Mornington Crescent

 

There are 52 stations on the Northern Line, 9 of which I have already seen as those stations were on previously visited lines. Of the 43 remaining, Mornington Crescent is 22nd on my list. I had hoped to complete the Northern Line this year but that isn't gong to happen. My house move has slowed everything down but I am determined not to give up on this challenge. 

My first impression of this station was of an old one in need of refurbishment. Not a station I would feel comfortable travelling to at night. In Oct 1992 the station closed so that the old lifts could be replaced. It was only supposed to close for a year but due to a lack of funding it remained closed until 1998. Perhaps the only reason it did reopen was because of its association with a radio 4 game show called 'I'm sorry I haven't a clue'. If you have ever listened to the programme you will have heard Mornington Crescent mentioned as it is a long running game played on the show. It is a game that no-one can follow but it has stood the taste of time, having first appeared on the show in 1978, and is still part of the programme today.

The presenters of the show were there for the reopening of the station in 1998. In the ticket hall is a blue plaque to Willie Rushton who appeared on the panel of the show for many years.

Access to the platforms is via lifts or stairs.

I did like the curve of the corridor with the blue tiling.


The station was built as part of the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway in 1907. Designed by Leslie Green, evident from the red oxblood ceramic tiles which cover the exterior.

This pub was once called the Southampton Arms but changed its name to the Lyttleton Arms in memory of Humphrey Littleton who was the host of  'I'm sorry I haven't a clue' from 1972 until his death in 2008.

In the 1920s the pub was at the centre of conflicts between race course betting gangs from Clerkenwell, Camden and Birmingham. The racecourse wars involved gangs securing the control of the protection business where protection was offered to bookmakers and then taking a share of their earnings. Conflict at the racecourses made its way onto the streets and outside this pub with the attempted murder of one of the gang leaders.

On the other side of the road is  KOKO, a music venue. It first opened in 1900 as a theatre before becoming the Camden Hippodrome, a cinema and a BBC radio facility. It was here that the last goon show was recorded on 30th April 1972 with peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe. In 1977 it opened as the music machine. Then reopened again in 1982 as the Camden Palace with performers such as Spandau Ballet, Boy George and even Madonna did her first promotional concert here. After major work  updating and refurbishing the building, its life continues as a music venue.

2 minutes from the station is Mornington Crescent, the road that gave the station its name. This sweep of houses used to have gardens and tennis courts to look out on. They were private gardens that the residents paid to use. At the beginning of the 20th C the houses with their large rooms and windows became popular with artists.

Probably the most well known of the Camden Town group, as they called themselves, was Walter Sickert. Mornington Crescent gardens were the subject of several of his paintings.
 
This was the reason that residents in Mornington Crescent were furious. Instead of looking out onto a green area they now looked out onto the back of this factory. The land had been sold to Carreras who built a cigarette factory here in 1928. It was the first factory to install air conditioning and a system for dust extraction. Their motto on some posters read 'a pure product from a clean factory'. The building was five storeys high built with reinforced concrete. The largest reinforced concrete factory in the country. It completely filled the gardens.

The Egyptian style design of the building was inspired by the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922. The decorations were created by mixing ground coloured glass with cement which meant the colours were permanent and could be washed.  

The factory was guarded by two bronze cats During WW2 the building was camouflaged. In the late 50s the company was taken over by Rothman's and it moved the factory to Basildon. One of the bronze cats went to be displayed at their factory in Jamaica whilst the other one went into storage. What you see here is a replica. When Rothmans left the factory it was repainted and the decorations were removed. It looked like any other office block and the name of the Carreras Black Cat cigarette factory was renamed Greater London House.

The story doesn't end there because in 1997 the building was bought by Taiwanese based owners and they restored it to look like the original Egyptian design with the black cats guarding it. 

Turning away from the station down Crowndale Road I noticed this building with what looked like a belfry on the top. The name across the top told me it was The Working Men's College founded in 1854. Further research informed me that this is the oldest adult education college in Europe. It was founded by F.D. Maurice, John Ruskin and Christian Socialists. The college was built here in 1904 and is now a Grade II listed building. The cupola that I thought was a belfry is in fact the fume extractor for the chemistry lab which used to be in the room below.

Just a little further on from the college is the Theatro Technis, meaning work, art and craft. It is an independent fringe theatre established in 1957 to create a permanent theatre for the mainly Cypriot immigrant community. It began in a garage in Camden where the small audience shared the space with the owner's car. Then in 1972 it moved to a disused warehouse near king's Cross station. A few years later in 1978 the theatre company took over this building which used to be St Pancras church house and church hall.

The two murals outside the theatre were painted as part of the London Mural Festival 2024 which is produced by Global Street Art. The one above is by the artist D*Face and is titled, 'A Dog in Hand....'

The one below is the Global Street's mascot Globey.  I missed the whole point of that one ie watering a tree outside the theatre! I have therefore copied an image from the website:

 https://www.theatrotechnis.com/global-street-art

 

I left Crowndale Road and turned left onto Royal College Street and came across The Royal Veterinary College. The RVC was founded in 1791 and joined the University of London in 1949. It is the oldest and largest veterinary school in the United Kingdom. In 1932 The Beaumont Animals' Hospital opened here specialising in small animals.

I liked the small animals decorating the railings outside the hospital.

Next door to the animal hospital is the RVC's London BioScience Innovation centre.

 Around the corner and away from the busy roads I discovered St Martin's Garden. Although not a large park, it felt like I was miles away from all the hustle and bustle. My only regret was that I hadn't packed a lunch as this would have been the perfect spot for a picnic. This land was originally an overflow burial site for St Martin in the Fields church (in Trafalgar Square) acquiring the land in 1810. The grounds closed for burials in 1856 and became a public garden in 1889. Many gravestones were moved to the perimeter.

Running alongside the park are the St Martin's almshouses. The almshouses were built to replace the original 1683 almshouses. They were completed in 1818 and were to house '70 poor aged women of the parish of St Martin in the Field'. 

I left the park to return to the station. Was this door a nod to Salvador Dali? 

Attracted by the name of Mandela Street I wandered down for a look. The street was originally called Selous Street after Frederick Selous, a South African game hunter who was born in the local area. During the 60s the street became a meeting place for the Anti Apartheid Movement. In 1985 it was renamed Mandela Street to honour the leader of the African National Congress who was in prison at the time. Nine years later he became the president of South Africa.

This block of offices used to be the St Pancras Borough Council Electricity and Public lighting department. It was responsible for the generation and distribution of electricity to the borough as well as the installation and maintenance of street lighting. The large windows let in as much natural light as possible for the many draughtsmen who worked there drawing plans. Not a problem these days as I doubt any plans would be drawn by hand. 

Other interesting buildings in Mandela Street. They are now advertised as co working buildings but I couldn't find any info on their history. The date 1890 is above the door of this building.

At the end of the street is a mural of Nelson Mandela.

A former furniture depository, the Centro building is now a collection of offices.

This church was built as an Anglican church and known as the Camden Chapel. A group of Greek Cypriots requested a second Greek orthodox church in the area to meet the needs of an increase in the number of immigrants after WW2. They were given  this church and it was first used for Orthodox worship in 1948. It was later purchased by the community and became All Saints Greek Orthodox Cathedral.

Time to go and find somewhere for lunch. I hadn't come across anywhere I fancied visiting so decided to just go home.

Euston

Euston station opened in May 1907 as part of the City and South London Railway's extension from Angel station. A few months later, the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway opened its own Euston station with a surface structure designed by architect Leslie Green. Despite having separate entrances the two stations shared an underground ticket hall. 

This is the old surface station.(Had the camera on a black and white setting, bizarrely. I didn't even know that was possible.)

From 1922-24 the station was closed to allow tunnels to be enlarged in preparation for both branches to join at Camden.

The station was rebuilt in the 1960s to accommodate the Victoria Line which began calling at the station in 1968. Tom Eckersley designed the illustration of the Euston Arch that once stood at the entrance to the mainline rail station. 

This is the front of London Euston National Rail station. It is the southern terminus of the West Coast main Line and was the first of London's mainline stations and the first to connect London with another city.  Euston was  opened in 1837 and the first inter city journey from London to Birmingham was made by the directors of the company in 1838.From here you can  travel to destinations like Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh and Glasgow. I have been here on numerous occasions when travelling to and from Manchester. The current building was opened in 1968 and about all you can say about it is that it is functional.

I arrived at the station as all the alarms were going off and announcements for everyone to evacuate the station. It turned out that they were testing the alarm systems.

It's always incredibly busy.

On the plaza outside the station is a statue to Captain Matthew Flinders. The inscription reads:

In commemoration of Captain Matthew Flinders RN, 1774-1814, who named Australia and charted its 'unknown coast' with the help of Bungaree and the crew of HM S Investigator.

Two copies were made of this statue, one of which is in Port Lincoln, South Australia.

Outside the station is the London and North Western War memorial. It is a First World War memorial dedicated to all those LNWR employees who were killed in WW1

When Euston was first built a large Doric Arch was constructed to form a grand entrance to the station. All that remains are two accompanying lodges, one on either side of the approach road now.

On the exterior corner walls are quoin stones with the names of stations engraved in them. Inside this one is the Euston Tap pub. 

Across the Euston Road is Friends House, built in 1927, it houses the central offices for the Quakers in Britain.

 South of Euston Road is the University College London which is housed in a number of different impressive buildings.

But also in this area are a number of garden squares. Squares are one of the defining features of London making it very different from other cities. Mainly developed during the Georgian and Victorian periods they are a mixture of private and council enclosed gardens surrounded by houses. The locked private ones with their dense hedging are full of mystery whereas the public ones not only have a mixture of flowers and greenery but also recreational facilities such as playgrounds and tennis courts. The London Squares Act of 1931 was hugely important in protecting more than 400 of the city's squares from being built over. This one is Gordon Square. The gardens were designed and laid out by the 6th Duke of Bedford. They are now owned and maintained by the University of London. 

This drinks kiosk was once a gardener's hut.

The houses at Gordon Square were built between 1820 and 1850 and became the focus of the Bloomsbury Group. The group was made up of British writers, intellectuals. philosophers and artists in the early 20th cent. Among the people involved were Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell and E. M. Forster. The social life of the group revolved around the London and country houses of the various members and friends. The lifestyle of some of the set seemed outrageous to outsiders, mainly because of their many love affairs with partners seeming to move from one person to another. The group continued until the 1940s. After the Second World War many of the houses were no longer residential but housed various parts of the University. 

Gordon Square was named after the 6th Duke of Bedford's wife, Lady Georgiana Gordon. This square is named after the Duke's family seat, Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire. The houses in the square were narrower and less imposing than the houses on Gordon Square and hence had lower rents. Woburn Square. The southern half of the long, narrow shape of Woburn Square garden was lost when new buildings for the School of Oriental and African Studies and Institute of Education were constructed in the early 1970s..  

The Green Man near the entrance to the park.