Camden Square, NW1

This area was laid out over fields in the 1840s but was only finally completed around 1880.

It had been determined that Camden Square should be a higher class development. The earlier portions of Camden Town were already deteriorating socially. Hence there was a generous provision of green space and to deal with spiritual matters, St Paul’s Church, a neo-gothic structure, was consecrated in 1849. A contemporary lithograph by C.J. Greenwood shows the church with cattle in the foreground, and a view stretching along the emerging Cantelowes Road towards St Paul’s Cathedral. Large houses were concentrated around Camden Square with more modest buildings leading from the Square, loosely following the example of Covent Garden.

Upmarket ambitions faltered as high density housing was placed to the north east, as Camden Terrace, North Villas and South Villas.

Then, the Midland Railway arrived in 1864. Cut-and-cover construction bisected Camden Square, and a number of properties were demolished both in the 1860s and then after the widening of the railway in 1898. Even after completion, vibration from the tunnels and smoke from the ventilation shafts reduced the desirability of the area.

A century later, from the mid-1960s onward, Camden Square underwent a social and architectural renaissance. The area once again became a desirable place to live.





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