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Having just returned from a short break with "Miss Amateur Casual" in Brugge, I expected to be blogging about the wonderful, historical and beautiful Belgian city. However, apart from a hearty recommendation to visit, and a further recommendation for readers to stay in B&B, which was superb, I turned from blogging about Brugge, to the wonderful St Pancras - from which we left London for France on the Eurostar.

I hadn't been to Kings Cross or St Pancras for years, and this visit was the first since I became fixated with the Victorian period, therefore I saw it with different eyes than I had before, appreciating the architecture all the more.

I resolved to blog about St Pancras, George Gilbert Scott and the Midland Grand Hotel, but on the way back to England on the Eurostar I got engrossed in an article (Predictably, by Greenwood) about an area not far from St Pancras and Kings Cross, called Belle Isle.

Once we arrived home, I got online and tried to find out more about this horrible sounding place, the description of which conjured up the stereotypical image of Victorian London poverty and child labour. Here is the article that inspired my searches:

"ON a piping hot summer's day - the thermometer marking 80 in the shade I took it into my head that I would go and see how such weather agreed with a place so terrible as Belle-Isle was made out to be. It is doubtful if, left to himself, the stranger would ever discover the place in question. Those who are disposed for a similar exploration, however, may accept the following simple direction. Turn up a road called the York-road, by the side of the King's-cross railway station, and follow your nose. Even should the wind be unfavourable, the air will certainly be laden with peculiar indications that may safely be trusted for guidance.

Keep straight along the York-road, and gradually you will be sensible of leaving civilization behind you. You will discover on the right-hand side of the way, opposite to some cottages which stand in a street that is "no thoroughfare," a modest pair of gates attached to a red-brick lodge bearing the inscription "Cemetery Entrance." Here it is that bodies intended for interment in out-of-town cemeteries are housed until the stated time arrives for their conveyance down the line. It is a terribly deserted and melancholy place, looking as though every one connected with its proper and decent keeping had given up the ghost and slipped down the line with the rest. Between the gates and the dismal house where the coffins are stored, there is a space which desperate efforts have been made to convert into a kitchen garden; but never was there a more ghastly failure. Barren, sickly, yellow-cabbage stalks, that have out-grown their strength, crop out of the ground all aslant; while fierce rank weeds have seized on more tender plants of the green tribe, and strangled them till they are absolutely black in the face. The iron gate has long shed the coat of paint by which it was originally covered, and glows dusky red with rust. It is evident that no one now resides at the lodge; for there is a board on which are inscribed directions to "apply over the way," and when last I passed a dozen or so of shoeless, almost breechesless young Belle-Islanders were swarming over the wall, and deriving immense satisfaction from the pastime of pitching old tin pots and other gutter refuse upon a sort of high-up window-ledge. But you do not arrive at Belle-Isle proper until you reach the archway that spans the road. At this point you may dispense with the services of your faithful olfactory guide; indeed, it will be better, provided you do it in a way that shall not be remarkable-for the act is one that the inhabitants may resent - to mask its keen discrimination with your pocket handkerchief. Here, an appropriate sentinel at the threshold of this delectable place, stands the great horse-slaughtering establishment of the late celebrated Mr. John Atcheler.

As a horse-slaughtering establishment nothing can be said against it. I am afraid to say how many hundred lame, diseased, and worn-out animals weekly find surcease of sorrow within Atcheler's gates-or how many tons of nutriment for the feline species are daily boiled in the immense coppers and carried away every morning by a legion of industrious barrowmen. Everything, I have no doubt, is managed in the best possible way; but that best still leaves a terribly broad margin for odours that can only be described as nauseating. In the shadow of the slaughter-yard is a public-house-a house of call for the poleaxe men and those who, with a hook to catch fast hold, and an enormous knife, denude the worn-out horses' bones of the little flesh that remains attached to them. They are terrible looking fellows, these honest horse slaughterers. They seem rather to cultivate than avoid stains of a crimson colour; and they may be seen at the bar of the public-house before-mentioned, merry as sandboys, haw-hawing in the true and original "fee-fo-fum" tone, drinking pots of beer with red hands and with faces that look as though they had been swept with a sanguinary hearth-broom. You can see all this from the gateway where the savage young Belle-Islanders congregate to give fierce prods with pointed sticks at the miserable bare-ribbed old horses as they come hobbling in. Altogether the picture is one to be remembered.

The horse slaughterer's place, however, is by no means the ugliest feature of Belle-Isle. Its inodorous breath is fragrant compared with the pestilent blast that greets the sense of smell before a distance of fifty paces further has been accomplished. The spot that holds the horse slaughter houses is modestly called "The Vale;" the first turning beyond is, with goblin like humour, designated "Pleasant Grove." It is hardly too much to say, that almost every trade banished from the haunts of men, on account of the villanous smells and the dangerous atmosphere which it engenders is represented in Pleasant Grove. There are bone boilers, fat-melters, "chemical works," firework makers, lucifer-match factories, and several most extensive and flourishing dust-yards, where - at this delightful season so excellent for ripening corn - scores of women and young girls find employment in sifting the refuse of dust-bins, standing knee-high in what they sift. In the midst of all this is a long row of cottages, each tenanted by at least one family; and little children, by dozens and scores, find delight in the reeking kennels. These are the very little ones; those of somewhat larger growth turn their attention to matters less trivial.

For instance, a knot of half-a-dozen were calmly enjoying, at the wide-open gates of a sort of yard, the edifying and instructive spectacle of a giant, stripped to his waist, smashing up with a sledge-hammer the entire red skeletons of horses that had just been dragged from the cutting and stripping department. Again, the juvenile Bell-Islanders are not so benighted that they have not heard of the game of cricket; nor did a lack of the recognised appliances needed for that noble game frustrate their praiseworthy determination to do something like what other boys do. A green sward was, of course, out of the question; but they had; to the number of eight or ten, chosen a tolerably level bit between two dust-heaps. For wickets they had a pile of old hats and broken crockery; for bat the stump leg of an old bedstead, and for ball the head of a kitten.

This is not romance, but earnest fact. With the thermometer at 80 in the shade, there was the merry young band of cricketers, their faces and the rest of their visible flesh the very colour of the dust they sported among; and, the sun blazing down on their uncovered heads, they were bowling up the kitten's head, giving it fair spanks with the bedstead - leg for ones and twos, and looking out with barbarous relish for "catches." Evidently they were boys employed in some of the surrounding factories, and this was the way in which they sought recreation in their dinner-hour! I say evidently they were factory-lads, because their fantastic aspect bespoke them such. There were boys whose rags were of a universal yellow tint, as though they were intimately acquainted with the manufacture of sulphur or some such material; boys whose rags were black as a sweep's; and other boys who were splashed with many colours, that made them twinkle in the sun like demon harlequins as they wrestled in the ashes for possession of the "ball."

Belle-Isle is by no means a small place. Beyond the delectable Pleasant Grove is another thoroughfare called Brandon Road. Brandon Road has cottages on either side of the way, and gives harbourage to several hundred cottagers little and big. The road is hemmed in, as Pleasant Grove is, by stench-factories, and the effect on an individual used to ordinarily wholesome air is simply indescribable. The odour makes the nostrils tingle; you can taste it on the tongue as though you had sipped a weak solution of some nauseating acid ; it makes the eyes water. And yet, as before stated, swarms of little children and grown men and women abide winter and summer in this awful place; here they cook and eat their food, and, these sultry nights, when even in open places scarcely a breath of air stirs, they retire to bed amid it all. It is utterly impossible that the poor wretches doomed to Pleasant Grove and Brandon Road should not be afflicted occasionally with illness; and just imagine the sick bed at this time of year!

But there is another feature of this pestilent colony of too grave importance to be passed over. The row of barrows and "half-carts," as they are called, unmistakably denotes that Brandon Road is a place where costermongers congregate - vendors of fruit and vegetables who hawk their wares through the day, and bring home at night what remains unsold. And where is that remainder stored? It cannot be left in the street all night; it must be carried into the house - into the ill-ventilated hovel containing three rooms and a wash- house; every apartment affording sleeping accommodation for some member of the householder's family or his "lodgers." One shudders even to think of it. The temperature of 80 in the shade, and the plums and apples and pears-more often than not just a little "damaged" before the costermonger brought them - heaped all night in one of these Belle-Isle fever-dens on the same floor on which the sack and straw bed is made, to be taken out to-morrow and sold and eaten raw or made into pies and puddings by the thrifty poor, who, before everything, look out for what is cheap! I saw under one gateway several hundreds of herrings split open and hung up to "cure" in that hotbed of pestilence.

It is not nice to talk about such matters; it was very far from nice to investigate them; but, since such vileness exists, has existed doubtless for years, and will continue to exist for all that the parochial authorities can do to make an end of it, it becomes necessary to expose it for common safety, no less than for mercy's sake. The risk we run in shirking such questions is incalculable. Not because we are far removed from plague-spots are they no concern of ours; not because we are cleanly in our own homes, and take scrupulous care, in a sanitary sense, of every nook and corner from the garret to the kitchen, can we afford, with no more than a disgustful shrug of the shoulders, to dismiss from our minds all consideration of the deplorable condition of the Belle-Islanders. It is not only the residents of Belle Isle that are in daily danger from its poisoned air. As I have mentioned, there are many factories the operations of which admit of boy labour. I don't know whether the factory inspectors ever visit Belle-Isle, or whether any member of the Metropolitan School Board has yet happened to pass that way at the hour when the gangs of poor little wretches are respited from their disgusting drudgery. It is always unsafe, with regard to this class of juvenile humanity, to rely on size and appearance as guides in judging of age. Stunted in growth and ill-fed as they are, it is easy to miscalculate by a year or so; but I think I might allow at least as broad a margin as that, and then declare that many of the industrious little chaps that came trooping out of the match factories and other factories near at dinner time, had not yet witnessed their ninth birthday. All of them were ragged and hideously dirty, and, so far as might be judged by the little of their complexion that was accidentally brushed clear of its coat of grime, they were one and all sickly and unhealthy-looking.

I wish that a member of the School Board would find leisure to look in on Belle-Isle some fine dinner time or evening. I think it not unlikely that his benevolent eyes would be opened to the fact that the bold and easygoing youth who is proud to be known as a street Arab is not the only young person who would be benefited by his fatherly attention. The street Arab, at his worst, is a homeless, ragged, wretched little waif, who will tolerate semi-starvation, but beyond that point may not be relied on to keep his hands from picking and stealing; so he is a proper object for rescue, and it comes cheap for the country to take him and place him at a trade by following which he may obtain an honest livelihood. But who would think of apprenticing him to a lucifer matchmaker, or a worker in chemical compositions, the handling of which would certainly enfeeble his health, and bring him to an early grave? Did only half a dozen such instances occur, the whole nation would raise its hands in horror at the deliberate barbarity; yet here, in Belle-Isle, and in a few other places that might be mentioned, we have hundreds of poor, patient little boys and girls, who never in their lives did a dishonest thing, kept in ignorance and doomed to work through their young lives in dirt and squalor and the very shadow of death, for little if anything more in the shape of wages than the free street Arab contrives to pick up in his vagabond rovings."

I managed to find an old map online of Kings Cross and St Pancras stations, which I would have posted here but it came out rather small, so you can look at it a bit closer

On the far left of the map can be seen Belle Isle and its businesses, the Bone Mill, Soap Works, Cattle Lairs and the brick and tile works.

I compared this to a current map of London, and, as expected, Belle Isle is no longer there. However, if you try and take Greenwood's directions today you can see where Belle Isle used to be.

What Greenwood calls York Road, seems now to be York Way N7, which runs north alongside Kings Cross station off the junction between Pentonville Road and Euston Road. Following York Way past Kings Cross, you come to three roads, all right-turns, in a row. The names of these roads are:

* Tileyard Road (where the old Belle Isle brick and tile works were?) And the most northernly;

* Brandon Road, which is also mentioned in the article.

In between these three roads now are a variety of businesses, but did this used to be Belle Isle?

Things like this fascinate me, I'm interested in the way cities move on and evolve and the bad old places are swept away in favour of the new. If this is the kind of subject that you too find interesting, then the story of the notorious slum of Bethnal green; "The Old Nichol" will probably interest you, and you should get hold of the Sarah Wise book "The Blackest Streets" which details the conditions and social impact of the slum.

In the meantime, any other stories like this or comments or information on Belle Isle or places like it are very much welcomed. I think I have the location of where it used to be correct, but would like to be corrected if not.

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Having just returned from a short break with "Miss Amateur Casual" in Brugge, I expected to be blogging about the wonderful, historical and beautiful Belgian city. However, apart from a hearty recommendation to visit, and a further recommendation for readers to stay in B&B, which was superb, I turned from blogging about Brugge, to the wonderful St Pancras - from which we left London for France on the Eurostar.

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Map Of London - Cross's London Guide 1844.

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MAPCO Map And Plan Collection Online : Map Of London - Cross's London Guide 1844.

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disgust and delight in the grimy truths and dirty secrets of our past.") to find the true culprit: fetid water that was being distributed through a public water pump. Snow's famous "ghost map," which traced the progress of the terrifying disease through the city, is included in the exhibition.
Imagine living anywhere near this gray mountain of trash in the first year of Queen Victoria's reign. It's the "Great Dust-Heap at Kings Cross" as seen from Maiden Lane (now York Road), painted in 1837 by the watercolorist E. H. Dixon, surrounded by slum housing and adjacent to the
The crud all around us is the focus of a fascinating new exhibition at the Wellcome Collection, London.
The exhibition uses six different historical times and places as starting points for exploring attitudes towards dirt and cleanliness: a home in seventeenth-century Delft, a street in Victorian London in the 1850s, a hospital in Glasgow in the 1860s, a museum in interwar Dresden, a community in present-day New Delhi, and the Fresh Kills landfill site in New York City.

The exhibition's display on Broad Street (now Broadwick Street) in London's Soho district, ground zero of a cholera epidemic in 1854 that killed more than 600 people, is particularly interesting. At the time, an infecting "miasma" was thought to cause the disease. It took the brilliant detective work of the physician (and royal anaesthetist) John Snow ( DNB bio here; Wiki bio here) and the Rev. Henry Whitehead (
Wiki bio here
Highlights include paintings by Pieter de Hooch, Joseph Lister's medical instruments, and a wide range of contemporary art on related themes. You can peer through one of the first primitive microscopes used to discover bacteria (which had been collected from the mouth of a Dutch scientist), learn about the cesspools that turned the Thames into a "monster soup" in the early nineteenth century, and gaze on "Laid to Rest," a sculpture by Serena Korda featuring bricks that incorporate dust sent to her by modern Londoners."Dirt: The Filthy Reality of Everyday Life," brings together a variety of art, documents, cultural ephemera, photos, videos, and art installations to -- as curator Kate Forde puts it -- "uncover a rich history of
Smallpox Hospital.

As for Kings Cross ... similar dustheaps featured in Charles Dickens's Our Mutual Friend (the " Golden Dustman" Noddy Bofﬁn is one of the writer's most indelible creations) and were the an essay by the poet R. H. Horne that appeared in

Read more...
"Dirt" runs through 31 August at the Wellcome Collection, 215 Euston Road, London.

Henry Mayhew,
Brian Maidment,Dusty Bob: A Cultural History of Dustmen, 1780-1870. Manchester University Press, 2007.
29.4 (April 2009), pp. 1282-1290.
Costas A. Velis, David C. Wilson, and Christopher R. Cheeseman, "19th century London dust-yards: A case study in closed-loop resource efficiency." Waste Management

Steven Johnson, The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic -- and How it Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World. Riverhead Press, 2006. There's a wonderful website for this book here. "Of the Dustmen of London." London Labour and the London Poor, 1851.
"Wellcome Collection Takes a Filthy Look at an Age-Old Obsession," The Guardian, 23 March 2011.

This exhibition is part of the Wellcome's"Dirt Season" that involves a collaboration with the BBC (a series called "Filthy Cities" with accompanying scratch-and-sniff cards), an environmental theatre piece at this summer's Glastonbury Festval, related events for children at the Eden Project in Cornwall, a "Dirt Banquet" held earlier this month at Joseph Bazalgette's Crossness Pumping Station, and a free iPhone/iPad word-puzzle app called "Filth Fair."
The Kings Cross dustheap pictured at the top of this post was packed up and shipped to Russia in 1848 when city developers decided to convert the site into what is now the Kings Cross railway terminus. The Russians mixed ash from the pile with local clay to make bricks that were used to rebuild their war-ravaged country."Dust, or Ugliness Redeemed," the weekly journal Dickens edited from 1850 to 1859. Horne vividly describes the underclass of "Searchers and Sorters" who scaled the debris and painstakingly raked through the refuse, separating animal and vegetable matter from broken pottery, bones, rags, metal, glass, and other detritus. Everything was sold off and recycled: coarse cinders were sold to brickmakers, bones to soapmakers, threadbare linen rags to papermakers. [Shown here: The sifting process at a dust-yard in nineteenth-century London; Mayhew, 1862.] Household Words,

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disgust and delight in the grimy truths and dirty secrets of our past.") to find the true culprit: fetid water that was being distributed through a public water pump. Snow's famous "ghost map," which traced the progress of the terrifying disease through the city, is included in the exhibition.

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A full twenty years before steam trains started arriving at the new station of King's Cross, a small suspension railway had operated on the opposite side of the road. Not only was it an early form of suspension railway - it was also human powered - by a man spinning a wheel at the front of each carriage.

In use for barely two years, it has been seemingly lost to common knowledge - this was the Suspension Railway at the Royal Panarmonion Gardens.

King's Cross station stands on what was at the time a Smallpox Hospital, and opposite it sat a great "dust heap" of rubble and burnt cinders from the coal fires. There also appears to have been another unrelated dust heap sited behind the hospital as well - according to this painting.

In fact, a description in The Antiquary magazine (Vol XLIV 1908) suggests the area at the time as having several "huge cinder-hills that formed a small alpine range". The site, described in the magazine as 277 Gray's Inn Road, and bounded to the west by Argyle Street, was sold in 1826 for £15,000 to the Panarmonion Company.

A guide to Marylebone and St Pancras by George Clinch, published in 1890 also makes mention of nursery grounds belonging to, or occupied by a Mr Collins. It would seem that the whole area bought by the company comprised of some 10 acres of land. You can see the "dust ground" in the lower right of this map.

This company, largely promoted by Professor Gesualdo Lanza, described as a master of elocution who aimed to rise £20,000 in £100 shares to provide "extensively ornamented gardens which will be judiciously planted and pleasingly interspersed with Fountains, Cascades, Temples, etc.,a neat and elegant Theatre, a Botanical Bazaar, Bathing Rooms,and even an Hotel."

It would seem however that of the buildings, only the Theatre was built. The gardens were laid out - as was the premier attraction - Thorrington's Suspension Railway - described in the magazine as half a mile in length, and also lost to history, the only hints of its existence being the illustrated handbills that were handed out (a copy above).

The prospectus cited by Clinch noted that "The amusements in the Gardens, independently of the ingenious Rail-way already constructed, will comprehend Concerts, Reading Rooms," etc. Worth noting then that at the time, the railway already existed and was presumably pulling in enough visitors to make the rest of the Pleasure Garden development seem viable.

The railway seems to have consisted in suspending a boat-shaped car from a substantial level bar, along which it travelled upon small wheels. The motive power was supplied from the car by means of a wheel which was worked by hand, and by which means the rate of progression was regulated.

"No one can believe," says a contemporary account, "that this Car travels with such ease and rapidity without being a witness of the fact. The idea is a very ingenious one, and does great credit to Mr. H. Thorrington, who is the inventor.

The gardens opened on the 4th March, 1830, and entry cost One Shilling, which included a ride in the railway.

The Morning Post of the 19th July 1830 wrote that "Since we last notices this tasteful erection, the proprietors have substituted an elegantly decorated boat or car, capable of containing eight persons, for the chair, which was intended for only two."

"The person who manages the crank is concealed under a cover in the stern of the car, and when going at the rate of seven or eight miles an hour, it slides gracefully along without any visible propelling power, and produces a very agreeable effect."

I would presume that the illustration given at the top of this blog post is possibly a slightly earlier version, between the small 2-person chair and the version described with the man hidden behind the carriage.

Certainly to sit at the front of the carriage and to be propelled along without noise or discomfort must have been a wondrous sight to Victorian visitors.

However, despite much admiration, the Gardens were not a commercial success. On the 28th February, 1832, a notice was published announcing the sale of the assets of the Garden, and their demolition followed within a few weeks.

A brief note in the Bury and Norwich Post of December 1831 notes that many London Theatres are to be shut down due to censorship of their plays. That may have also played a part in the demise of the whole project.

A reminiscence of Beer Gardens in the October 1920 issue of The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser waxes about several of the Pleasure Gardens in London, but barely mentioned the Panarmonion Gardens - and only in reference to its former life as a dust heap. Maybe the area's unsavoury history was also still a deterrent to visitors.

The area was was divided up into streets - or seemingly more accurately, side streets that lead to the gardens were extended into the land. A Victorian garden square was laid out, and genteel houses built around it.

Old map link - Modern map link

The houses still exist, as does Argyll Square Gardens, but there is no record of the remarkable railway on the site.

Alas.

Also on ianVisits

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London's Lost Suspension Railway at Kings Cross

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A full twenty years before steam trains started arriving at the new station of King's Cross, a small suspension railway had operated on the opposite side of the road. Not only was it an early form of suspension railway -

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How King's Cross concourse was designed 12,000 years ago.

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How King's Cross Station Was Designed 12,000 Years Ago

This is the main concourse at King's Cross station - a structure that nearly everyone would agree is both eye-pleasing and a much-needed boon to the previously overcrowded station.

It's been likened to many things, including a flying saucer, the Starship Enterprise and, more prosaically, the roof of the British Museum. To our eye, it resembles a glacier. Like this.

For those of a psychogeographic bent, this similarity is somewhat apt. The concourse's circular form was quite possibly dictated by the melting of a glacier 12,000 years ago... at least if you want to believe the historical thought experiment that follows. Here goes...

See that building on the right of our top image? That's the Great Northern Hotel, which opened in 1854 and is often described as the first purpose-built hotel in London. Here's how it looked around 100 years ago.

The hotel is Grade II listed, so couldn't easily be knocked down to make way for the modern concourse, and nor did anyone want to knock it down. Instead, its gentle curve was incorporated into the designs.

As you can see from the photo up top, the internal arc of the old building directly influenced the outer curve and therefore full diameter of the modern addition. Other shapes could have been considered, but in choosing the circular architecture, the size and shape of the new concourse were predetermined by the plans of Lewis Cubitt more than a century and a half ago.

But why did Cubitt make his hotel curvy? It's not mere aesthetics. The frontage of his hotel was designed to snugly follow the curve of Pancras Road, as this map from 1862 shows.

The Great Northern Hotel is clearly marked, just south of the green area - presumably a small park, or the burial ground of a Smallpox Hospital previously on the site. Pancras Road is ancient, and features on the earliest maps of the area. But why does the road - which informed the shape of the hotel, which informed the shape of the new concourse - follow a curve?

The John Rocque map of 1741-5 is the earliest real chart of the area. You can see the now-buried River Fleet running through the valley to the middle-right of the map (an area still characterised by steep gradients, such as Vernon and Weston Rise). Follow it to the west, and the suggestion is that it follows the L-shaped Pancras Road, to the right of the label marking 'The Bruel'. In other words, the ancient Pancras Road was built to follow along the banks of the River Fleet.

Indeed, here's an image of the sparkling waters in front of Pancras Road and St Pancras Old Church (just north of the map's border) from 1827, before the area was transformed by the railways. The church, by the way, has its own fascinating history, involving two of Britain's greatest novelists, a famous poet, the architect of the Bank of England, the origins of the red phone box, ancient Christian worship and The Beatles. Do pay a visit next time you're in the area.

And how did the River Fleet come to be here? Well, this is the vague bit, but its current course was probably set by the tumultuous events of the last ice age, when retreating and melting glaciers 12,000 years ago altered the shape of the lands and rivers of north London.

So we have: glacier makes river makes road makes hotel makes concourse, which happens to look like glacier. Had that long-gone glacier melted in a slightly different way, we might now be catching trains from a wedge-shaped station, or enjoying a pre-boarding pint inside another oblong shed.

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How King's Cross Station Was Designed 12,000 Years Ago

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How King's Cross Station Was Designed 12,000 Years Ago This is the main concourse at King's Cross station - a structure that nearly everyone would agree is both eye-pleasing and a much-needed boon to the previously overcrowded station. It's been likened to many things, including a flying saucer, the Starship Enterprise and, more prosaically, the roof of the British Museum.