Latest Local_history
Camden's history
In April 1965, the London Borough of Camden replaced the former metropolitan boroughs of Hampstead, Holborn, and St Pancras. It was named after the first Earl Camden, Charles Pratt, who started the development of Camden Town in 1791.
The earliest known settlement was on the high lands of Hampstead Heath and dates back to the Mesolithic age around 7000BC. For many centuries the area remained heavily forested, with fertile land drained by the Fleet, Tyburn and Westbourne rivers, and other streams.
From the Roman city of Londinium legions used a great highway leading to the west that is now High Holborn and Oxford Street. Watling Street, another Roman road leading to St Albans, forms the western boundary of the borough and is known today as Edgware Road, Kilburn High Road and other local names. Other Roman roads probably passed through Hampstead and Highgate.
The Saxons later built their city Ludenwic to the west of Londinium, on a site which excavations have recently confirmed as stretching from the Thames through Covent Garden to around the Kingsway and Holborn areas. Early charters from that period include boundaries that, over a thousand years later, still form part of the boundaries of the present borough.
In 959AD King Edgar granted to Westminster Abbey land that lay south of the 'wide army street' of High Holborn, including the old wooden church St Andrew on 'Holebourne'. The Anglo-Saxon name of burna, a stream, and hol, a hollow, provided the original name of Holborn, while the lower part was a tidal creek known in Anglo-Saxon as a fleot which later became the Fleet River.
The Domesday Survey of 1086 was the
first systematic attempt to describe the communities; who owned them,
their
value and how many people worked the land. The manors of Tothele
[Tottenham
Court], Rugmere, St Pancras, Hampstead, and Holborn are recorded as
small
hamlets where the inhabitants ploughed the land and kept pigs in the
forests.
The spread of London continued outside the city walls, along High Holborn and to the south towards the river Thames. John de Kirkby built a house and chapel in the 13th century, which later became the London palace of the Bishops of Ely. John of Gaunt, Elizabeth I, Richard III and Henry IV were among the many famous visitors and guests.
In 1576 the Bishop was forced to grant a lease to Christopher Hatton by Elizabeth I. His grandson later developed the estate in the 17th century. St Etheldreda's Church in Ely Place is all that remains of the palace.
Holborn
Around Holborn, London's legal quarter developed from the 14th century, lawyers often gathering together in 'Inns' for training and support, Gray's Inn and Lincoln's Inn are examples which still exist.
To the west, the leper hospital of St Giles was established in 1117 by Queen Matilda and remained as a hospital until the 16th century on a site that is bounded by today's St Giles High Street, Charing Cross Road and Shaftesbury Avenue. The present St Giles in the Fields Church, built in 1734, is probably the third on the site and its parish was once one of the most overcrowded and insanitary in London. The first outbreak of the Great Plague of 1665 occurred nearby and the parish was one of the worst affected.
Bloomsbury
Blemundsbury, now Bloomsbury, was named after William de Blemund who acquired land there in 1201. The manor passed to Lord Southampton and later to the Duke of Bedford who began to develop a series of graceful squares and streets for the fashionable and wealthy. Bedford Square 1775-1783 remains one of the most attractive and complete 18th-century squares in London.
Authors and artists later settled here including Virginia Woolf and other members of the Bloomsbury Group. Famous buildings in the area include the British Museum, the University of London and some of its colleges.
The village around the manor house of Tottenham Court disappeared under 19th and 20th-century developments around Euston Road and Hampstead Road, leaving only the name of the road leading to it. To the west Fitzrovia grew piecemeal from the mid-18th century onwards although only gaining its current name in the 1940s. An area of craftsmen, writers and artists, it shared with Soho a very bohemian atmosphere.
King's Cross
King's Cross was previously known as Battle Bridge until 1830, when a short-lived monument to George IV was erected at the junction of Euston, Gray's Inn and Pentonville Roads. Euston Road, initially called the New Road from Paddington to Islington and London's first by-pass road, was opened in 1756. Lord Somers was a landowner who took advantage of its construction to develop his fields as Somers Town.
The area later became home for many refugees from the French Revolution and people fleeing from Spanish-ruled lands, particularly from South America. It is now home to the new British Library on Euston road, opened in 1998.
St Pancras
A little to the north of King's Cross is one of the borough's oldest buildings, St Pancras Old Church in Pancras Gardens. Its exact origin is unknown but parts of it date from the 13th and 14th centuries, although older Roman tiles and bricks have been used in its construction. The church and the former borough were named after Pancratius, a young boy martyred in Rome for his religious beliefs in 303. Much of its churchyard now lies under the railway lines into St Pancras Station.
This text has been taken from Camden’s Local History website. For more information contact the Camden Local Studies and Archives Centre.
For more about local history click this link to Camden’s website:
http://www.camden.gov.uk/ccm/navigation/leisure/local-history/
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