peter darley

If someone had one hour in Camden, what would you recommend people to see?

Well, there is so much to see in Camden, many types of walks that you could go on. But from my personal point of view, I think I would start at Camden Underground. I'd walk up Camden High Street, past the kind of walk of fame for the music and celebrities. And then turn down onto the canal at the Lock Keeper's cottage, which dates from 1816, and across the marvellous roving bridge. And note the industrial heritage that lies both west and east of that, continue along the towpath a bit and come up at Southampton Bridge. From Southampton Bridge, you can climb down some stairs there, that lead into The Stables Market. Look at the amazing work they have done to restore that and then continue on up to the roundhouse from there. And I think at the roundhouse you've probably earned a nice cup of coffee. 

Why is Camden such an important site of industrial heritage?

Camden from the end of the 19th century was on the Hampstead Road and the old Mother Red Cap was, of course, a staging post. As people travelled by coach, horse drawn coaches, it was the arrival of the Regents Canal which changed everything. The Regents Canal linked Camden at the Hamstead Road with the industrial Heartlands of England, the North and the Midlands and also linked to the docks. So suddenly Camden was on the map. It was also linked to the West End where there were prosperous people who could afford pianos and things like that. And so it started to grow, albeit somewhat slowly from 1816 when the Canal arrived. It really got going two decades later when the railway arrived, because suddenly you had much faster movement between the industrial Heartlands of England and Camden where there was manufacturing starting to develop. And of course, the docks. So Camden was suddenly basically linked to the empire, to the world, and to the rest of England and the UK. So I think that really was why Camden had such locational advantages and developed a lot of industry.

And do you feel like it's the same today?

There's not quite the same movement between rail, canal and road. Pretty much everything nowadays is carried by road and the goods yard has disappeared. We're trying to restore some of that heritage. The canal is now basically for people like you and I to enjoy as an open space. So it's all changed completely, um, from the transshipment point that Camden became over the last 200 years.

What heritage site do you think is particularly important to the Highline?

Well, you’ve got one end of the Highline; Camden Goods Yard. At the other end you've got King's Cross Goods Yard. They are not quite so directly associated with the Highline as St. Pancras Goods Yard which was developed by the Midland Railway, which came into St. Pancras in the 1860s. It developed pretty much alongside what was then the North London Railway or Camden Highline. And I think this is an opportunity really to explore a site, a goods yard site about which we know relatively little. This Goods Yard site is associated with the development of Agar Town, which itself is a sort of socially fascinating story. All of the battles that William Agar had with the Regents Canal, the development of Bass, the largest brewer in Burton on trent, the largest brewer in England which established its space there. And the wonderful Constitution Pub, which must have been there to serve railway workers, I should imagine. So there's a story there as well. So I think there's a fascinating story still to be explored with St. Pancras Goods Yard, and it's directly alongside the Camden Highline. 

What's a lesser known secret place of Camden's heritage that you think people should know about?

Well, that's a very easy question to answer. The Winding Engine vaults that used to pull trains up from Euston to Camden to be attached to their locomotives and continue the journey on to Birmingham from 1837 are a marvellous bit of heritage, which is still there underneath the railway, almost intact and just needs to be opened up to the public. It's a secret place at the moment about which the public know very little, and it's why we have proposed an access route called Stephenson Walk between Camden and Primrose Hill, which would pass the vaults and act as publicity for them.

And why do you think it's so important that the public see spaces like the Winding Vaults? 

Well, I think the more the public can see all of this, the more these sites are protected from development. It's a win-win situation if you can get the public to access it and at the same time provide some sort of a commercial space which can be enjoyed both for its heritage and because it may be somewhere you have as a venue for music or a cafe or whatever. There are many opportunities other than it sitting there under the railway just being used to support the main line going across.

That's the purpose of the High Line as well, isn't it? 

Absolutely. Yeah.

So in your years of exploring Camden's Heritage, what's the most unique or interesting story you've come across?

Well, I think probably when I was exploring King's Cross, I came across a number of artists, quite a number of artists that had become very interested in the sort of industrial sites there, some of which were pretty much decaying at that point. The first person I would mention is Leon Kossoff. He spent many hours sitting on the banks of The North London railway or Camden Highline, painting the approaches to King's Cross, obviously fascinated by all of this activity. And another artist, to whom I dedicated my book on King's Cross was Kate Reitz. And she did a lot of sketches of that whole area, from the canal, the railway, up to the Copenhagen Tunnel. She was brought over just before the war with the Kinder Transport and settled here while her family unfortunately perished in Czechoslovakia. So it was really nice to have her sketches and to dedicate the book to her. 

There's a nice story of Kate Reitz who was painting at King's Cross Goods Yard. She was painting in a particular place, just under the Canopy Market, looking up at the sidings. When a guy brought his locomotive down and sort of approached her and she said, would you mind moving that locomotive!? And, and he said, oh, of course! She obviously had a commanding sort of presence, but she basically got this guy to reverse his locomotive while she finished her painting, and then when she finished her painting, she said, okay you can come back! And I love that kind of boldness. That brass.

When discussing interesting points on the online map:

Do you know what used to be called The Coal Office?

I think it is the finest (historic point on the map) for me. That's the finest heritage building in Kings Cross. Better than the granary. It's a lovely building and it flows around this curve (following the curve of the canal). It does. And that curve was insisted to avoid William Agars properties, they had to root this canal around, around his area, which was all this.

The nightclub was in the Arches, which had housed horses underneath. And it was in one of the buildings of Coal Drops Yard.

I think one of the most interesting things I ever discovered about King's Cross has a lot of colour in a way that Camden Goods yard struggles. Yeah, yeah. Because people sort of seem to get into King's Cross after all of the goods yard had disappeared, whereas they didn't get into Camden Goods yard in the same way. They got into the stables market, but not until the rest of it, which seemed to rapidly become Morrisons and, and then housing. But groups like the Mutoid Waste Company.They are just, they were just amazing people.

They used to turn Volkswagens into crocodiles breathing fire. It was just astonishing. And for a while, they basically ruled King's Cross because they took over such a large area of it. 

Do you have a story of the transformation of Kings Cross after the goods yard had disappeared?

Well, pretty much everything that wasn't demolished was left there. So there were a lot of buildings and it didn't take very long for artists and people making things to kind of colonise all these buildings. Artists, photographers, sculptors, all kinds of people. And also one group in particular that took over what had been the sort of the Motor Service depot, which was a large depot. This was the Mutoid Waste Company. A bunch of people that had been together for some time and specialised in cannibalising old bits of machinery, cars, whatever, and turning them into animated objects that breathed fire and flames and therefore had a certain kind of public attraction. But they also put on amazing concerts, I say concerts, I mean raves. You could go to Kings Cross and for 10 quid, and I'm not sure how they collected all this money, you could go in and they would put on a rave and they'd have all these amazing objects that would be moving around.

So it must have been an extraordinary time. The police eventually caught up with them and sort of moved them on. But they had a really interesting history thereafter. But one thing that did happen, which is worth mentioning, is that their (referring to ‘The Muties’ - a performance group formed from the Mutoids) drummer (Referring to Ivan Tarashenko) was killed in the famous King's Cross underground fire. And to celebrate his memory, they had a final concert in King's Cross where they invited people just to bring anything that they could beat. And so there was this amazing drumming concert that they had, beating cars, beating anything, in honour of the drummer who had perished in the King's Cross Fire.

Peter, what do you think the connection is between the industrial heritage of Camden and its prevalence in being a place of freedom and performative activity? 

There's always something slightly anarchical about the heritage and the kind of repurposing that you can do with it, because underground spaces that just don't make any sense in the modern world as it were, that are just beautiful in themselves, lovely Victorian brickwork… This creates a rather good feeling that you can do almost anything with this space. And music is obviously one of those things… You don't need much of an excuse to use old buildings for modern artistic expression. It seems to me they lent themselves to it admirably. And that's what I would like to see.

We've heard you've got a new book! Can you give us a few sentences describing the book?

Well, the book ranges from 1830 to 2030, and the first chapter imagines a walk that George and Robert Stephenson would've taken from the Parliament area up to Camden to explore what the possibilities were for a goods yard site. And the last chapter imagines what this area might be like. That's the Camden Goods yard site in 2030 after we've opened up some of the major heritage such as the wine and beer vaults and stationary winding engine vaults to the public and put them to some sort use and repurpose them for both for sort of public enjoyment and for commercial uses. So the rest of the book is developing the history through time the goods yard from 1830 to 2030.

Where did your personal interest in Heritage develop?

It developed once I stopped commuting and spending all day working and I was able to look around my local area and suddenly realise what there was. That was when I retired or semi-retired in 2005. Then after that I became aware of a development which was going to affect the horse tunnels in Camden and basically destroy the entrance to one of them so I formed Camden Railway Heritage Trust as a way of mobilising support to oppose the developers ideas and got quite a lot of backing from some influential people like Simon Jenkins and Torquil Norman of the Roundhouse. We managed to at least prevent them from destroying anything!

What's your favourite heritage site?

Ooh, well I think I mentioned the wine and beer vaults and the stationary winding engine vaults. I like those particularly, but what set me off were the Primrose Hill Tunnel portals. That was the first site that really stimulated my interest in Heritage. I thought ‘this is completely hidden behind trees’. Nobody knows about them. They walked past them, but they never noticed them! But why? Because Network Rail has not bothered to provide any kind of a viewing platform or anything. So I've been campaigning to open up that site now for the best part of 20 years. And it's still not open! So there's more to be done. 

What do you think we can do to encourage visitors to look past Camden's facade and explore the industrial heritage?

Well, I know what I would like to see and I think… along the Highline, I would have a place where you can look out over what used to be St. Pancras goods yard and try to sort of stimulate people's imagination and say, look, there was an enormous amount of beer that was brought in here and shipped across a bridge, that's what the history is. And people were drinking beer in those days because it was safer than water! Then there's the whole development of Agar Town. All of that I think is a really great story in itself. And I think that ought to be directly associated with the Highline. I think the Highline really ought to capture that and make it its own.

Just like the West Coast mainline can make Camden Goods Yard its own, and the East Coast mainline can make Kings Cross Goods Yard its own, but you've got somewhere that links the two and you've got interesting stuff along there.

What do you think we could be doing to make Heritage more visible in the public realm?

Well, I mean, that's a huge question. 

I'd say maybe as, as a community?

We're trying to do a lot. I think the first thing is to publicise what heritage exists and make people aware of it. If the public doesn't know about it, they can't appreciate it. If they can appreciate it, then you can start to mobilise a bit of support, and that is the way we are trying to operate. It takes a lot of time. But now people like Network Rail are taking up an interest and that is what will be the difference between a small group like Camden Railway Heritage Trust and Network Rail is they have real influence. We (Camden Railway Heritage Trust) have a small influence. Camden Highline and the Collective obviously sit between the two. So we've all got influence and we should all use that influence to try to publicise what Heritage exists.