Somers Town, London

Somers Town
Somers Town  Somers Town shown within Greater London
OS grid reference	TQ295825
London borough	Camden
Ceremonial county	Greater London
Region	London
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	LONDON
Postcode district	NW1
Dialling code	020
Police	Metropolitan
Fire	London
Ambulance	London
EU Parliament	London
UK Parliament	Holborn and St. Pancras
London Assembly	Barnet and Camden
List of places UK England London

Coordinates: 51°31′51″N 0°07′53″W / 51.530970°N 0.131498°W

Somers Town is a district in central London. It has been strongly influenced by the three mainline north London railway termini: Euston (1838), St. Pancras (1868) and Kings Cross (1852), together with the Midland Railway Somers Town Goods Depot (1887) next to St Pancras, where the British Library now stands.

Historically, the name Somers Town was used for the larger triangular area between the Pancras, Hampstead, and Euston Roads,^[1] but it is now taken to mean the rough rectangle bounded by Pancras Road, Euston Road, Eversholt Street, Crowndale Road, and the railway approaches to St Pancras Station; that is to say, the area about 200 metres east and west of Chalton Street. Somers Town is within the parish and district of St Pancras.

History

1837 map, showing St. Pancras, Regent's Canal, Clarendon Square, Somers Town, Pentonville, Kings Cross and Euston Square

St Pancras Old Church is believed by many to be one of the oldest Christian sites in England. The churchyard remains consecrated but is managed by Camden Council as a park. It holds many literary associations, from Charles Dickens to Thomas Hardy, as well as memorials to dignitaries, including the remarkable tomb of architect Sir John Soane.

Somers Town was named after Charles Cocks, 1st Baron Somers (1725–1806).^[1][2] The area was originally granted by William III to John Somers (1651–1716), Lord Chancellor and Baron Somers of Evesham.^[3]

18th and 19th centuries

Clarendon Square, with The Polygon on left and St Aloysius Chapel on right (1850 engraving by Joseph Swain from an earlier sketch)

In the mid 1750s the New Road was established to bypass the congestion of London; Somers Town lay immediately north of this east-west toll road. In 1784, the first housing was built at the Polygon amid fields, brick works and market gardens on the northern fringes of London. Mary Wollstonecraft, writer, philosopher and feminist, lived there with her husband William Godwin, and died there in 1797 after giving birth to the future Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein. The area appears to have appealed to middle-class people fleeing the French Revolution.

The site of the Polygon is now occupied by a block of council flats called Oakshott Court, which features a commemorative plaque for Wollstonecraft. The Polygon deteriorated socially as the surrounding land was subsequently sold off in smaller lots for cheaper housing, especially after the start of construction in the 1830s of the railway lines into Euston, St Pancras and King's Cross. In this period the area housed a large transient population of labourers and the population density of the area soared. By the late 19th century most of the houses were in multiple occupation, and overcrowding was severe with whole families sometimes living in one room, as confirmed by the social surveys of Charles Booth and Irene Barclay. Dickens lived in the Polygon briefly as a child.

When St Luke's Church, near King's Cross, was demolished to make way for the construction of the Midland Railway St Pancras Station and its Midland Grand Hotel, the estimated twelve thousand inhabitants of Somers Town at that time were deprived of that place of worship, as the church building was re-erected in Kentish Town. In 1868 the lace merchant and philanthropist George Moore funded a new church, known as Christ Church, and an associated school in Chalton Street with an entrance in Ossulston Street. The school accommodated about six hundred children. Christ Church and the adjacent school were destroyed in a World War II bombing raid and no trace remains today, the site being occupied by a children's play area and sports court. St Mary Eversholt Street is today the parish church.^[4]

20th century

Improvement of the slum housing conditions, amongst the worst in the capital, was first undertaken by St Pancras Council in 1906 at Goldington Buildings, at the junction of Pancras Road and Royal College Street, and continued on a larger scale by the St Pancras House Improvement Society (subsequently the St Pancras & Humanist Housing Association, the present owner of Goldington Buildings) which was established in 1924.^[5] Its founders were Church of England priest Father Basil Jellicoe and Irene Barclay, the first woman in Britain to qualify as a chartered surveyor. The Society's Sidney Street and Drummond Street estates incorporated sculpture panels of Doultonware designed by Gilbert Bayes and ornamental finials for the washing line posts designed by the same artist: these are now mostly destroyed or replaced with replicas. Further social housing was built by the London County Council, which began construction of the Ossulston Estate in 1927. There remains a small number of older Grade 2 listed properties, mostly Georgian terraced houses.

During the early 1970s the neighborhood comprising GLC-owned housing in Charrington, Penryn, Platt and Medburn Streets was a centre for the squatting movement.^[6]

In the 1980s, some council tenants took advantage of the 'right to buy' scheme and bought their homes at a substantial discount. Later they moved away from the area. The consequence was an influx of young semi-professional people, resulting in a changing population.

Historically, Somers Town has contained a number of hospitals, such as Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (144 Euston Road), National Temperance (110-112 Hampstead Road) and the London Hospital for Tropical Diseases (5 St Pancras Way). All have closed since 1980, with the exception of St Pancras Hospital. Its site includes buildings that date from a former life as St Pancras Workhouse, adjacent to St Pancras Old Church. The large red brick building fronting the complex to the north of St Pancras Gardens is still residential, chiefly as a rehabilitation hospital for the elderly. Other buildings house the headquarters of Camden NHS Primary Care Trust. It also accommodates parts of Islington Primary Care Trust, the Huntley Centre (a mental health unit) and St Pancras Coroner's Court.

Somers Town experienced ethnic tension between whites and Bengalis in the early 1990s, climaxing in the murder of Richard Everitt in 1994.^[7][8]

21st century

Major construction work along the eastern side of Somers Town was completed in 2008, to allow for the Eurostar trains to arrive at the refurbished St Pancras Station. This involved the excavation of part of the St Pancras Old Churchyard, the human remains being re-interred at St Pancras and Islington Cemetery in East Finchley.^[9]

Land at Brill Place, previously earmarked for later phases of the British Library development, became available when the library expansion was cancelled and was used as site offices for the HS1 terminal development and partly to allow for excavation of a tunnel for the new Thameslink station. It has now been acquired as the site for the Francis Crick Institute (formerly the UK Centre for Medical Research and Innovation), a major medical research institute being established by a partnership of Cancer Research UK, Imperial College London, King's College London, the Medical Research Council, University College London (UCL) and the Wellcome Trust.^[10][11]

Culture

Charles Dickens knew the area well. The Polygon, where he once lived, appears in Chapter 52 of The Pickwick Papers (1836), when Mr Pickwick's solicitor's clerk, arriving at Gray's Inn just before ten o'clock, says he heard the clocks strike half past nine as he walked through Somers Town: "It went the half hour as I came through The Polygon." The building makes its appearance again in Bleak House (1852), when it served as the home of Harold Skimpole.^[12] In David Copperfield (1850), Johnson (now Cranleigh) Street was the thoroughfare near the Royal Veterinary College, Camden Town, where the Micawbers lived, when Traddles, David Copperfield's friend and schoolfellow, was their lodger.^[13] In A Tale of Two Cities (1859) Roger Cly, the Old Bailey informant, was buried in Old St Pancras Churchyard. The funeral over, later that night Jerry Cruncher and his companions went "fishing" (body snatching), trying unsuccessfully to 'resurrect' Cly .^[14] Robert Blincoe (1792–1860), on whose story Oliver Twist (1838) may be based, was a child inmate at the St Pancras Workhouse.

A number of significant films have been set in Somers Town: the 1955 Ealing comedy The Ladykillers with Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers; Neil Jordan's Mona Lisa of 1986, featuring Bob Hoskins; Mike Leigh's 1988 film High Hopes; Anthony Minghella's 2006 romantic drama Breaking and Entering starring Jude Law and Juliette Binoche; and in 2008 Shane Meadows's Somers Town, which was filmed almost entirely in and around Phoenix Court, a low-rise council property in Purchese Street.^[15]

Somers Town has a flourishing street market, held in Chalton Street, Wednesday to Friday.^[16] The START (Somers Town Art) Festival of Cultures is held on the second Saturday in July, on the site of the market. It is the biggest street festival in the Camden borough and attracts about 10,000 people, bringing together the area's diverse cultural communities.^[17]

The children's charity Scene & Heard is based in Somers Town. It offers a unique mentoring project that partners the inner-city children of Somers Town with volunteer theatre professionals, providing each child who participates with quality one-on-one adult attention and an experience of personal success through the process of writing and performing plays.

Education

There are two secondary schools in the area, the Roman Catholic co-educational Maria Fidelis Convent School FCJ in Phoenix Road, and the state Regent High School in Charrington Street. Regent High School was established in 1877 and has gone through several name changes, more recently as Sir William Collins Secondary School, then as South Camden Community School. Somers Town Community Sports Centre was built on part of the school playground. The building is leased to a charitable trust that is jointly managed by the school and UCL (UCL is based a few hundred metres to the south of Euston Road and is a major employer of local residents). It is used for 17% of available hours by UCLU's sports teams for training and home matches and for recreational sport by UCL students. As part of Building Schools for the Future plans to expand the school, it is probable that the sports centre will be reintegrated back into the school campus.

There are also three primary schools: Edith Neville (state), St Aloysius (state-aided Catholic) and St Mary and St Pancras (state-aided Church of England). The latter has been built beneath Somerset Court, four floors of university student accommodation units.

Nearby areas

• Camden Town to the north
• Euston to the west
• King's Cross to the east
• St Pancras to the south-east
• Bloomsbury to the south

Transport

Vehicular through traffic is not heavy, and is confined by traffic calming and other measures to a few north/south arterial throughways.

The nearest London Underground stations are Mornington Crescent, Euston and King's Cross St. Pancras. National Rail services operate from the nearby London King's Cross, London St. Pancras and London Euston stations. St. Pancras International is terminus for Eurostar services and was the London terminus for the Javelin fast train service to the London Olympic Park.^[18]

Notable residents

• John Arnott (1799–1868), Chartist leader and poet, lived at 8 Middlesex St, 11 Middlesex Place and 1 Equity Buildings (now Walker House, Phoenix St), died in St Pancras Workhouse^[19]
• Sir James Bacon (1798–1895), judge and privy councilor, born at 10 The Polygon
• Andrés Bello, (1781–1865), Venezuelan poet, lawmaker, philosopher, and educator lived at 39 Clarendon Square, later at 9 Egremont Place
• Natalie Bennett, former Green Party of England and Wales leader^[20]
• Maria Caterina Brignole (1737–1813), Dowager Princess of Monaco, Princess of Condé, fled the French Revolution, buried in St Aloysius^[21][22]
• Nell Campbell, actress and singer, lived in Charrington Street while appearing in The Rocky Horror Show
• Guy-Toussaint-Julien Carron (1760–1821), French priest who fled the French Revolution and established the chapel of St Aloysius and other institutions in the area, lived at 1 The Polygon^[21]
• Charlie Charles (1945–1990), drummer for The Blockheads, lived in Charrington Street^[6]
• Joe Cole, England footballer
• Louis Joseph de Bourbon (1736–1818), Prince of Condé, counter-revolutionary leader who fled France^[21]
• Jean François de La Marche, Bishop of St. Pol de Léon (1729–1806), priest who fled the French Revolution, buried in St Pancras churchyard^[21]
• Samuel De Wilde (1751–1832), portrait painter and etcher, lived in Clarendon Square^[1]
• Charles Dickens (1812–1870), lived at 29 Johnson (now Cranleigh) Street for four years,^[23] then moved in November 1828 to 17 The Polygon
• Arthur Richard Dillon (1721–1806), Archbishop of Narbonne, who fled the French Revolution, buried in St Pancras churchyard^[21]
• Francis Aidan Gasquet (1846–1929), Cardinal, Librarian of the Vatican, scholar, was born at 26 Euston Place
• Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (Mary Shelley) (1797–1851), most famous for her novel Frankenstein, was born at 29 The Polygon
• William Godwin (1756–1836), Enlightenment philosopher, lived at 25 Chalton Street (from 1793), at 17 Evesham Buildings (in Chalton St, from 1797) and at 29 The Polygon (1797-1807)^[24]
• John Gale Jones (1769–1838), English radical orator, lived at 10 Brill Terrace (now Coopers Lane) and 32 Middlesex Street^[25][26]
• George Lance (1802–1864), painter, lived in Phoenix St^[21]
• Ethel Le Neve (1883–1967), the mistress of Dr Crippen, lived at 17 Goldington Buildings^[27]
• Dan Leno (1860–1904), leading music hall comedian and musical theatre actor during the late Victorian era, born at 6 Eve Place ^[28]
• Samuel Mitan (1786–1843), engraver, lived and died at 8 The Polygon^[29]
• Sidney Richard Percy (1821–1886), one of the most prolific and popular landscape painters of the Victorian era, lived at 11 Johnson Street in 1842
• Antonio Puigblanch (1773–1840), author of The Inquisition Unmasked, London, 1816, lived and died at 51 Johnson Street^[30]
• Mary Ann Sainsbury (1849–1927), businesswoman, wife of Sainsbury's supermarket chain founder John James Sainsbury. Born at 4 Little Charles Street (now St Joans House, Phoenix St); her family's shop was at 87 Chalton Street from 1863. In 1882 it became part of the Sainsbury chain.
• Edward Scriven (1775–1841), pre-eminent engraver of his generation, lived and died at 46 Clarendon Square^[1][31]
• Benjamin Smith (1754–1833), engraver, lived and worked first at 21 Judd Place‚ then at 65 Ossulston Street^[32]
• Fred Titmus (1932–2011), cricketer, lived at 13 Bridgeway St
• James Tibbits Willmore (1800–1863), engraver, lived at 23 The Polygon
• John Wolcot (1738–1819), as "Peter Pindar", the most prolific and successful burlesque poet of the late 18th century, lived and died in Latham Place (now part of Churchway)
• Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797), writer and philosopher, died at 29 The Polygon
• William Wordsworth (1770–1850), major Romantic poet, Poet Laureate, lived at 15 Chalton Street in 1795^[33]

References

1. Walford, Edward (1878). "Somers Town and Euston Square". Old and New London: A Narrative of Its History, Its People, and Its Places. Illustrated with Numerous Engravings from the Most Authentic Sources. 5. London: Cassell Petter & Galpin. pp. 340–355. Retrieved 2011-06-26.
2. Malcolm, J.P. (1813). "Origin and gradual increase of Somers Town". The Gentleman's Magazine. 83 (November, 1813): 427–429.
3. Somers Cocks, J.V. (1967). A History of the Cocks Family (PDF). Ashhurst, New Zealand: J. Somers Cocks. ISBN 0-473-06085-X. Retrieved 2011-06-27.
4. Miller, Frederick (1874). Saint Pancras, Past and Present: Being Historical, Traditional and General Notes of the Parish. London: Abel Heywood & Son. p. 331. Retrieved 2013-05-26.
5. Roland Jeffery, Housing Happenings in Somers Town in Housing the Twentieth Century Nation, Twentieth Century Architecture No 9, 2008, ISBN 978-0-9556687-0-8
6. "Charlie Gillett – a reminiscence". Home thoughts from abroad. Alien thoughts from home. Jakartass.net. 2 April 2010. Retrieved 26 May 2013.
7. Braid, Mary (16 August 1994). "Fear and loathing after 'racial' murder: Gangs of teenagers have vowed to avenge the death of a white schoolboy stabbed by a group of Asians in Somers Town, north London, on Saturday". The Independent. London. Retrieved 7 May 2016.
8. McKie, John (1 November 1995). "Gang leader gets life for killing boy". The Independent. London. Retrieved 7 May 2016.
9. Phil Emery; Pat Miller (2010). "Archaeological findings at the site of the St Pancras Burial Ground and its vicinity". London Archaeologist (Winter 2010/2011): 296.
10. PM backs groundbreaking medical research centre
11. Deal secures £500m medical centre
12. Wright, Thomas (1935). The life of Charles Dickens. London: Herbert Jenkins Limited. p. 50. Retrieved 2 June 2013.
13. Wright, Thomas (1935). The life of Charles Dickens. London: Herbert Jenkins Limited. p. 44. Retrieved 2 June 2013.
14. Wright, Thomas (1935). The life of Charles Dickens. London: Herbert Jenkins Limited. p. 52. Retrieved 2 June 2013.
15. French, Philip (23 Aug 2008). "Film of the week: Somers Town". The Observer. Retrieved 2012-10-04.
16. "Markets in Camden". Camden. Camden London Borough Council. Retrieved 7 May 2016.
17. Wroe, Simon (8 Jul 2010). "A summertime celebration of culture and art in Somers Town". Camden New Journal. Retrieved 2012-10-04.
18. "Five million passengers jump aboard for Paralympics". ITV News. 12 Sep 2012. Retrieved 2012-10-04.
19. Shaw, David. "John Arnott, 1799-1868". Chartist Ancestors. chartists.net. Retrieved 26 May 2013.
20. Lamden, Tim (2 April 2015). "Green Party leader Natalie Bennett: 'That car crash interview will keep following me'". Ham&High. Retrieved 7 May 2016.
21. Clarke, Linda (1992). "The population of Somers Town". Building Capitalism: Historical Change and the Labour Process in the Production of Built Environment. Oxford: Routledge. pp. 188–190. ISBN 978-0415687881. Retrieved 26 May 2013.
22. Martin, P. (May 1813). "The London Gazette". The Military Panorama or Officer's Companion for May 1830. London. p. 196.
23. Sinclair, Frederick (1947). "The Immortal of Doughty Street.". St Pancras Journal (June 1947): 19. Retrieved 2011-06-29.
24. Wheatley, Henry B. (1891). London, Past and Present: Its History, Associations, and Traditions. 3. London: John Murray. p. 268. Retrieved 26 May 2013.
25. House of Commons (21 Feb 1810). "Breach of Privilege—Mr. John Gale Jones.". Hansard. Retrieved 18 May 2013.
26. Parolin, Christina (2010). Radical Spaces: Venues of Popular Politics in London, 1790 - C. 1845. Canberra: ANU E Press. pp. 1–2. ISBN 978-1921862007. Retrieved 28 May 2013.
27. Hibbert, Christopher, ed. (2008). The London Encyclopaedia. London: Macmillan. p. 850. ISBN 9781743282359. Retrieved 18 June 2015.
28. Anthony, Barry (2010). The King's Jester: The Life of Dan Leno, Victorian Comic Genius. London: I.B.Tauris & Co. ISBN 9780857731043. Retrieved 7 May 2016.
29. O'Donoghue, Freeman Marius (1894). "Mitan, James". In Leslie Stephen & Stephen Lee. Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900. 38. London: Oxford University Press. Retrieved 2012-09-20.
30. Cave, Edward (1840). "Obituary". The Gentleman's Magazine, and Historical Chronicle for the year 1840. 14 New Series. London: William Pickering, John Bowyer Nichols and Son. p. 553. Retrieved 2013-05-25.
31. Sylvanus Urban (Edward Cave) (October 1841). "Deaths - London and its vicinity". The Gentleman's Magazine. 170: 441.
32. Maxted, Ian (2001). "The London book trades 1775-1800: a preliminary checklist of members. Names S". Exeter Working papers in Book History. Exeter, UK: Devon Library Service. Retrieved 2012-09-20.
33. Johnston, Kenneth R. (1998). "18. Philanthropy or Treason". The Hidden Wordsworth: Poet, Lover, Rebel, Spy. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. pp. 441–442. ISBN 0-393-04623-0. Retrieved 28 May 2013.

External links

• an inside view
• Somers Town Community Association
• Somers Town slum clearance
• The Francis Crick Institute
• UCL