- 2 Greenland Road
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51.538935, -0.141857 (OpenStreetMap, Google Maps, Yandex Maps)
- Graffiti on the western wall of the building.
- Number of foxes
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2
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Historical background
Camden Town began with a pub. When there was no settlement of Camden Town, just a crossroad, there already was a pub named Mother Red Cap, at the spot where World’s End pub stands these days. In 1791 the owner of Kentish Town manor, Charles Pratt, Earl of Camden, began building houses here, but the area really came to life in the middle of the 19th century, when first the canal between Birmingham and London, and then the surrounding railway stations made Camden Town a trading and industrial centre of London.
After the industrial revolution came the music one. In 1966, a former locomotive garage north of the canal was reopened as The Roundhouse club. The opening night was the first London All Night Rave with Pink Floyd as the headliners. Soon, the Roundhouse became one of the main rock venues in London: The Beatles, The Doors, The Who, Jefferson Airplane and Jimi Hendrix all performed here. When punk rock came after the 60s rock, the Roundhouse did not lag behind — in 1976, The Ramones played their first British concert there, helping the wave of British punk to rise to unimaginable heights.
Others followed suit. In 1973, The Dingwalls Music Hall opened in a former warehouse near the Roundhouse, and soon it was occupied by the likes of The Ramones and their British counterparts, The Sex Pistols and The Clash. A small arts & crafts fair has opened in the backyard of Dingwalls, which soon moved to the former stables building nearby, and has since captured all the covered buildings in the area, becoming what is now known as the Camden Market.
The former Camden Theatre building, where Charlie Chaplin has often performed at the beginning of the century, reopened as The Music Machine club in 1977. It did not focus on rock music only, and in 1983 then-uprising star Madonna played her first British concert there.
All these venues are still very much relevant today. The Music Machine re-opened under as Koko in 2004, and since then Christina Aguilera, My Chemical Romance, Katy Perry, Lily Allen, Amy Winehouse, and many, many others have performed there. Dingwalls, which is now located in the centre of the expanded Camden Market, hosted shows by Noel Gallagher and Mumford & Sons. The Roundhouse, which had been closed since 1983, was reopened in 2006 as a multi-arts venue. And even Mother Red Cap, that, as we remember, started everything, was split into a pub called The World’s End and a club called The Underworld, the latter hosting metal rock festivals on a regular basis.
Present in routes of categories Lion, Atlas
Passed by: 39/42 (93%).
By categories:
- Atlas: 5/5 (100%)
- Lion: 34/37 (92%)