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.

Edgware

 

This is the 2nd station I visited today. As I am so far away from home I decided to try and fit two stations into the day.

Edgware is a much bigger town than Burnt Oak so I was hoping to see many more places of interest.  But unfortunately that was not the case. This is very much a suburban area with the usual shops, churches, schools and housing.

The station opened in 1924, marking the completion of the tube extension from Golders Green. The line was called the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway which later became the Northern Line. The opening of the stations on this branch line spurred a surburban expansion as the improved transport links allowed people to work in London but live much further out. The arrival of the tube to Edgware increased the population by 350% over the next 10 years.

The station was designed by Stanley Heaps and it is similar in design to the previous stations. The station is in the middle of shops with a spacious ticket hall and wooden doors. 

It was a long High Street and I was surprised to see that all the major banks are represented which is unusual as many people do internet banking and the banks don't have that many physical buildings these days.

I walked the length of the High Street looking for a cafe where I could sit down with a sandwich and cup of tea. There were lots of different restaurants Japanese, Afghan, Indian and so on but not what I was looking for. I was put off the cafes by the number of men sitting outside drinking small cups of coffee and smoking. Finally I spotted one called  Jenny's Cafe. Nothing fancy but I was able to get a cup.of tea and sandwich.

This is the Broadway centre sited on the old National Rail station.

 It was light and airy inside with the usual aaray of shops that you find everywhere. Edgware is in the London Borough of Barnet and is the 2nd largest London borough by population. There are over 90 different languages spoken in the Borough and walking along the High Street I was aware of the mix of cultures and languages.

This newish looking building is the library. I was hoping to find some local information about places of interest but I couldn't enter without tapping in a Borough of Barnet library card. Obviously as I don't live in this area I don't have a local library card. I suppose there must have been a button to press to speak to someone but by now I couldn't be bothered. 

The stream is a tributary of the Silk stream I photographed at the previous station which eventually finds its way out to the River Thames. I left the High Street and walked around but it was just streets full of housing. I couldn't find anything Iwanted to photograph. I feel I must have missed something here but I had seen enough for one day and decided to go home

I walked back to the tube via the large bus station. 

Burnt Oak

 

The station opened as Burnt Oak in 1924 and then four years later was called Burnt Oak (for Watling) but reverted back to Burnt Oak in 1958. I was surprised to find one roundel showing the pre 1958 name all the others just have Burnt Oak on them. As I mentioned in my last post I am almost at the end of this Northern underground branch line and I am not expecting to find much here other than residential estates. This station was also built by Stanley Heaps, architect of the previous stations. 

The station is almost identical to previous stations designed by Heap with the spacious light filled ticket halls and black and white tiled flooring.

Always pleased when I find the Mark Wallinger labyrinth. There is a different one on every tube station.

Familiar Heap designed symmetrical station building with the art deco doors.

The Roundel for the station said 'Burnt Oak for Watling'. So I needed to find out what or where is Watling. Just a 5 minute walk from the station and I came to Watling Park with an explanatory board outside informing me that Watling Park is part of the Watling Housing Estate. This was a London County Council project 'to make London a slumless city'. Before World War One working London families lived in poor conditions. Between 1922 and 1928 the LCC built 120,000 new homes including three flagship estates, one of which is Watling. 

The first homes were occupied in 1927 and new residents could choose brick houses, timber house (manufactured in Sweden or Atholl steel houses. The Atholl houses were prefabricated steel dwellings constructed in Glasgow. 252 were erected on the Watling estate.Funding came from the Addison's Act which was passed after World War One to encourage councils to build 'homes for heroes'. The site here was deliberately chosen because of the newly completed tube station which provided a fast route into Central London.

The construction of this large estate wasn't without some controversy. In 'Municipal Dreams' 1914, one critic wrote 'the raw, red tentacles of that housing octopus, the London County Council Watling Estate are pushing their way through the green meadows, devouring everything in their path'

 Flats on Goldbeaters Grove.

The LCC purchased 387acres of farmland adjacent to the new Burnt Oak station. They split the land into 16 acres for schools and public buildings and 46 acres for allotments and parks. The rest of the land was allocated to housing. 4021 dwellings were complete by 1931 apart from 34 larger homes were added in 1936.

A 45 acre, green area was in the middle of the estate with the Silk Stream meandering through it. 

In 1929 Hendon council adopted the green area and laid it out as a park with a sand pit, tennis court, putting green and paddling pool.

The station exits on to a High Street with a number of fast food restaurants and shops. The restaurants and shops reflect the multi cultural mix in this area.

The first Tesco store opened here in Burnt Oak where this shop now stands. The founder of Tesco is Jack Cohen who started out with a couple of market stalls and then he deided to open his first grocery store here in 1929. The Tesco brand first appeared in 1924. The name came from a shipment of tea that Cohen bought from Thomas Edward Stockwell. He used the initials of the supplier TES followed by the first two letters of his surname CO making the word TESCO. The first self service store opened in St Albans in 1956 with the first supermarket in Maldon 1956. Today Tesco has over 5000 stores throughout the world.

Another building on the High Street is the library an important centre of the community. Originally built by the borough architect in 1968 as a square design with a glass pymarid roof. It was refurbished in 2008 and a curved entrance was added.

Without an underground station arriving here in 1924 it is unlikely Burnt Oak would exist as a thriving community. I'm glad I found a few places of interest to write about and wonder if I will be fortunate at the last station on this branch line.