This was home to a group of painters called the Camden Town Group 'founded over a Soho dinner table by sixteen revolutionary young painters'. Amongst its members was Augustus John, Harold Gilman, Spencer Gore and Walter Sickert.

Walter Sickert was accused of being Jack the Ripper (although this accusation had been made before by others) by Patricia Cornwell but see my pages on The Camden Town Murder for refutation of this. Sickert often used the Bedford Music Hall as inspiration.

As you walk north you come into Fitzroy Square which was the home of George Bernard Shaw. There is a plaque at number 29. GBS sat on St Pancras Council and was a member of the now defunct London County Council.

Turn right into Euston Road. The area on the left past the station, between it and St Pancras Station - itself a monument to neo-Gothic architecture - is called Somers Town and was one of the worst slums in London. It was the setting for many of Dickens novels and many of the Ealing Comedies of the 1950's were shot on location here.

Turn left along Pancras Road, past Kings Cross Station, underneath the grim railway arches in the shadow of the derelict gasometers and you find St Pancras Church.

This contains one of the first altars to be established in Christian Britain and named after one of its earliest Saints - St Pancras, who has given his name to the area. Somewhere in the graveyard is the tomb of the last man out of the Black Hole of Calcutta - a less savoury episode in British history. If you are looking for family archives you may be interested in searching England Cemeteries & Gravestones at Ancestry.co.uk.

DR H CRippen and Ethel le Neve

Follow the road round and on the left is Goldington Buildings, a landmark housing development and home to Ethel le Neve. She was the mistress of Dr H H Crippen who was hanged for the murder of his wife, and who often appeared on the stage of the Bedford.

Crippen achieved notoriety for being the first person apprehended as a result of radio. His house is in Hilldrop Crescent, close to Holloway Women's prison in Camden Road. Shortly after his execution the houses were re-numbered so no-one is now sure exactly where he lived.

If you stand at Mornington Crescent tube station you can see the huge white building that was the Carrera's factory built in 1928. It offered work for hundreds of Camden women and was always known as the Black Cat after cigarettes that were produced there.

The b/w illustrations on this page come from a publication called 'The end of one story - A Souvenir of the Borough of St Pancras' published in 1965 when the old borough became part of Camden. There is an acknowledgments page but it is not clear to which photo each credit refers.

Part Two follows

All the articles on my home pages (see Site Map) have been collected in a new ebook ‘An echo from the Green Fields’

Other London walks

Hampstead

Highgate

Two London Markets