Kings Cross Hinterland

The derelict spaces north of Kings Cross were re-imagined, now they are re-built – a walk from the British Library to Highbury Corner.

Sunday 14th July 2024, 1pm

Lewis Cubitt Park has a steel sculpture by Eva Rothschild

A stimulating walk connecting several parks and public gardens … We explored the new old neighbourhoods immediately north of Kings Cross and Saint Pancras stations. Over the last few years there has been much development, with designer flats, stores and restaurants, and some lovely open spaces and plantings.

There have been many transformations of that area over historic time, and many interventions some of which have been socially motivated and idealistic, some purely for profit, which we shall see on this walk around the canal and the railway, with the most recent changes arising from connection of St Pancras to the European continent and the clearing and re-purposing of old industrial infrastructure.

£8 ticket

The walk started from the fascinating garden of the British Library, which has a whirling solar system by Antony Gormley and a huge sculpture of Isaac Newton, and was the starting place for my Eduardo Paolozzi walk some years ago.

We walked through the sixties/seventies flats behind the Francis Crick building, and saw their idea of shared space, across St Pancras Old Church Gardens which took us back to Victorian England – and the now fallen Thomas Hardy Tree – to the resurrected Camley Nature Reserve by the Union Canal, before stepping into the energised, privately developed Coal Drops Yard with its Highline-style modernist plantings. Here’s Thomas Heatherwick explaining the vision …

Continuing north we’re again into socialist visions of community space, then town house squares, maintained and improved by local people, and parks set aside after previous uses had faded away.

I asked artist Marianne Ockinga, who painted the renovation of St Pancras, to meet us in Thornhill Square where she showed some of her prints and paintings of the square. It was a pleasure to see her work in the place where she had painted it.

Artist Marianne Ockinga (left) showing her sketches of Thornhill Square

This one shows the workers putting in the fenceposts which protect the plantings from trampling

First part of the walk just by the stations:

British Library garden
Story community garden
Brill Place, closed for construction, contentious
St Pancras Gardens
Camley Street Natural Park

Around Coal Drops Yard:

Bagley Walk
Gasholder Park – here’s how gasholders worked
the rooftop Islamic gardens of the Aga Khan Centre
Jellicoe Gardens
Lewis Cubitt Park which has that spidery sculpture by Eva Rothschild,

Then to the 1960s/’70s developments along the Caledonian Road:

Bingfield Park with a Zelkova tree
the grounds of Bemerton Estate

In the nineteenth century landowners gave over their lands for housing development; the buildings were delapidated by the 1970s, but recently renovation has made them attractive again:

Thornhill Square
Mountfort Terrace Open Space
(skipping Barnsbury Wood Nature Reserve which is only open Tuesdays)
Barnsbury Square
Arundel Square, we were impressed that creative development enclosing the railway below had added green space to Islington
Laycock Park
Highbury Island by Highbury & Islington station, where we began our Highbury to Finsbury walk a couple of months before

Meeting place: British Library garden, Euston Road
Take the tube: Any line coming in to Kings Cross, St Pancras or Euston
Date & time: Sunday July 14th 2024, 1 pm
Distance: 3.2 miles
End point: Highbury & Islington station
Maps: Google map of the route, Komoot map – click to view
Contact: email tim.ingram-smith@virgin.net mobile: 077932 00932
Cost: £8 per adult walker PAY HERE https://paypal.me/parktopark