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Somers Town, London
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Somers Town is an area of London in the London Borough of Camden, just north of the centre and just south of Camden Town. It is the location of the British Library. It is a quiet residential enclave, much of which is pedestrianised, making it impossible for heavy traffic to cut through.
Somers Town is bordered by four busy main roads: Eversholt Street to the west, Crowndale Road to the north, Euston Road to the south, and Pancras Road to the east.
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St Pancras Old Church sits in the St Pancras gardens. It is one of the oldest churches in London. Within the churchyard are many memorials to Victorian dignitaries.
A large red brick building to the north of the gardens is St Pancras Hospital, once feared by older Somers Town residents as "the workhouse".[1] The hospital more recently housed UCLH nurses. It is now the HQ of Camden Primary Care NHS Trust and in the far corner sits St Pancras Coroners Court.
One of Somers Town's most famous priests, Father Basil Jellicoe (1899-1935), was responsible for clearing many of the slums in the area and forming the "St Pancras Housing Association", which still exists today. As well as the church flats there are a large amount of council-built properties, along with a small enclave of Grade 2 listed houses that face on to South Camden Community School. This school has become the focus of trouble and violence recently, and there is often a heavy police presence at the end of the school day.[citation needed]
Somers Town includes the historic St Pancras railway station, which is being greatly expanded to incorporate terminals for the Channel Tunnel and Kent services.
Somers Town has always been a multicultural area. Among the ethnic groups that have settled here are Irish, French Huguenot refugees, Bengali, and most recently Somali and Kosovans/Albanians. Somers Town is officially deemed a "deprived " area in the borough. Despite the transient nature of much of the populace, there are many families who have lived here all their lives, and whose grandchildren now go to the same schools they attended. However, during the 1980s many council tenants took advantage of the right to buy scheme, and, having bought their homes with a substantial discount, chose to move away from the area into more outlying parts of London. This has led to an influx of young professionals buying property in the area, making it an even more diverse place to live.
The officially sponsored Somers Town Festival is held every year on a Saturday in July and showcases the best of the resident multicultural communities.
Somers Town Market is held in Chalton Street every Friday.
Somers Town has a large sports centre, built on the playgrounds of one of the local secondary school's, South Camden Community School (mixed). It was formerly (and is still locally) known as Sir William Collins Secondary School and was previously called Medburn Street School (all boys). Somers Town also houses three primary schools. St Mary and St Pancras Primary School was named after the local parish churches which still partly fund it and it has just been rebuilt beneath three floors of student accommodation. The other primary schools are "St Alyosius" (Catholic) and Edith Neville, which is a non-denominational school.
- Joe Cole, England footballer, hails from Somers Town
- Jimmy McDonald, boxer, also lived in Somers Town
- Fred Titmus was born in Somers Town
- Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (Mary Shelley) was born at 29 Polygon Square, Somers Town, in 1797.
- Camden Town to the north
- Euston to the west
- Kings Cross to the east
- St Pancras to the south-east
- Bloomsbury to the south
Nearest Tube stations
Nearest Railway stations