Kentish Town

This is station #42 out of 52 stations that make up the Northern Line.

I am now on the final section of this long underground line. It is not the longest as the District Line has 60 stations and the Piccadilly Line which is the next one that I will explore also has the same number of stations as this one although I am hoping I will already have visited a number of them. But I am looking too far into the future. Let's see what Kentish Town has to offer. I am hoping it is more interesting that the last station at Edgware.

 The station also serves National rail as well as the London underground. This was a time saving discovery as I could get here far quicker by rail and then have a look round the Underground part of the station. I did go home via the underground so I can honestly say I have travelled every underground station. After coming so far I don't want to be accused of cheating.

Kentish Town is a deep level underground station with long escalators. The station was closed for a year in 2023 whilst new escalators were installed.

On one of the platforms was an information board about the design of the London Underground map. The original underground maps were plotted against the geography of London with distances between stations accurately recorded, but with the density of stations in London this didn't really work. Harry Beck, a draughtsman for the Underground solved the problem. Inspired by an electrical circuit, his map of 1931 allowed all stations to be represented in this diagrammatic map. His design has been used as the standard for metro maps around the world.

The familiar design of a Leslie Green station with the ox-blood red tiling and semi-circular windows.

It has a long frontage probably because it is a National Rail as well as a London Underground station. This is the only station on the High Barnet branch of the Northern Line that has a direct interchange with a National Rail line. The first station was opened here by Midland Railway in 1868. The London Underground station was opened in 1907as part of the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway, a forerunner to the Northern Line.

To one side of the station is this Victorian wrought iron canopy. I thought it probably had something to do with the original station but apparently not. It was refurbished and erected here in 1982 after the mainline station was rebuilt. It came here from Elstree apparently.

As you exit the station your eye is drawn to a large mural welcoming you to the area. Funded by Global Street art and painted by the Brighton based artist Aroe. That was in 2018 but Camden council were not happy saying it did not have permission and consequently must come down. Reading about the issue in a local paper it seems the objection is not about the welcome sign but the fear that that is temporary and it will just be used for advertising where no permission has been granted. However 8 years later the welcome mural is still there so I can only assume everyone is now happy to let it stay.

The High Street was fairly busy with a number of shops, cafes and restaurants. The local library was also here and looked more inviting than the last one in Edgware.

There were also two bookshops. This one looked particularly interesting.

This shop seemed to have an original frontage going back to the 50s where the doors to the shop were set much further back given extra space for window displays. When I was a child all the stock was kept in drawers and you were served. No taking clothes off rails to look at them so I suppose these bigger window displays were the only way shops could show you what they had to offer. Samuel Bluston was a specialist ladies tailor who emigrated to the UK from Russia c1890 and opened this shop with his wife in 1931. It is now a charity clothing store for the Octavia Foundation.

I turned left off the High Street onto Prince of Wales Road.

Una House was one of Camden Council's early housing developments

Near by on the same road is this wonderful Victorian building with the name emboldened on the front: St Pancras public washhouse. Opened in 1901 this facility comprised originally of two men's pools and two ladies' pools and was one of only three baths in Britain with first and second class pools for women as well as men. Boards were put over the pools in the winter so that other events such as dances and boxing matches could be held there. The building also contained a Public Hall which was operated as a cinema in around 1910-11. The hall was later converted into apartments but the baths continued and later became known as the Kentish Town Sports Centre. The building was closed for refurbishment in 2008 and reopened in 2010.

I have never seen first and second class signs on washhouses/pools before. From what I can discover it seems with first class you would be given a towel and soap.

Further on down the road I noticed this church which looked different from the usual Church of England or Catholic churches. On closer inspection I read that it was a Greek Orthodox Cathedral. The door was open so I had a brief look inside.

I was completely taken aback by the decorations.

The church started life as an Anglican church in 1885 and it wasn't until 1957 that it was first used for Orthodox worship and was later bought and became St Andrew's Greek Orthodox Cathedral. Original features of the Anglican church have been kept such as the stained glass windows, the altar piece, commemorative plaques and the baptismal font. All the internal walls and ceilings have been decorated by a master iconographer from Athens.

It wasn't easy to find the name of this street!

I was surprised to turn the corner and see this curve of 19th century pastel painted terraced houses. Built in the mid 19th century this terrace brightens up the neighbourhood.

The foundation stone for this pub was laid in 1891. The brickwork makes the pub stand out from the other buildings. I have heard this type of brickwork referred to as 'blood and bandage'.

At the other end of the High Street going towards Camden is a disused station building. It opened in 1907 but closed in 1924 due to low passenger usage. The station has been many things since then including a retail unit, yoga studio, three themed escape rooms and the setting for a short story by John Betjeman called South Kentish Town. The fictional story of a passenger trapped in the disused station. The story was based on a true incident when a train stopped at the station and mistakenly opened its doors. However, no-one was left trapped at the station.

I returned to Kentish Town Road and wandered down a couple of the side streets. Numerous large Victorian houses graced the streets.

 On Caversham Street I came across the 'Good Mews' coffee shop which looked worthy of a visit before I return home. From the name and location I assume it is a converted mews building, Mews were the stables and carriage houses with living quarters above. They would be built behind large city houses in the days when horse pulled carriages were the norm.

Also on Armoury was was this unfamiliar name. Apparently it is the English phonetic spelling for the Finnish word for Sauna, which is loyli meaning steam. This is the entrance to a new sauna complex built on a disused parking lot. It has five saunas ranging from 75-95 deg C and six ice baths ranging from 3-15deg C. It is open from 7am to 9pm seven days a week so I wonder if I will spot more of these centres around London in the coming years.

I turned back onto Highgate Road to walk up the hill to Parliament fields. This large building is known as the Forum which opened in 1934 as a theatre. It was a cinema as well as a theatre with a fully equipped stage for live variety acts, a theatre organ and an auditorium that could seat over 2000 people. It was taken over by ABC who closed it in 1970. From then on it went through a few changes from a bingo hall to a ballroom and then a concert venue called The Town and Country Club. Nowadays it is a large concert venue and has gone back to its original name The Forum, to be correct - 02 Forum. Note the sun is still shining.

Within a few minutes it was pouring down.

An old street sign painted on the wall.

The rain is now coming down quite heavily. Time to find shelter somewhere. No little cafes down this Mews.

There was one more place I wanted to visit before going home and that was the Parliament Hill Fields Lido, Opened in  1938 it was the most expensive of the 13 open air swimming pools built on parkland sites by the London County Council. The idea was to bring the seaside into the city. Originally people were allowed to swim for free early in the morning every day of the year. One of the attractions was mixed bathing  which was allowed four days of the week in the summer, but this also caused controversy. People complained that mixed bathing would attract 'sun bathers' and 'undesirables' with people sitting around the pool 'almost naked' which was probably true. The 60m pool opens from 7am until 12.30 pm, 365 days a year. If you are under 16 or over 60 you can still swim for free before 9am each morning,

The rain was now coming down in buckets so I needed to find shelter and hopefully toilets. At the back of the Lido is a cafe which is open to non swimmers. It was dry and warm and gave me great views of the pool. A piece of cake and a cup of tea were a perfect antidote to the weather. Unfortunately it didn't have any public toilets as they were on the swimmers side of the cafe and were now closed!

 

The pool is on the edge of Hampstead Heath. Looking a bit bleak this afternoon in all the rain.

My last stop of the day had to be a quick visit to this Ale and Cider house. Brick built dating back to the 1830s and looks more like an old shop front than a pub, Very small inside but friendly. I really didn't want to have a drink just use their facilities. Had the weather been kinder and me not drenched I would happily have tried one of their ciders but the landlord was happy for me to use the bathroom and I didn't feel obliged to purchase anything. There was lots to see in Kentish Town so I am hopeful that this final branch of the Northern Line will have other interesting places for me to discover.