By the late eighteenth century, the time by which Leroux had completed his first constructions, French political life had undergone a revolution, and the citizens of France were subject to the Reign of Terror; an attempt to purge all internal political opposition to the newly instated principles of republicanism and democracy. The new regime in France was particularly keen in chasing the Roman Catholic Church clergy out of the country. A stream of Catholics fled France and many ended up on the shores of England and in London, and given the low rents in Somers Town itself. And so through a strange coming together of political revolutions, building developments and a crash in the housing market, a French Protestant refugee ended up building a whole urban village to accommodate his French Catholic contemporaries. Part of the legacy of the French Catholics was St.Aloysius, a sixteenth century Italian saint who as a boy lived a sickly and lonely life, a latter day Amelie, but whose name came to be used by the French Catholics for their church, which is still going strong. As well as a church, St.Aloysius’ name has been given to several schools and a social club.

Somers Town’s capacity for cradling the begotten and unwanted of the world has been a recurring theme. By the mid nineteenth century the proximity of Saint Pancras, Euston and Kings Cross train stations meant Somers Town was an obvious first stop for many refugees arriving in London. In 1974 the Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus caused a large number of Greek Cypriots to flee to the UK with many ending up in Somers Town. Whilst many Greek Cypriots have since moved out the local theatre Teatro Technis on Crowndale Road is a lasting sign of their presence.

Today Somers Town has a significant Bengali community, which you can see out in numbers in various places. On certain streets young Bengali men hang around showing off their expensive cars and slick hair cuts. The Bengali community established themselves in the Kings Cross area in the 1950s and 1960s. In the early days there were violent battles between local gangs of White English and Bengali Youths. These days the news reports tend to be more about battles between different Bengali gangs. The narcissism of small differences.

The English in Somers Town

Today Somers Town is home of a pretty feisty set of working class English geezers and geezeresses. It undoubtedly has its fair share of Saint George’s flags hanging from windows, a sign of a resurgent national pride, which is slowly growing amongst the English working classes across the country. This resurgence has grown out of a reaction to years of neglect to the unique needs of the white English working classes and white English culture in general; which it has been assumed have widely been met by the relativistic multicultural policies of government, which have ironically served to pacify any expression of national pride in Englishness the assumption being that celebrating Englishness could be construed as intimidating by other ethnic minorities. Given that in some areas of London the white English are becoming a minority group in themselves, the need to express one’s pride in one’s cultural and national identity, especially for the poor who are used to having identities, roles and all kinds of other shit foisted upon them by capitalists and state institutions.

Shovelling the Shit in Somers Town

The social history of Somers Town, and in particular, the development of Saint Pancras and Kings Cross train stations and lines, is testament to the point that is made throughout this text that the residents of Somers Town, have, by way of their relative poverty and weak social ties, often been one of the easiest populations to sacrifice for state and capitalist sponsored projects. An editorial in the Camden New Journal in June 2008 states ‘For decades many people in Somers Town – one of the most deprived parts of the borough – believe their patch has become a dumping ground for projects difficult to place elsewhere, certainly in better-off areas, for fear of public backlash.’ According to the Nation Master Encyclopaedia Margaret Thatcher’s right-to-buy council housing policy helped to add a small but assertive class of professionals to the area. The policy led to a number of council house tenants buying their homes and selling up to live in more affluent areas. An influx of young professionals took their place, which the Encyclopaedia claims, has led to a small minority willing to criticise the status quo and generate change.

Nevertheless, Somers Town is up until now a case of history repeating, of the powers that be, of rich commercial interests, and ambitious politicians and developers, moving the poor around and booting them out of their homes. By rights the poor should smite these politicians and developers and their projects from the face of this earth, but being composed of refugees they lack the shared community, understandings, histories, allies and strength to do anything about it.

The first instance of this state sponsored maltreatment occurred in the late nineteenth century when Midlands Railway Station acquired the site where the British Library now stands to develop a goods depot. Four thousand homes were forcibly demolished and ten thousand people evicted to make way for the new railway line and station. A church was also destroyed and a cemetery unearthed. More of the cemetery was unearthed recently to make way for a new railway line connecting St Pancras International to France.

Today the government is considering the relocation of the National Institute for Medical Research, a virus medical research centre, from Mill Hill in North London to the back of the British Library on railway wasteland in Somers Town. Once again the British government have seen it fit to shit their plans and risk on the people who can resist the least. A small number of middle class people who live in Somers Town have put up a squeak of a protest. According to Jamie Welham of Camden New Journal, in October 2007, ‘Holborn and St Pancras Frank Dobson MP pledged his support to the campaign to use 3.6 acre site at Brill Place solely for affordable housing and facilities for residents in Somers Town, but urged them to be realistic about their chances against the powerful corporations bidding for the site’. Frank Dobson, who once reached the great powers of Secretary of State for Health under a Labour government in the nineties, sounded like he had all the fight of a lab mouse with a suppressed immune system and a pocket full of medical lobby gold.

It has not been lost on some commentators that some Islamofascists, of which there must be a few living in Somers Town, might think twice or even three times about the possibility of planting a few home made constructed explosives in the research compound – releasing Pandora’s Box on to the residents of Somers Town. In a recent article by the Camden New Journal two scientists from the National Institute of Medical Research, were quoted as saying, “This whole project is misguided and will lead to worse science. There are no scientific arguments for moving from our current site – which is surrounded by a perimeter fence and has room for expansion – to a much tighter site” and “I am not saying there is a risk from the containment facilities, but clearly there is a greater risk in the centre of London than out in north London.”

In 1838 Somers Town experienced a serious outbreak of smallpox. Who knows, two hundred years later if they might be about to repeat history? If the Pandora’s Box of the National Institute for Medical Research is released on Somers Town then the Institute will have a good argument for expanding its boundaries even further, to encompass the whole of Somers Town, and its residents, who will have become unwitting research subjects in one of the world’s biggest open air laboratories.

Sources on the internet are unclear as to whether the laboratory is going ahead. The Camden Danger Lab blog reported in June 2008 that Camden New Journal had reported that a consortium had purchased the land behind the British Library for 85 million. So I guess its going ahead. When I walked past the site in July 2008, there was plenty of building work going on, and loads of workmen sitting in the dirt leering at whoever walked past – so maybe the laboratory is going to be a reality. The irony for those protesting against the laboratory is that if they succeed the Medical Research Council has earmarked the Temperance Hospital, in north east Somers Town, which it already owns, as its second location.

Urban Prison

Somers Town has the misfortune of being bounded by four polluted urban highways which act as an effective deterrent to visitors and potential inhabitants. Euston Road to the south, Eversholt Street to the west, Pancras Road to the east and Crowndale Road to the north, produce a permanent ring of dust, pollution and noise which suffocates and tires Somers Town, wearing it down, slowly killing it. It is physically impossible to walk out of Somers Town without having to face the abomination of endless streams of traffic, without your lungs balking at the prospect; and without the dust and pollution eventually smothering you with its sticky, pervasive neediness. Come and live in Somers Town to put the finishing touches to your lung cancer. It’s not the kind of place that you would stumble into during a picturesque wander through London. Its virtual urban imprisonment must be one of the reasons for its relative tranquillity. We huddle the jetsam and flotsam of the world into these urban hell holes, give them a bit of money, enough to buy a few sausages, a copy of the Sun, a sprinkling of pubs to drown their sorrows, some betting shops to exploit the last remnants of their hope, and so long as they only take their anger and frustrations out on each other, forget about them.

Trouble in Somers Town

It may often seem tranquil but Somers Town has also had its fair share of violence and trouble. In the summer of 2008 Somers Town was host to a battle between two gangs involving knives and spilt blood, although it seems that the location, north Somers Town was coincidental – the people involved were not from the area.

It seems there was a lot more trouble in 2004, involving battles between Asian gangs, which occasionally resulted in abductions and savage beatings. In 2003, Mahbub Miah, a fifteen year old was kidnapped by a group of masked Asian teenagers who beat him with mallets and hammers. The most bizarre criminal activity, a king of modern day banditry, involved gangs using pieces of rope to fell cyclists, and then relieving the dazed victims of their personal belongings. In response to these incidents Camden Council worked together with the local police to ban intimidating groups of people causing anti-social behaviour from designated areas for up to 24 hours. In addition, unaccompanied children under 16 years found in the zone after 9pm could be taken home to their parents or guardians.

Councillor Roger Robinson gave a well-argued and passionate justification for the curfew in the Camden New Journal arguing that a ‘minority of disaffected youth have harassed kids from a nursery school; harassed other groups; held gang fights in estates and on the streets; terrified elderly and vulnerable residents and indeed all residents; invaded playgrounds and destroyed play equipment which we councillors have fought long and hard for. They have burned bikes and premises of these playgroups like Plot 10, rode their motorbikes at great danger to all and placed string across bicycle tracks, injuring many.’

Residents have not just been under attack from Asian gangs, but also from seagulls. A recent article in New Camden Journal revealed that nesting seagulls in Crowndale Court in Somers Town had started to attack passers-by. The newspaper reported ‘Pensioner Jack Crabbe, who lives in nearby Charrington Street, said that during one attack he had to cower in a dustbin shed for an hour.’ According to one expert the number of gulls is increasing in urban areas because rooftops on high rise buildings have all the advantages of a cliff; and litter and rubbish provide the food they need.

A Land of Institutions

The land in and around Somers Town has over the last two hundred years been used for various city institutions. Somers Town ward used to include a number of hospitals including Elizabeth Garret Anderson and the National Temperance. Its northeastern tip bordered by St Pancras Road faces Saint Pancras Hospital, which, especially the bits of it visible from Saint Pancras road and from the nearby gardens, looks like an absolute ashtray. Nowadays the building is no longer used as a hospital but as an administrative centre for local health services. Around the building there are blocked drains and bits of litter everywhere. St Pancras as an area is generally a cess pit, but you’d expect the hospital building to be setting some standards. In fact I was not surprised that it used to be a workhouse before it was a hospital because its current state evokes images of the last days of a long-neglected mental asylum.

Towards the south there is the British Library would give some kudos to the Somers Town area. But it doesn’t really. In the great tradition of shit British architecture, the outside of the British Library is one of the most expensive 1970s shopping precinct style facades that the British taxpayer has had the misfortune of being required to sink its money into. What is all the more amazing is that the principal architect Sir Colin St John Wilson, took a staggering thirty-six years to complete it. During the 1960s when plans were being drawn up for a new British Library, the intention was to site the library across the road from its old site in Bloomsbury. This would have required the demolition of a large swathe of housing. With the residents of Bloomsbury putting up effective resistance to the initiative, a new site was found at St Pancras on land to be vacated by British Rail, where surprise surprise the residents of Somers Town did not. St John Wilson built the British Library to last for another two hundred and fifty years. Let’s see if it does!

Saint Pancras international opened for business in November 2007 and is another London institution which has taken a bite out of Somers Town territory. The gleaming glass and steel structure of its train shed, at one point the largest single span structure built, allows the sky light to flood into the station. The redevelopment of Saint Pancras has been a real fillip for the British spirit; reminiscent of the day Britain was awarded the 2012 Olympics; and prior to that of when Queen Elizabeth celebrated her fiftieth birthday. Saint Pancras train station was built by the Midland Railway Company in 1868 to increase the reach and ease of access of its trains into central London. Midland Railway wanted to make their station the proudest and most dominant landmark in its locality. To this end the engineer William Henry Barlow decided to build the whole station on 1000 18 foot cast iron pillars. Further more he identified that the resulting undercroft could be used for and should be designed for storing barrels of beer. (McKie, 2007).

Is Somers Town to be traversed by a Cross River Tram System?

Somers Town is being considered as the location for a new Cross River Tram system, which is planned to be a high quality public transport link, running on-street between Euston and Waterloo, with branches to Camden Town and King’s Cross in the north, and Brixton and Peckham in the south. One of the routes would direct the tram up and around the north of Somers Town, whilst another, favoured for reducing the journey time between Euston and Kings Cross would cut straight through Somers Town, traversing Polygon Road, Phoenix Road and Brill Place.

Pubs in Somers Town

With little passing traffic running through Somers Town, and little to attract in Londoners to the area, most of the pubs seem like local haunts, the kind of places that a stranger would automatically attract stares in. There are a few run down pubs. The most run down being Prince Alfred, which is now closed for business.

The Coffee House is paradoxically a pub, but its roots hark back to a time when it was the only coffee house in Somers Town, one which British History Online reveals, used to be frequented by many foreigners, Frenchmen I presume, living in Somers Town at the time. The Coffee House became a pub as the locals took a preference to liquor. Until it was recently transformed into a gastropub the establishment had a reputation for being a dubious drinking hole. One internet commentator suggests this is a sign of the middle classification of Somers Town, which in itself may be a consequence of the recent refurbishments to Saint Pancras international train station and Kings Cross. Are sophisticated Parisians aimlessly wandering into Somers Town? I don’t think so.

St Aloysius social club is based in Somers Town. It hosts a variety of different events including poetry evenings, jazz and jumble sales. Seems an interesting place to visit.

Transformations

The west side of Somers Town is bordered by Eversholt Street, a dusty and unforgiving street, which borders Euston Train Station, and has a dodgy looking bookshop as well as a lap dancing club. To finish it off there is London’s most intriguing shop, Transformations. On its shop wall Transformations has an image of a fairly plain looking blonde haired guy, looking a bit directionless and without much joie de vivre, next to his future destination, a rather vulnerable and yet happy woman with a Coronation Street perm and an over the top cocktail dress waiting to be plucked. Check out the website for more male fantasies, there are some great images of the ‘woman’ who runs Transformations in a four poster bed with a smooth looking black buy wearing a gold chain and a glass of champagne. The before photo showed a balding businessman from the northeast in a grey suit and briefcase – what made me laugh about this most – is how many similarly looking accountants from Newcastle are going through the motions of their nine to five dreaming about four poster beds and being fed olive on sticks by Craig David look-alikes? Sex changes are mental – and so are sex change shops – but if we have to have them no better place than Somers Town. The owner of Transformations obviously has a sense of humor commenting, ‘Transformations offer transvestites, crossdressers and transgendered a discreet , confidential and truly feminine shopping experience, as well as providing a he to she make over service. I know the supermarkets are trying to take over the world these days but here’s one local Euston shop that wont be fearing a Tescos in the neighbourhood.’

St. Marys

The nineteenth Century St.Mary’s church in Eversholt Street has the look of a building that was condemned to a miserable existence the day it was built. These days it’s got broken windows and when I took a look inside the church there was a guy on his knees in the centre of the church repairing something. It’s a battle for survival. The Church of England seems to recognise the problems faced by local people in Somers Town. One of it’s statements reads, “London is a place of extremes, and for many reasons, London is also a place where mental health problems are rife. From stress caused in the workplace, strains of expectations at home, to life on the streets and inadequate counselling and listening facilities offered by the NHS. In response to the many mental health problems that we face either in our communities, our churches or ourselves St Mary's Church in Eversholt Street near Euston Station is organising a workshop on the use of music and singing in the alleviation of mental health problems.”

The Goldington Crescent Cattle Trough

At the north east tip of Somers Town there is a cattle trough belonging to the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association. Although in this day and age such troughs seem to serve no other purpose than decoration, they were genuinely used in the nineteenth century, in the days when horses used to provide the main engines for transport, and when cows and other farm animals were often herded into London for sale. The Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association was a philanthropic initiative to bring clean drinking water to Londoners and animals. London in the nineteenth century was characterised by rapid urban and population expansion and the private water companies were not able to provide all Londoners with free quality water.

Links

• Londonist stalks…Mr Charles Dickens, November 2005
• Visit the British Library
• Visiting the British Library
• Plans for the proposed Euston Kings Cross tram route
• Shane Meadows on Somers Town
• Councillor Roger Robinson, Dismayed that tram plan is still alive despite the objections, Wood and Vale, December 2007.
• How the tram system would look on the underground map.
• Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association
• Camden Cycling Campaign: Somers Town Troubles, Summer 2004.
• Patricia August, The London Blitz, Somers Town, February 2004.
• Somers Town on wikipedia.
• South Camden Community School on Nation Master Encyclopedia.
• Somers Town and Euston Square on British History Online - 1878
• Dad’s anger as victim of attack faces arrest threat, Camden New Journal, February 13th 2003.
• Police patrol schools after abduction terror, Camden New Journal, 6th February 2003.
• Teens in Summer Curfew, Camden New Journal, June 2004.
• Estate under attack from family (of gulls) from hell, Camden New Journal, July 2004.
• Photographs of Somers Town Festival of Cultures, July 2006.
• Camden New Journal, Murder Police Insist: ‘We Got The Right Man’, 22nd April 2004.
• Indymedia, Somers Town Residents Protest Corporate Land Sell Off, 24th November 2007.
• On the 13th of August, 1994, 15-year-old Richard Everitt was stabbed to death in Somerstown, London; I am an Englishman.
• Swenson, P. (2006) Mapping Poverty in Agar Town: Economic Conditions Prior to the Development of St Pancras Station in 1866.
• Robinson, R. (2004) Human rights are not just for violent youths, Camden New Journal, 14th July 2004.
• Old Bailey hearing of man who was allegedly attacked on Crowndale Road on 21st April 1884.
• Old Baily Proceedings involved alleged house robbery on Chenies Place 23rd April 1912
• Old Bailey Proceedings involved alleged house robbery on Chenies Place 23rd April 1912