- Gasholder Park
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51.536893, -0.128274 (OpenStreetMap, Google Maps, Yandex Maps)
- Columns around the park.
- Year on the foundation of the column closest to the canal
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1883
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Historical background
Until the 18th century King’s Cross was a quiet countryside location popular among the Londoners who sought an escape from the bustling city. It all began to change in 1756, when a new road appeared on the northern border of London (New Road, now Euston Road), which kickstarted the development of adjacent areas.
King’s Cross became an important transportation hub in 1820, when the newly built Regent's Canal connected it to major industrial cities of the north of England. Easy access to transport has attracted many industrial companies to the area — in 1824, the Imperial Gas Light and Coke Company opened gasworks to the south of the canal. Ecologically questionable industrial enterprises created a bad reputation for the area, and in an attempt to improve its reputation, a statue of King George IV was opened at one of the crossroads in 1830. The statue became a subject of ridicule and did not take root — it was demolished in 1842, but the name, King’s Cross, stuck.
The importance of King’s Cross as a transportation hub increased with the arrival of railways to London in the second half of the 19th century. The Great Northern Railway built a passenger terminal, gasholders, good yards and coal drops — the proximity of the canal made it possible to transfer goods directly from the trains to the barges. Constant growth of London population lead to multiple expansions of the station and warehouses and a rival railway company, Midland Railway, has built another station (St Pancras) literally twenty meters away from the existing one.
Despite the fact that the gasholders continued to work until 2000, after the WW2 King’s Cross lost its status as a poor but busy industrial area, and was half abandoned. In the Eighties, prostitution and drug trade flourished here, and politicians tried their best to pretend that King’s Cross didn’t exist. In the late Nineties some former warehouses became home to club nights and raves, but the gentrification was still far away.
The railways came to the rescue again. At the beginning of the millennium, HS1 project was started, connecting London and the Channel Tunnel with a high speed railway track, and in 2007 the Eurostar terminal was moved to St Pancras station. Office buildings began to grow in the wastelands, warehouses were reconstructed — and now the world-renowned design school Central Saint Martins is based in a former grain warehouse, canal towpath is a nice place to have an Aperol-Spritz while watching Wimbledon on a big screen, a new Google office is being built on the last empty bits near the railway tracks, and all of these are connected by an urban space somewhat akin to the High Line park in New York. Gasholders also came back after having been dismantled in 2011, and are now a beautiful industrial framing for apartments buildings and a park.
Present in routes of categories Lion, Lion-Mini, Atlas
Passed by: 44/48 (92%).
By categories:
- Atlas: 5/5 (100%)
- Lion: 33/37 (89%)
- Lion-Mini: 6/6 (100%)