KINGS CROSS AND ST PANCRAS REGENERATION

To the rear of Kings Cross and St Pancras stations there has been much change in the last few years mainly due to the resiting of the Channel Tunnel London terminal to St Pancras (replacing Waterloo). Whilst some of the changes have refreshed the area the regeneration has threatened some of the interesting old buildings & viaducts.

Brian Baker writes to Derelict London:

"My late Mother would have been horrified to see what has happened to the buildings that she helped to protect as a 'fire watcher' during WW2. She said that the windows got blown out so many times in the Blitz that for a while people just replaced them with brown paper. She described nights where the shrapnel came down like red rain!
It would appear that 'progress' has achieved something that the Luftwaffe failed to achieve all of those years ago."

STANLEY BUILDINGS
Once a village called Battle Bridge and, according to some, the site of a battle between Boudicca and the Romans in AD61, King’s Cross’s other claim to fame is that it was the first place in England where the Bessemer converter was used to turn iron into steel.

Stanley Buildings (top pictures) were erected in 1864 to a design inspired by Prince Albert for ideal workers’ homes and served the men working on the building of the railway in this area. The bands U2 and Public Image Limited shot videos in this building. The street has been used in many Charles Dickens and Sherlock Holmes films.

Jack Baio from Brooklyn, NY writes to Derelict London telling me about his time when he lived in Stanley Buildings:

"I lived there, when I was a little boy circa 1969. I lived on the top floor, Number 75 Stanley Buildings, The one facing the German Gymnasium. Boy did it bring back memories, when I saw your pictures, I remember playing on the roof all day. I remember looking at the trains, coming and going from Kings Cross station. Specially one time I looked out the window and right across the street I saw the Flying Scotsman, the old steam engine train. I remember one time there was this competition, I think it was something to do with cars racing down to the gasholders area , I remember been on the roof seen all these helicopters flying around, and then there was this loud noise, that scared the devil out of me, so I run home crying. I went back up on the roof with my mum, and there it was, that loud noise, It was a jet fighter, I think they called it: The Harrier Jump Jet . it took off vertically, I never heard so much noise in my life. it went up turned, and in a blink of an eye it was gone. I remember seen something about it on the news that night. I remember seen for the first time from the roof the concord another historic moment. The apartment was so old, we didnt have a bath, only the toilet bowl and a sink, no hot water. The cooking stove looked like it was from the 1800's. I remember they would come around to sale coal for the fire place, we had 2 fire places, but we didnt use them. the only thing they had done was new pipes. Each floor had 4 apartments. I think we left Stanley Buildings around spring of 1969.I was 7 years old. We were the last family to leave, I think the buildings belonged to a privet owner, and town hall must have taken it over. They told everyone that they were going to demolish the building. So the city council gave us a new flat, and we moved near Regents Park area. After 3 years, when I was 10 years old, me and a friend, went to see Stanley Buildings. And I found out, that they didnt demolish the building, but they fixed it up, and each floor now had 2 apartments instead of 4. And new tenants."

Brian Baker writes: "I was genuinely upset to see what has happened to my childhoodhome. I lived at 55 Stanley Buildings until I was 16 in 1964, when we moved to Hampshire as part of the London Overspill.
My enduring memory is the Smog of the Fifty's before the smokeless zones were introduced. I opened the door to the flat one Winters morning to be greeted by this totally brown fog which was so thick that I could barely see the door to the flat opposite which was only about 2 metres away (if that)."
A great swathe of buildings in this area has now been cleared and the character of the district has been dramatically altered. The future of Stanley Buildings remains uncertain; demolition has been threatened. The Fish & Coal Buildings (bottom pictures) will eventually be converted into cafés and bars.

  
FISH & COAL BUILDING
CULROSS BUILDINGS
The Culross Buildings were developed to the south of the gas works in 1891, being an early example of social housing. The blacksmith's forge, which previously abutted the eastern end of the Culross Buildings has been demolished (this is now a car park) .Culcross Hall recently was a base for socialist/political activists in London, this was one of their exhibition venues and meeting houses
Culross Buildings and Culross Hall occupy the southern side of Battlebridge Road. Culross Buildings is a multi-storey Victorian philanthropic industrial dwelling, as are the Stanley Buildings. It was built by the Great Northern Railway for its workers working on the expansion of the train shed to the west and on the suburban shed; also for people made homeless by the demolition of houses for railway expansion. The main elevation to the north is decorated with regular horizontal and vertical red brick banding and is subdivided by regular open stairwells, which are framed by red brick projections (like giant pilasters) which add a vertical orientation and variety to the elevation. Green painted iron railings are set within the stairwells, whilst similar railings also surround the flat roof. The north and south elevations have green painted timber sash windows, with red brick lintels.There is an unusual flat roof, with railings round the edges, providing amenity areas for the residents and areas for drying washing.
THE GERMAN GYMNASIUM
The building above is the German Gymnasium built in 1861.Gymnastics was “transported” on to the British Islands by German followers of the Father of modern Gymnastics, Frederick Ludwig Jahn. German Immigrants formed the first Gym Club in Britain & opened their German Gymnasium in St. Pancras, London. (Ironically, this centre was bombed by the Germans during the first World War on 7th July 1917).
Built at the same time as Stanley Buildings (1864), it was a unique, purpose-built gym, of great historic and aesthetic importance. It was part of the movement towards the establishment of the Olympic Games and was important in the development of public sport and fitness. Its style is a Prussian neo-medieval vernacular.It has rare surviving laminated timber roof ribs of a type originally used in King's Cross station.
Since the pictures above were taken the German Gymnasium has been tastefully restored.

GASHOLDERS
Icons for King's Cross..............................
The grade II listed triplet of interlocking gasholders built 1880 located adjacent to Goods Way has been dismantled and their guide frames and other components placed in storage near Goods Way, adjacent to the remaining no 8. gasholder. The triplets and no. 8 gasholder remain listed. The gas tanks have been demolished. The unlisted group of two telescopic gas holders previously situated to the north of Goods Way and the unlisted southern gas holder of the pair located on the
northern side of Goods Way have been demolished. In addition, manual gas pumps and wrought iron handrail posts have been removed from the former gas
works. Gasholders to welcome dinosaurs and forests?! See Goodsyard proposals below.

STEAM LOCOMOTIVE WATER POINT
This grade II listed steam locomotive water point has been relocated from a site adjoining St Pancras Station, to a site overlooking St Pancras Cruising Club basin; built by the architect Sir George Gilbert Scott in the early 1870s to supply steam locomotives at St Pancras.
KINGS CROSS GOODSYARD
The 3 gas holders could be re-erected here to house giant greenhouses including one recreating the Jurassic Age with life-like dinosaurs.
The proposal is part of a plan to redevelop the 58-acre former goods yard behind King's Cross, the largest and most important development site in central London. As at the Eden Project, self-contained natural environments would be created in glass drums within the former gasholders, each of which is larger than the Great Palm House at Kew and tall enough to allow rainforest trees to grow to full height. As well as a rainforest environment there would be swamp and a "Jurassic Park", complete with animatronic dinosaurs. The scheme is likely to receive the backing of English Heritage and the Victorian Society as its smooth glass skin and drums of varying heights make it the most sensitive of the four proposals towards the listed gasholders.
Miscellaneous items of street furniture have been removed and placed in temporary storage, under the provisionsof the CTRL Act, with the specific intention that they would be re-used in the area , including: granite setts and kerbstones; stone paving flags; granite and cast iron bollards (including those marked GNER); Hayward's Patent Self-Locking Plate coal covers; cast iron railings (including those marked GNER and some featuring shields embossed with lions); and cast iron marker posts (including those marked S.P.P. [St Pancras Parish] 1854).
 
DEMOLITION OF VIADUCTS ADJACENT TO ST PANCRAS CHURCHYARD
The parish churchyard at St Pancras was the burial place of many eminent French Roman Catholics including the Archbishop of Narbonne and seven bishops expelled from France, as well as several French marshals and the Chevalier D'Eon. In 1889 part of the burial ground was acquired by the Midland Railway Company and was disturbed for the building of St Pancras station. The excavation work for the new St Pancras station and the Channel Tunnel Rail Link has uncovered many more graves and remarkably well preserved finds.

"Graves destroyed by Chunnel Diggers" By Evening Standard
More than 1,000 graves are being destroyed by contractors building the Channel Tunnel terminal in what government advisers have called "a desecration" and "an outrage against human dignity". Archaeologists excavating human remains from up to 2,000 graves have been suddenly ordered off the site of the Camley Street Cemetery at St Pancras as the Channel Tunnel Rail Link company (CTRL) prepares to start digging them out. They had completed work on only about 100 graves. The experts wanted to identify the graves and then contact living relatives of the dead. They also believed they could gather vital information which would help build up a picture of life in London during the Industrial Revolution. "There will be many people alive who have relatives buried in this graveyard," said English Heritage. "The archaeologists were excavating these remains with respect, as they are required to do. Normally that is done using sheets to protect the remains from public view, and with meticulous care. "Now, instead, the company will be sending bulldozers straight through the lot, loading the soil, bones, bits of coffin and name plates into what they call a muck- away truck. Archaeologists will then pick over them for bones. "It is a total desecration of human remains. If this were happening anywhere else - if it were an aboriginal cemetery somewhere, for example - there would be an outcry. It is outrageous that they can just drive through a churchyard - people's grandparents and great-grandparents - in this way." English Heritage is powerless to act, despite what it says is the invaluable record the graveyard contains of life in London, with the most recent of the graves dating from 1854. CTRL - which operates under a special Act of Parliament, giving it virtual carte blanche - has obtained a Home Office licence to remove the graves, although English Heritage says it is missing the usual clause insisting on their "respectful and dignified removal". The row echoes that surrounding the building of St Pancras Station in the mid-19th Century, when the Midland Railway company cut through the same graveyard, disturbing 40,000 graves. The public outcry that resulted led to the appointment of the novelist Thomas Hardy to ensure that the remains were correctly treated. "It seems today that little has been learned. It is of great concern that this may set a precedent for the way early modern burial grounds are treated," said English Heritage.

St Pancras Chambers is the Grade 1 listed Gothic style building which fronts St Pancras Station. Built as The Midland Grand Hotel, taking 8 years to build from 1868, it was one of the most oppulent hotels in London during its heyday. The hotel closed in 1935 as its facilities were outdated and became too expensive to run and refurbish. It was then used as railway offices and renamed St Pancras Chambers. In the 1980's the building failed its fire certificate and has remained empty ever since. A scheme underways is to develop it into an international deluxe Marriott hotel.
"To make way for St Pancras Station and the hotel, as well as the extensive goods depot to the north, comprising altogether some fifty acres, no less than three thousand houses in Somers Town and Agar Town were demolished, including Skinner Street, King's Road, and Brill Street, together with some of the worst slums in London extending more or less from Euston Road to Camden Square and the North London Railway. Somers Town was built after 1790 at the time of the French Revolution, but Agar Town, commenced about 1840 and happily wiped out altogether by theformer Midland Railway..
It was during the construction of the approaches to St Pancras through the burial ground of the church that a body in a coffin was exposed, causing a great scandal, Proper reburial was arranged and a young assistant named Thomas Hardy was sent to supervise; two poems resulted from the experience."

GROUND FLOOR

GRAND STAIRCASE (LOOKING UP)
"Many of the visitors to the hotel have reported seeing and feeling the presence of spirits in this area of the hotel and some have even refused to walk up the stairs."

FIRST FLOOR
A Chaucerian scene from the "Romance of the Rose" is the only canvas mural left in the building. Painted by Thomas Wallis Hay.

LADIES DRAWING ROOM
Fireplaces in the Ladies Drawing Room which became known as the Ladies' Smoking Room in the 1890's and was the first of its kind in London.

VIEW FROM THE FIRST FLOOR

GENTLEMENS TOILETS - First Floor taken during the Derelict Sensation Exhibition

This venue was the Subject of an investigation on Living TV's "Most Haunted" Ghosts of The Midland Grand. During the late 1880’s it was documented that an employee of the hotel discovered that she was pregnant. Unable to cope with the consequences of having a child out of wedlock, she is said to have thrown herself
down the public staircase of the east wing. The newspapers claimed there was no foul play, it was believed she committed suicide. Due to this occurance, a handrail was installed to prevent any further ‘accidents’.She is said to reappear in the hotel, making her presence known.
Originally built on the site of a Roman settlement and also part of the cemetery of St Pancras Old Church, the hotel hosts a number of rumours and sightings of paranormal activity. In the basement of the hotel, visitors have reported visions of Roman soldiers marching through the darkness. One Security guard witnessed a drip of water running down his neck as he patrolled the basement, but when he wiped his neck, it was dry...More peculiarly is the ghost of room 10. Many sightings have been made of a man walking up the rear staffing staircase and when chased he runs away. This staircase only goes to room 10 and when investigated, the room is empty.
There have been many other sightings of apparitions on the grand stairwell and noises of doors opening and objects moving have left people feeling uneasy. The 300 plus rooms in the derelict hotel act as a haven to wandering spirits of time gone by and even though the building is relatively modern, the history of the site goes back to BC years.
The ladies toilets on the ground floor have also been subject to speculation that ghosts are present in the building. Some have even said they felt watched as they toured the derelict property There have been 2 other deaths in the hotel, both of which have peculiar events surrounding them. In one of the towers, the main water tank was housed to provide running water for the hotel. In the summer, the staff would sun bathe on the roof and swim in the tank unbeknown to the rest of the hotel. One of the staff was found dead in the tank after days of searching.
Also, Gilbert Scott’s grandson died of a heart attack while staying in the hotel, but strangely he had booked in under a false name and was staying incognito. Could there be more to it?
It has also been suggested that various laylines converge on the spot where the station and hotel were erected making it an ideal spot for paranormal activity!

    
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