St Pancras International E-Book

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 186

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

In celebration of the 150th anniversary of St Pancras station, this absorbing new book brings together 150 facts, revealing many little-known details about the long history of this iconic building and its local surroundings. From its conception and build, and the opening of the largest single-span arch in the world as the London terminus of the Midland Railway, to the damage it suffered during wartime, this fascinating fact book reveals many facts about St Pancras station's tumultuous history, including threatened demolition and glorious restoration. Did you know there was once a farm in the heart of the St Pancras parish area? Or that it was once home to one of the biggest markets in London? And why did Midland Railway built a special viaduct to travel over St Pancras station? This is the perfect gift for anyone with affection for this beautiful and important piece of London's architectural and railway heritage and its surrounding area.

Leseprobe

ST PANCRAS

INTERNATIONAL

The facts in this book started life as 192 images that were sourced and annotated by the UCL History students listed below, as part of a St Pancras International 150th Anniversary Research Project commissioned by HS1.

Sara Ali, Alicia Alli, Nick Bailey, Susannah Bain, Ayesha Baloch, Genevieve Caulfield, Xiyu Cheng, Matthew Dawe, Emma Dove, Cholé Ducroizet-Boitaud, Peter Fitzsimons, Alexander Freeland, Scarlet Furness, Caitlin John, Michael Johnson, Christiana Karagiorgi, Hannah Keen, Michael Launchbury, Imran Loades Dhalla, Risha Patel, Caycee Peskett-Hill, Eliza Riley-Smith, Sian Robbins, Jamie Sillitoe, Huw Steer, James Stockham, Kevin Tailor, Isobel Thompson, Holly Todd and Elle Zacharia under the supervision and with editorial assistance from Dr Chris Jeppesen and Professor Margot Finn.

Archive image research by Cate Ludlow.

First published 2018

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

Text © HS1 Limited

Images © Samlane Limited (unless otherwise credited)

The rights of the Author have been asserted in accordance with the

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 8971 8

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed in Turkey by Imak

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

CONTENTS

Introduction

1   A Brief History of the Area

2   Building the Station

3   Midland Railway Life

4   The Station at War

5   Interesting Facts About the Station

References

INTRODUCTION

ST PANCRAS STATION was opened in 1868 and is one of the wonders of Victorian engineering, the centrepiece for the vibrant borough it inhabits. Along with the former Midland Grand Hotel, the station is a masterpiece of Victorian Gothic architecture and one of the most elegant in the world. In honour of its 150th anniversary, HS1 commissioned UCL to collate historical information relating to the history of the station and its surrounding area, here re-worked into an easy-to-digest illustrated fact book. Did you know there was once a farm in the heart of the St Pancras parish area? Or why Midland Railway built a special viaduct to travel over St Pancras? Read on to find out …

1 The St Pancras area in Georgian times was almost entirely rural

Map of St Pancras in 1833. (Wellcome Library, London)

Contemporary maps show little to suggest the urban transformation that this area would undergo over the next 150 years. The opening of the New Road (present-day Euston Road) in 1756 began to change this. Initially built to reduce the volume of traffic passing through Westminster and the City of London as farmers took their livestock to market at Smithfields, as well as to ensure troops could be moved quickly around the city in case of emergency, the fields along the New Road soon began to be developed as sites of light industry, brick yards or refuse dumps. Over the next fifty years, growing numbers of wealthy Londoners looked to escape the overcrowded centre for less populated areas, with plenty of open land and clean air. This initiated a house-building boom that pushed the city northwards into the area around St Pancras. In the 1770s, the population of St Pancras was still under 1,000, but by the turn of the nineteenth century it had risen to 31,779, as new arrivals streamed into Somers Town and Camden Town. Gradually the area’s rural landscape disappeared as St Pancras was increasingly integrated into a constantly expanding city. London’s population reached 1 million people by 1800 and 100 years later numbered over 6 million.

2 There was once a farm in the heart of the St Pancras parish area

Built in 1776, Capper’s Farm House remained a well-known local landmark until the early twentieth century. It was named after Christopher Capper, ‘a great cow keeper’ who had farmed and grazed cows for milk in St Pancras parish since 1693. His daughters subsequently gained notorious reputations in the area as ‘two old maiden sisters’: one used to ride with shears to cut the strings of kites flown by little boys, whilst the second sister reportedly stole the clothes of boys who trespassed on their land to bathe. During the 1840s, Capper’s Farm was purchased by the Heal family. Despite a change in the ownership, the Heals were required to accommodate forty cows that remained on the land, something that became increasingly difficult as London sprawled outwards. Capper’s Farm House survived until 1913, when it was torn down to make room for the expanding Heal & Son furniture business. The development of the Capper’s Farm land and the farmhouse’s eventual destruction offers an important insight into nineteenth-century urbanisation and the changing economy of the local area from its agricultural roots in the eighteenth century. These socio-economic changes resulted in the eradication of the rural economy from the Tottenham Court Road area, to be replaced with the dense urban thoroughfare seen today.

Cattle arriving at nearby Euston rail terminus in 1849. A whole herd was once kept in the heart of St Pancras. (Wellcome Library, London)

School, church and parsonage at Agar Town, London. Wood engraving by W. E. Hodgkin, 1858. The cottages were nearby. (Wellcome Library, London)

3 Agar Town cottage residents opposed railway construction

Despite contemporary criticism, and its subsequent repetition by later historians, that Agar Town was little more than, in the words of Charles Dickens, an ‘English Connemara’, the reality was more complex. Historian Steven Denford highlights the dangers of relying entirely on nineteenth-century sources that give no voice to local inhabitants. In place of the prevailing stereotype, his research has revealed an area and community that, whilst poor, contained a greater diversity of people than frequently suggested. Contrary to the entrenched stereotype, relatively few Irish migrants or unemployed are listed on the census returns of those living in Agar Town in the 1850s and ’60s; the majority of residents are listed as working craftsmen or labourers. Most houses in the area were occupied by a single family, rather than being subdivided, and were rented. This meant, however, that few occupants were entitled to compensation once the Midland Railway Company started purchasing land, leases, and property from landowners or the parish authorities. Despite efforts by the local community to use the courts to stop the construction of the railway, they were ultimately unsuccessful. Even so, this opposition did increase the cost of construction considerably for the Midland Railway Company. The labourers’ rows of cottages were situated on the edge of Agar Town, next to St Pancras Old Church.

4 Dr Jenner pioneered his revolutionary treatment at St Pancras Smallpox Hospital

‘Variolation’ – the deliberate introduction of matter from smallpox pustules into a healthy patient’s skin in the hope that a mild infection would ultimately protect against a more serious attack – had been introduced to Britain from the Ottoman empire in the 1720s; however, this had proved unpopular with patients. Edward Jenner’s research suggested an alternative approach by revealing that those who had suffered from cowpox would not contract the more dangerous smallpox. Jenner’s method involved transferring infected matter into a cut on the patient’s arm; the method came to form the basis of modern vaccination.

From 1793 until the 1840s, the St Pancras Smallpox Hospital occupied the area adjacent to the present-day station, now the site of King’s Cross. A smallpox hospital had first opened in 1743 at nearby Battle Bridge, but when this proved insufficient for the number of patients, the hospital moved here. When the Great Northern Railway Company demolished it to make way for the new station in the 1840s, the hospital relocated again to Highgate. As well as caring for those suffering from the disease, the hospital’s chief physician, Dr William Woodville, was a keen supporter of Jenner and allowed him to refine his vaccination technique on his patients. Nevertheless, the government did not introduce a compulsory programme of vaccination until the 1850s and the disease remained endemic in Britain into the late nineteenth century, with over 70,000 dying of smallpox in 1870 alone. As the admissions records of the St Pancras Hospital illustrate, the disease remained most devastating amongst London’s poorer communities, like those living around Somers Town.

Caricature of vaccination scene at the Smallpox and Inoculation Hospital at St Pancras by James Gillary, 1802. (Library of Congress, LC-USZC4-3147)

5 The Piccadilly Line is built on land once belonging to the Foundling Hospital

Established in 1739, the Foundling Hospital was one of St Pancras and Bloomsbury’s most famous institutions and largest landowners throughout the nineteenth century. Founded by Thomas Coram, it served as a home and hospital to abandoned and orphaned children. As the underground rail network spread across London during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, rail companies required land to construct tunnels and stations. A deed transferred land from the Foundling Hospital to the Great Northern Piccadilly & Brompton Railway Co., later forming the Piccadilly Line. The company took an area in Bloomsbury where the company would ‘maintain and use the tunnels constructed according to the levels indicated in such last mentioned sectional plan’ as the line ran south from King’s Cross St Pancras. The Great Northern Piccadilly & Brompton Railway Underground line opened in 1906, serving twenty-two stations over 14.17km, with three of the stations situated in the St Pancras area.

6 St Pancras Hospital was once a workhouse

Situated next to St Pancras junction, St Pancras Hospital, which specialises in geriatric and psychiatric care, now occupies the building that used to be the borough’s workhouse. Over the years, it has served as a psychiatric unit and as a geriatric hospital, but in 1951 it became the home of the first School of Hospital Catering. Funded by the King’s Fund, which had long been concerned with ‘the cause of good feeding’ in hospitals, the school trained hospital chefs to work in the newly formed National Health Service. When the NHS began in 1948, F. Avery Jones, Chairman of the Fund’s Hospital Catering and Diet Committee, lamented the ‘system of archaic kitchens’ in British hospitals. In preparation for the opening of the school, the kitchens at St Pancras hospital were renovated through an £11,000 grant from the Fund. The primary function was the provision of refresher courses to those presently employed as hospital catering staff, but the school also offered bursaries to fully train individuals as catering officers. Upon the school’s opening, the Duke of Gloucester, a patron of the King’s Fund, described it as ‘breaking new ground’. The school’s chef instructor was H.C. Jupp.

7 St Pancras’s Victorian almshouses still stand as housing

Although housing provision and living conditions have improved over the course of the twentieth century, these remain deeply contentious issues, especially as the threat of redevelopment and gentrification threaten to displace the local community once more. Before Greenswood Almshouses in Rousden Street were renovated by the St Pancras Housing Association in 1984, the area’s Victorian housing was in a run-down state. Originally built in 1840, by the 1980s the building had fallen into a state of total disrepair despite, in theory, still being intended to provide housing for elderly residents. The St Pancras Housing Association asked the architectural practice Peter Mishcon & Associates to undertake the task of renovating the building, for which the firm won third prize in the Times/RICS Conservation Award. The almshouses are now run by Harrison Housing and currently provide housing to elderly women.

8 The ‘Brill’ market in Somers Town sold tea from India

Products at the Brill included Assam tea from India, fresh bread, and gin. Although much of the area was demolished to make way for the Midland Railway, Edward Walford described the atmosphere in his account of the Brill in Old and New London, written in 1878:

Brill Row, at the northern end of Skinner Street, together with the ‘Brill’ tavern close by, are nearly all that remains of the locality once familiarly known by that name, which was nothing more nor less than a range of narrow streets crossing each other at right angles, and full of costermongers’ shops and barrows, but which were swept away during the formation of the Midland Railway Terminus … As the philanthropic or curious visitor enters Skinner Street, about eleven o’clock some bright Sunday morning, his ears will be greeted, not by the barking of dogs and the roaring of infuriated bulls, as of old, but by the unnaturally loud cries of men, women, boys, and girls, anxious to sell edibles and drinkables – in fact, everything which a hard-working man or poor sempstress is supposed to need in order to keep body and soul together. The various so-called necessaries of life have here their special advocates. The well-known ‘buy, buy, buy,’ has, at the ‘Brill,’ a peculiar shrillness of tone, passing often into a scream – and well it may, for the meat is all ticketed at 41/2d. per pound. Here the female purchasers are not generally styled ‘ladies,’ but ‘women,’ and somewhat after this fashion – ‘This is the sort of cabbage, or meat, or potatoes to buy, women’; and each salesman seems to think that his success depends upon the loudness of his cry … The purchasers not only come from all parts of Somers Town itself to this spot on a Sunday morning, but from Camden Town, Holloway, Hampstead, and Highgate, and even from distances of five and six miles. The leading impression made by the moving scene is that of great activity and an ‘eye to business.’ Everyone at the ‘Brill,’ as a rule, comes there on a Sunday morning for a definite purpose. The women come to buy meat, fish, vegetables, and crockery; and the men, chiefly ‘navigators,’ as they are termed, come to purchase boots, boot-laces, blouses, trousers, coats, caps, and other articles of wearing apparel. Altogether, at the Brill matters are carried on in a business-like way. The salesmen, many of them young boys, are too intent on selling, and the purchasers too intent on buying, to warrant the supposition that they derive much spiritual benefit from the preachers of all persuasions and of no persuasions who frequent the neighbourhood. The most ardent, and apparently the most successful, of the street preachers are those who occupy posts in the immediate vicinity, and ‘hold forth’ in familiar strains on the advantages of teetotalism, and the evil consequences following intemperance.

9 The St Pancras area was once home to one of the biggest markets in London

Chalton Street remained Somers Town’s main shopping thoroughfare throughout the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century. Major markets often grew up around railway stations due to the easy supply of fresh food and produce. Chalton Street’s bustling market comprised around 300 traders, one of the busiest in London, and a wide variety of shops, including the grocer’s J. Sainsbury at Nos 86–87, a Hovis baker’s shop, Peark’s Stores ‘For Value’, Western’s Laundries, L. Rose Boot & Shoe Maker, and Parry’s Haircutters & Shaving Salon. The street was also known for its pubs, including the Cock Tavern and Somers Town Coffee House, and cafes like P. Tennison served such delights as stewed eels and mashed potato. Following damage during the Blitz, the area has undergone extensive redevelopment. Some former residents have lamented the loss of community that the market was seen to foster, recalling with pleasure the diversity of accents heard around the shops and stalls. Over the last decade the Somers Town Festival of Cultures has taken place in Chalton Street, once again celebrating the local area’s identity.

10 Female pupils in Cromer Street did British military exercises

In 1906, female pupils at Cromer Street School participated in a popular form of early-twentieth century exercise: ‘Indian clubs’. The exercise routine had been introduced to Britain by military personnel returning from India, where they used the weighted clubs (which actually originated in Persia) to strengthen arm muscles and improve agility. Beginners were advised to start with clubs weighing 2–3lb and only to progress to heavier clubs once they had perfected the swinging technique. The popularity of the Indian clubs at this time transcended gender lines, with men, women and children engaging in the exercise, including during school PE lessons. The Indian clubs even appeared as a gymnastic event in both the 1904 and 1932 Olympic Games.

11 St Pancras is named after a 14-year-old Roman martyr

St Pancras Old Church has been an anchor amongst the changing tides of religious practice in London. Like the parish it serves, it is named in recognition of a 14-year-old Roman martyr, beheaded for his Christian faith in AD 304. Debate remains over the origins of the church itself; some claim a church has stood in this location since AD 314, whilst others have dated its origin from a sixth-century altar stone. The church’s rich layered history was revealed during its renovation in 1848, from when the building seen today dates. Norman materials and designs were found within its walls, as well as items marking the turbulent upheavals of the sixteenth-century Reformation. Despite the encroachment of the railway during the 1860s, St Pancras Old Church proved a durable and important institution in the lives of Somers Town’s rapidly growing population. Today it remains a lively and dedicated institution, which as well as continuing to provide religious service also hosts concerts and other social events, and has been described by Time Out as ‘London’s most spectacular intimate venue’.

South view of the Church of St Pancras. (Wellcome Library, London)

12 Immigrants to the St Pancras area included refugees from the French Revolution

Ever since the area was first developed in the late eighteenth century, Somers Town has had a diverse and eclectic population. Early arrivals included refugees from Europe’s religious wars and those fleeing the French Revolution, while the mid-nineteenth century saw large numbers of Irish migrants arrive, many of whom worked on the construction of the railways. Since the 1950s, the community living around Somers Town and St Pancras has undergone further change as new migrant communities from around the world have settled in the area. One newspaper report from the early 1960s described St Pancras as having ‘a lively, quick tongued population. They have many of the East Ender’s characteristics but the strong peppering of Greek, Irish, and Latin residents gives St Pancras a peculiarly individual tang.’ These decades also saw arrivals from South Asia and the Caribbean, many of whom found jobs in London’s expanding economy, and more recently the area has seen the growth of East African and Eastern European communities.

Contemporary print of the French Revolution by Scottish artist Isaac Cruikshank. Many Parisians fleeing the violence came to London. (Library of Congress, LC-USZC2-3597)

13 Shakespeare’s editor is buried in St Pancras Old Church

The Illustrated London News took a keen interest in the progress of construction as the Midland Railway approached St Pancras, providing readers with an etching of workmen exhuming bodies as the railway passed across the burial grounds of St Giles and St Pancras Old Church in 1866. The Midland Railway Company had had to apply to Parliament for permission to cut across the burial grounds, which was granted on condition that the exhumations were done with care and the coffins reburied elsewhere. In the event, however, the bodies were carelessly thrown about and bones muddled together. With public outcry mounting, The Illustrated London News reported the ‘foetid’ conditions on the construction site. Ultimately, construction continued unabated, albeit under tighter supervision. Anger lingered after the completion of the railway, however, with Frederick Miller recording in his 1874 book, Saint Pancras, Past and Present: ‘In 1866 the work of desecration commenced … The Railway is no respecter of persons living or dead.’

Shakespeare’s portrait in his First Folio, published posthumously. (British Library, G.11631, title page)

Among those buried in the cemetery were the philosopher and writer Mary Wollstonecraft and her husband William Godwin, the parents of Mary Shelley; Lewis Theobald, editor to Shakespeare; and it is likely that Charles Dicken’s younger sister was also buried there.

St Pancras Old Church. (Pete via WikimediaCommons, CC2.0)

14 Thomas Hardy has a tree named after him in St Pancras churchyard

In the 1960s, the Hardy Tree in Old St Pancras churchyard was surrounded by gravestones. The stones were moved during the construction of the Midland Line in the 1860s, when a section of the graveyard had to be dug up and the bodies exhumed. Before he achieved fame as a writer, Thomas Hardy had been an architect’s assistant and responsible for overseeing the removal of the bodies. These stones commemorate some of the yard’s more notable figures and were clustered in a circle with an ash tree planted at the centre. The tree has subsequently been given Hardy’s name.

15 Charles Dickens lived in Somers Town

Situated to the west of St Pancras stands the area of Somers Town, where the Midland Railway Goods Depot was built in the 1880s. Somers Town was first developed in the 1780s on largely rural land with the intention of capitalising on the building boom that was bringing wealthy residents north away from the crowded centres of the City of London and Westminster. However, fashionable society ultimately moved further west instead, with many of the arrivals in late eighteenth-century Somers Town coming from France as refugees fleeing the violence of the revolution. Subsequent dips in the housing market in the 1820s led to much of the stock being sold off cheap or subdivided for private rent. By the mid-nineteenth century residents tended to come from the lower middle and ‘respectable’ working classes, including Charles Dickens, who lived in The Polygon in the 1820s. With the coming of the railway, however, overcrowding became more of a problem as many of the residents forced from their homes in Agar Town relocated to nearby streets.

Charles Dickens. (Library of Congress, LC-USZ61-694)

16 Somers Town workers in the Victorian era often faced ‘wretched’ conditions

Godwin’s Somers Town illustration from Another Blow for Life (1864). (Wellcome Library, London)

George Godwin began his career as an architect, and later became editor of the magazine The Builder in 1844. In this role, he campaigned vigorously for greater government intervention to improve sanitary and housing conditions in ‘slum areas’. In 1864, he published Another Blow for Life,