The area where Somerton House is situated was in the old parish of St Pancras Middlesex. The parish once stretched for four miles north to south from Highgate Village to the Borders of St Giles and Holborn. Today located on the Bloomsbury borders within the Ward of Kings Cross (formerly known as Battle Bridge).
Duke’s Road, is the only surviving section of “The Duke of Bedford’s New Road” that can be found on John Rocque’s map of 1769, when much of the area was an expanse of brick fields and open land.
The road was previously a dirt track from Fig Lane (now Crowndale Road) to The Duke of Bedford’s Estate, and also known as “The Duke of Bedford’s Road and footway to Kentish Town”, on Rocque’s earlier map of 1746.
Dukes Road would have continued from the Dickensian row of shops of Woburn walk once the home of the Irish Poet William Buttler Yeats and the setting for the BBC TV Drama Fanny Hill, ITV Drama Agatha Christie’s Piorot, and the BBC’s Lennon Naked.
Duke’s road would have then continued to the site of the Duke of Bedford’s Estate House, now the site of The British Museum.
The beginnings of what we know as Euston Road began in the 1740s when it was used as a route to move cattle and sheep to market at Smithfield without having to drive them through the centre of London.
In 1755 an Act of Parliament authorised the construction of a New Road from Paddington to Islington and in 1756 London had its first bypass, it wasn’t until 1857 that it became known as Euston Road.
The Duke of Bedford opposed the New Road as it cut clean across his estate creating what is now the north south divide of Bloomsbury and Somers Town.
Somers Town named after Lord Somers, who started to build his “new town”, separated from London by acres of open fields in 1783.
Somers Town was to be an affluent area when it was being planned and built, but with the growing brick fields, kilins and slag heaps, the coming of the railway’s and the Regents Canal bringing with it an army of migrant workers, and their familys, many Spanish and Irish settled in the new Somers Town, known in the 1800’s as a soulless area…
St. Pancras New Church (right outside our front door) was built to serve the new and rapid developments and population of the area.
In 1801 the population of St. Pancras amounted to 31,779. Broken down, 14,009 were male and 17,770 were female, occupying 4,173 houses with 7,346 families.
By 1821 the same population had nearly doubled to 71,838 (31,796 male and 40,042 female), for a measure of change, the population of Camden in the 2001 census was 198,000, corrected for an undercount to 202,600, (the largest ethnic minority group being the Irish, followed by Bangladeshi and black African groups).
Church facilities were needed for this new community, and the building of the church was first agreed in 1816, with the Duke of York laying the foundation stone in 1819, and was competed with the church consecrated in 1822.
Built in the style of Greek revival it was the most expensive church in London since the rebuilding of St Paul’s at a cost of £89,296. Designed by William Inwood and his son Henry of Caen Wood ( Ken Wood), Highgate.
The church is built of bricks made locally and dried in nearby brick works and faced with Portland Stone, the churches crypt was used during two world wars as an air-raid shelter, being damaged during the Blitz of the Second World War. It is now used for exhibitions and as a gallery, church services are still held every Sunday.
St Pancras Old Church & Church Yard at Battle Bridge (King’s Cross) now swamped by the St Pancras Euro Link, still remains the place of calm it became in 1822, when the Church became a chaple at ease, it is also the burial gound of Johann Christian Bach ‘the London Bach’ along with many other famous names.
Sources:
Camden History review – Camden Historical Society.
Streets of St Pancras – Camden History Society.
British Library.
Compiled and written by Simon Lamrock
