Duke of Bedford granted the lease of a site on the north of Tavistock Place and for a small rent the Settlement had the use of the open space stretching to the houses of Tavistock Square. One of the nine great plane-trees still survives behind the Settlement building. The plans were put up for competition and judged by Norman Shaw. The competition was won by Brewer and Dunbar Smith. Pevsner, has declared the result to be 'perhaps the most charming piece of architecture of its time in England'. It was opened in 1897. Accommodation included a large hall (for some years equipped and licensed as a theatre), a handsome library, graceful social rooms, class rooms and delightful rooms for residents now, alas, too valuable financially to be lived in. Although Voysey designed the fire-places, they were made by 'ordinary manufacturers'. Mrs Humphry Ward had begun to take an interest in the 'Hip Hospital' (soon to be called the Queen Alexandra Hospital) in Queen Square. Crippling diseases such as tuberculosis of the hip were prevalent among children and delicate children were living longer than in earlier generations. Soon after the Settlement opened Mrs. Humphry Ward became concerned about the children whose physical handicaps prevented their attending the ordinary schools. A specially equipped school was started in the Settlement drawing-room. A ramp for wheel-chairs still exists. In 1903 a school was built a few yards east of the Settlement and was used as a school for physically handicapped children until 1961. In 1961, forty years after the death of Mrs Humphry Ward, the freehold was bought by the Nuffield Trust and the buildings were carefully restored. The main building became the National Institute for Social Training, the boys' club moved from the basement to a new club-house in Coram's Fields and the settlement activities were carried on in the former school building.

9 by the same firm, 1903, more simply detailed. Built as a school for invalid children.

St.Andrew's Chapel

Woburn Chapel

Thanet Street

part of the endowment of Tonbridge School bequeathed by its founder, Sir Andrew Judde

Estate minor terraces survive, only two-storeyed

German Lutheran church 1979. 1974-9 by Maguire & Murray job architect Ekkehard Weisner. In the basement of the International Lutheran Student Centre, a lively and ingenious urban design on a tight site. Six storeys, with tall oriel windows, and circular stair windows at the side. At ground-floor level large multi-paned lunettes act as clerestory windows to the church, with a larger one incorporating the door. The church is a square within a square, the centre denned by columns and higher ceiling fittings by the architects. In the basement is the International Lutheran Student Centre

Tonbridge Street

Argyle School. Board school on cramped site 1881 and 1902, with a tower to the earlier part.

East End Dwellings Co. Flats put up by the East End Dwellings Company replaced small early c19 streets run-down and overcrowded at the end of the century. Their depressingly grim early blocks arranged around cramped internal courts, 1893

Tonbridge House 1904 more cheerful. Its open front courtyard and use of red and yellow brick marking the change of spirit initiated by the LCC's early housing

Vernon Rise

127

Vernon Square

Features in films 'The Ladykillers’

Vernon Baptist Chapel. 1843 Three-bay brick front of 1843-4, minimal debased Perpendicular detail. The Minister, the Rev. Owen Clarke (secretary of the British and Foreign Temperance Society), may have been his own designer, together with a local builder. Galleries added 1848; extensions and small transepts 1869-70; interior remodelled 1937.

Boundary stone

Wells Square

Low-key neo-vernacular housing of the 1980s fills the area

Weston Rise

Climbs up the east side of the Fleet valley and feature the tell-tale word 'Rise' in its names.

Housing. Like Parkhill Sheffield. HLC 1964. The skyline is etched by stair- and lift-towers of a dramatic housing group in a fortress-like cluster of eight-storey linked slabs of maisonettes. By HKPA for the GLC, 1964-9. The folding plan set on a slope is reminiscent of Parkhill, Sheffield, but this is a less ambitious version, with access balconies rather than broad decks. Transformed in the 1980s, when the aggressively brutalist concrete detail was disguised by painting, and enlivened at night by clever lighting along the pierced concrete balconies.

Foxcroft

Frearson House

Hurst House

Sharwood House

Stelfox House

Wharton Street

Lloyd Baker Estate

Reservoir half-way up, then open land

Archery Fields House 1939

44 Du Maurier

35-36 thriough to Wharton Cottleges no 1: Frederick Ashton's

Whidbourne Street

5 Duke of Wellington

East End Dwellings Co. Flats put up by the East End Dwellings Company replaced small early c19 streets run-down and overcrowded at the end of the century. Their depressingly grim early blocks arranged around cramped internal courts, 1893

Wicklow Street

Derby Lodge

77 Squire and Partners’ Offices. Open plan work and gallery space. 2001 designs.

Woburn Place

Royal Hotel opened in 1927, with an unusually long frontage extending from Russell Square almost to Tavistock Square, an excessively plain building in external appearance, more suggestive of a large factory than a hotel.

Formerly lined with Georgian houses long since converted into private hotels

Russell Court. This is a bold block of bachelor flats, nine stories high, erected in 1937. It is designed to provide small flats for university students and people unable to afford big rents. The originator of this scheme was Mr. Gerald Glover, a London solicitor, and its architects were Messrs Val Myer and Watson Hart

Star Tavern

Tavistock Hotel has been erected since the war. All the rooms of this modem hotel have private bathrooms.

Woburn Walk

Built for the Bedford Estate. With its picturesque early-19th-century shop fronts. Not to be missed

Shops three-storey Grecian frontages and shop windows belonging to the original Cubitt design of c. 1822. The shops have curved bay windows; the upper windows are tripartite, smartly decorated with paterae. Built for the Bedford Estate, on its border, so that the shops would not disturb the prime residential areas. Greek revival style

5 W. B. Yeats, the poet, lived here in 1895-1919

Wren Street

Another Cubitt development, planned from 1816, but built up slowly, as the different designs of the houses indicate.

Grays Inn

Acton Street

Built 1835 onwards.

66 Queen's Head

Ampton Street

33 Thomas Carlyle home London County Council plaque

Cubitt original yard still used

22 Alexeyev flat friend of Lenin

21-37

Ampton Place

Group with pediments

Argyle Square

One of the last areas to be built laid out on the site of the unsuccessful Royal Panharmonium Gardens opened in 1830. Four-storey terraces on three sides. Mouldings around the upper windows betray the date: c. 1840. Features in films 'The Ladykillers’

Site of Royal Panharmonium

14-16 Montana Hotel.Features in films 'The Great Rock and Roll Swindle’z

44-46 Macdonald’s Hotel.Features in films 'Schizo’

New Jerusalem church

Dutton Street (possibly part of Argyle Square) Gas Works, 1820-1825. Private, belonged to William Caslon. Bought by Imperial in 1823. Operational until Pancras Station went on line. 1829 plant went to Fulham

Flats same as in Cromer Street Four others by the same architects between

Argyle Street

Built up from 1826. Bombed. Features in films 'The Ladykillers’

Bernard Street

Head on confrontation between 20th and Georgian design. Completed by 1802, connects Russell Square with Brunswick Square

12-28 decent terrace plain, decently proportioned brick with arched doorways and neat rubbed brick wind heads.

Offices - another part of the Martin and Hodgkinson scheme: a large, restrained office block with hotel behind, with long bands of windows.

24 Kingsley

39 Roget

48 Fry

Birkenhead Street

Built up from 1825

Britannia Street

Smithy’s Wine Bar. Back floor rises, iron rafters, and ring butts. It was the London General Omnibus Co. stables

Brunswick Square

Coram statue. Thomas Coram is commemorated by a seated bronze figure 1963 by William Macmillan. In a chair holding the hospital’s charter and a gauntlet. Copied from Hogarth’s painting.

11 George Tierney who fought a duel with Pitt and Grotes house

14 and 17 Sheridan lived

1 Russell

12 Goldring

Hogarth

Burial Ground

Bloomsbury Cinema is underground here.

26 Forster

27 Garnett

38 Woolf

Bowling Green House

Foundling Court

147 O’Donnell Court –office of Llowarch Llowarch architects studio, double height.

40 Bust of Coram.

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

Unity Theatre

Fitzroy Chapel

International Hall Of Residence, 1958-62 and 1964-7 by S.E.T. Cusdin of Boston & Robertson. Long, dull brick frontage, with the concrete box-frame exposed on the end walls.

Burton Street

Has some minor terraces.

**Calthorpe Street

20 plaque on the home of William Lethaby 1857-1931 which says 'architect lived here 1880-1891'. Lethaby was the chief assistant to architect, Norman Shaw. In 1902 he became Principal of the Central School in Holborn and there is another plaque to him there.

Model dwellings

Cartwright Gardens

The best survival of his time, generous crescent. Now largely university halls of residence. Two quadrants of houses; stuccoed ground floors with arched windows.

Cartwright statue. Resident of the square Major John Cartwright, 1831 by George Clarke. Seated bronze.

9 Galt

26 Smith

34 Smith

Burton Place 4-7 two houses disguised as one. Between Greek Doric porches on the flanks of each quadrant. Built as four houses disguised as a single one. Converted to flats, 1986 by Anthony Richardson & Partners.

Commonwealth Hall, planned 1949, built 1960-3, by K. Urquart of Adams, Holden & Pearson,

Hughes Parry Hall, 1967-9 by Booth, Ledeboer & Pinckheard

Cheney Road

King's Cross suburban station

Warehouse of the same name

Colonnade

The Horse Hospital. Two storey urban stable converted to hold a gallery and a fashion museum. By james Burton 1797. converted to solar energy and efficiency.

Coram Street

Kistner's Bakery

13 Thackeray

49 Le Gallienne

Russell Literary and Scientific Institution

Coram's Fields

Harmsworth Memorial Playground. ILEA Playcentre, etc.

Wolfson Centre for Child Development

40

Head on confrontation between 20^th and Georgian design. Completed by 1802, connects Russell Square with Brunswick Square