To the lighthouse

This blog is always keen to explore the quirky back alleyways and recesses of the housing world so, as I was down there at the weekend, I thought I would write about King’s Cross and its famous Lighthouse.

For nearly ten years in the 1980s I worked for Camden Council in King’s Cross. Back then it was an area notorious for prostitution, drugs and a general air of dereliction. It was a place to pass through rather than linger in.  Hang around too long and you would inevitably be offered drugs or “business”. Every afternoon, from my office on the civic floor of the Town Hall, I watched the same street-drinking man having a pee in the portico of Sir George Gilbert Scott’s glorious but semi-derelict St Pancras hotel. It seemed somehow symbolic of the area’s decline. For a while I “managed” the notorious Hillview estate – 230 flats in a series of tenement blocks with internal courtyards built by the East End Dwelling Company in 1897. There were stone-clad coppers on the stairwells and baths in the kitchens. You could have filmed a Victorian melodrama there without changing a thing. Kenneth Williams grew up in one of the blocks and made this film about his childhood. By the time I got there it was occupied by squatters and short-lifers and had been dubbed “Punk City” by the tabloid press on account of the drugs and prostitution that blighted the neighbourhhod. I once attended the eviction of a one-bed flat where we found five men and three women in residence, every inch of the floors covered in dirty mattresses. Interesting times.

Looking down over this scene of dereliction and decay, at the junction of Pentonville Road and Gray’s Inn Road, was the King’s Cross Lighthouse. It is a London landmark but no one seems to know its history or purpose. It has the appearance of a small helter skelter, but this seems improbable. One theory has it that it was an oyster establishment, as they used lighthouses as a symbol of their trade. For several years the building was squatted. One day some of the occupants got down into the basement and found themselves in a series of tunnels that suddenly opened out onto a tube platform. 

But now King’s Cross is being transformed. For anyone who is a keen student of housing history and urban regeneration I recommend a thirty-minute stroll around the area. The St Pancras Hotel, saved from demolition in the early seventies by John Betjeman and other campaigners, has been re-born as a mix of million pound lofts and a five star hotel. Behind it is the Eurostar terminal with a lovely statue of Betjeman on the concourse gazing up at the iron roof. Kings’ Cross station also has a magnificent new concourse. Hillview estate has been wonderfully restored by Community Housing Association and the surrounding estates are clean, safe and well managed. The area behind the station is now a huge building site where the gaps between the network of nineteenth century railways and canals are being filled in. The Guardian and St Martin’s School of Art are based there already and the quirky German gymnasium (once the head office of Circle 33) has been restored. But history seeps from the ground here. Queen Boadicea is supposedly buried under platform 9. Thomas Hardy was employed to disinter human remains from Old St Pancras churchyard, where The Beatles were also photographed by Don McCullin. Mary Shelley and Sir John Soane are buried here, the latter’s tomb being the inspiration for Gilbert Scott’s iconic red telephone boxes. The ash heap that dominates Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend was located nearby. Many scenes  from The Ladykillers were filmed in the cobbled streets behind King’s Cross. Sadly, most of these and the historic tenement buildings, like Culross Buildings and Stanley Buildings (where The Pogues lived) have been largely swept away. But local people, led by the indefatigable King’s Cross Railway Lands Group (formed twenty-five years ago and still going strong) have been fighting for years to retain some community benefits for the area, including affordable housing, and to prevent the area being swamped with offices.

Five years from now King’s Cross could become one of the most vibrant and diverse quarters of London, and the Lighthouse, which very nearly fell down, will continue to dominate the view eastwards, for it is finally being restored to its former glory, along with an Armadillo roof behind it. Perhaps one day someone will reveal its original purpose, although I prefer to let the mystery be.