Street names for the new N1C development were created as the result of a competition and described here:
Click to access KX-Street-Naming-Booklet.pdf
[BASIL] JELLICOE WAY
St Pancras House Improvement Society was established by Father Basil Jellicoe and
Irene Barclay. Father Jellicoe led a famous campaign in the 1930s to rehouse slum
dwellers in the Somers Town and King’s Cross areas, and a lot of high quality public
housing was built as a result.
BAGLEY’S WAY
After the Bagley’s nightclub – the centre of 1990s clubbing. The nightclub itself was named after the Bagley, Wild & Co soda bottle factory built on the site. The factory building became the nightclub.
[BABY] DELTIC STREET
Name of a famous diesel locomotive that would have been used
on the railways around King’s Cross.
BURDETT COUTTS WAY
Baroness Burdett-Coutts was a generous Victorian woman who gave away her
money to help worthy causes. In the King’s Cross area she built a school to educate
boot black boys, and commissioned a monument for St Pancras Old Church,
containing the names of people whose bodies were excavated to make way
for the railway.
CLAUDIA JONES STREET
The London Caribbean Carnival was officially founded by Claudia Jones, a Trinidadborn US civil rights activist. The Caribbean Carnival Committee was set up in November 1958 and the first Caribbean Carnival took place on January 30, 1959 at the St Pancras Town Hall, now the Camden Centre, on the southern edge of the new King’s Cross site.
[CHARLES] PEARSON ROAD
The man behind the Metropolitan Railway that served King’s Cross and who began
the building of the famous tube/railway network.
ELEN WAY
The area of King’s Cross was once covered by the great forest of Middlesex and is
said to have been a pre-Roman woodland shrine to Elen, an ancient British goddess,
the female version of The Green Man (a sculpture, drawing, or other representation
of a face surrounded by or made from leaves).
ESPERANCE STREET
Housed in various places around Somers Town and King’s Cross from 1895 to
1914, the Espérance Club was for young sewing girls from the area. Espérance is
French for ‘hope’ and the Club was set up as a pioneering social project by two
radical women, Mary Neal and Emmeline Pethick Lawrence, both suffragettes and
champions of working class women.
GIORDANI GARDENS
Mr Giordani has run a delicatessen business in King’s Cross for over fifty years.
HARRIER STREET
A Harrier Jump Jet took off for New York from a King’s Cross disused coal depot on
the 4th of May 1969, as part of a transatlantic race. Now King’s Cross has a
transchannel railway.
KESKEDEE WAY
After the famous Keskedee Arts Centre, which opened in 1971 on Gifford Street,
Britain’s first arts centre dedicated to the black community. It set a precedent for
community growth and empowerment across the country, and naming a street after
it celebrates one of King’s Cross more modern achievements.
KOHINOOR AVENUE
A diamond from India. Kohinoor (also Koh-i-Noor) was the main attraction of the
1851 Great Exhibition, the event for which King’s Cross Rail Station was delivered
just in time.
KRISHNA MENON STREET
One of the founders of independent India, he served on St Pancras Borough
Council 1934-39.
LOWFLEET LANE
The River Fleet is buried below King’s Cross.
LANZA STREET
Gesvalso Lanza founded the Panharmonium Gardens in King’s Cross. It was a short
lived but key attraction in the history of the area.
MACHEN WAY
Arthur Machen was a well-known writer who lived on Gray’s Inn Road and who
wrote a lot about the local area in his novels. One of the famous quotes attributed
to him is: “All the wonders lie within a stone’s throw of King’s Cross Station”.
MACKENDRICK STREET
Alexander Mackendrick was the director of the classic Ealing comedy
“The Ladykillers”, which was set in King’s Cross.
MARY SEACOLE STREET
Mary Seacole, a Jamaican-born woman of Scottish and Creole descent, worked as
a voluntary medic during the Crimean War by setting up the ‘British Hotel’. There
used to be a blue plaque at 157 George Street, London W1, which was subsequently
removed in 1998 following the demolition of this building.
[MARY] SHELLEY MEWS
After Mary Shelley, born in King’s Cross, author of Frankenstein.
PEPPERCORN STREET
After Arthur Peppercorn, Chief Mechanical Engineer of the LNER (1946 – 1948) and designer of many of the top link steam locomotives that ran from King’s Cross to the North.
WOLLSTONECRAFT STREET
Mary Wollstonecraft was a nineteenth century writer, philosopher and advocate for
women’s rights. She wrote “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman”. She is buried in
the graveyard of St Pancras Old Church, close to the new streets of King’s Cross.
PANHARMONIUM STREET
After the Panharmonium Company who, in 1826, bought the cinder grounds
and built the Royal Clarence Theatre.
POTATO LANE
There was once a busy potato market on the site.
[MODERN] PROMETHEUS STREET
This was the alternative name for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
REGGIORI STREET
Reggiori’s Swiss Italian restaurant used to be situated in King’s Cross in the
late 1800s and early 1900s. It served high quality food and wine in opulent
surroundings. This tradition of great food and wine in great surroundings in
King’s Cross is being upheld with the new restaurants planned as part of the area’s
regeneration.
TOOMEY ROAD
John Toomey worked tirelessly in Somers Town and King’s Cross as a councilor and
after retirement still campaigned for local people.
TRIPLET STREET
After the gasholder triplet.
[SAMUEL] PLIMSOLL PLACE
Samuel Plimsoll, the man who made water transportation of goods safe,
efficient and commercial, is especially relevant to the distribution of goods from KX.
He also developed the coal yard infrastructure for the Great Northern Railway and
the Plimsoll Viaduct.
WARYA STREET
This is a common word for the somali community in Camden, London.
WILBERFORCE LANE
Mrs. Louisa Wilberforce is the main character in ‘The Ladykillers’, set in King’s Cross.
A British, black comedy from 1955 by Ealing Studios which won a Bafta Award for
the original screenplay.