A famous corner in Camden over time

The other day, I came across a 1950s photo of the triangular plot in Camden between Camden High Street and Kentish Town Road, where the tube station is. My mind soon turned to wondering when the building dated from. Before long I was digging around to find out a little about its history. Camden Town was an important part of my early years in London and assume it was/is for others. So I thought some folk might be interested in my findings.

The earliest building I was able to find on the site was the second St Pancras workhouse. It is shown below looking from the east in a part panel from artist James King's Kentish Town Panorama (Drawn in  pen and wash and consisting of three rolls - one 20ft, another 15ft and a last one 3 ft - showing us ‘modest and grand buildings, domestic, public and agricultural on both sides of the principal roads of the time.’)

St Pancras Parish had opened its first workhouse in 1731 in rented premises at the west side of King's Road (now St Pancras Way). By the 1770s, the building was in a very poor state and in 1775 a lease was taken out on a property situated in the fork between what are now Camden High Street and Kentish Town Road, with frontages of over 250 feet on each. The premises included workshops, yards, gardens and an infirmary and in 1777 accommodated up to 120 inmates. The number greatly increased, however and there were fears of putrid fever breaking out. (workhouses.org)

1. Extract from one of the rolls of James King's Kentish Town Panorama showing from the east the second St Pancras Workhouse at the junction a Camden High Street and Kentish Town road.

By 1809 a new building had been erected at Kings Road (now St Pancras Way), an institution thought to have inspired Charles Dickens.

By the end of the nineteenth century the building was 176 Camden High Street and the next image I found is of the site in about 1901, about six years before the tube station was opened. So, perhaps this was a record of a part of London soon to change - a fashion driven by the Photographic Record and Survey Movement.

2. 176 Camden High Street c1901, six years before the tube arrived. 

On the left of the photo, with the bowler-hatted men standing outside is an outlet for Brown's Dairy, supposedly founded in the area in the late eighteenth century. The building was apparently nicknamed Cows' Cathedral. On the right is what I assume is the Camden Club, a middle class social club modelled on gentlemen's London clubs.

3. Advert for the Camden Club,  St. Pancras Gazette, 4 March 1893.

We then jump forward a coupe of decades or so to an image of 1927, showing the Midland Bank building that was erected in 1922. 

4. Midland Bank building at 176 Camden High Street with the triple-arched 1907 tube station behind.

The final picture, the one that got me started, is from the 1950s. I was 'certain' at first that the bank building must have been built in the 1930s, but a photo from 1945 showing where a bomb had hit the north end of the tube station and a fully intact 1922 Midland bank building says otherwise. 

The 1950s photo shows the now truncated tube station building as well as the art-deco style post-war bank rebuild. 

5. Tube station and Midland Bank building 1950s. 

All images in this article, except Fig. 3, have been lightly restored with AI. No 'creative' additions have been made.