Castle Road, Kentish Town
As
living proof that even the most ordinary London street can have a fascinating
history behind it, I recently came across some interesting stuff about Castle
Road, where my mum lived in the 1940s and 50s, and where my brother and sister
were born*.
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| Castle Tavern c.1800 |
Kentish Town was inhabited long before Somers Town and Camden Town existed. In the late 1700s, it was a “pleasant and healthy... village where people take furnished lodgings in the summer, especially those afflicted with consumption and other disorders”. In addition to these summer visitors, there were day-trippers who travelled by coach to visit the open slopes of nearby Hampstead Heath. After a stroll in the fresh air, the next stop might well be the Castle Tavern and Tea Gardens (in what is now Castle Road – the Kentish Town Road end) where refreshments of various kinds were sold, and ‘amusements’ on offer. These included concerts,
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| Site of original Castle Tavern & Tea Gardens |
But not all the
visitors who came were day trippers passing through, others came to visit
family. We
know that whenever he was in London, Admiral
Horatio Nelson used to stay with his maternal uncle William Suckling, a customs
house official, on Castle Road. The house backed onto the river Fleet and was
adjacent to the Castle Tea Gardens, which boasted a scenic bridge over the
water. There is a further naval
connection in the names of the Tapping the Admiral pub, (below left) a Victorian hostelry which
replaced an earlier one on Castle Road called the Trafalgar, and the Nelson which
used to be at 87 Castlehaven Road, now replaced by social housing.
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| Tapping the Admiral pub, 77 Castle Road |
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| The Victorian Castle Tavern |
The
Castle Tavern was eventually sold to developers in 1848. Its once-famous gardens
disappeared under roads and houses – now Castlehaven Road, Castle Place and
Castle Road, (known until 1912 as New Hampstead Road). A new pub (below) was built in a
slightly different location to its predecessor, at 147 Kentish Town Road on the
corner of Castle Road. Described soon after its rebuilding as a ‘splendid gin
palace’, it is currently awaiting its next owner.
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| No.2 Castle Road |
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| 56 Castle Road |
And at the other end of the street is no. 56 which has its own history… of interest to my family, if no-one else! Here are my mum’s memories of living in Castle Road during and after the war.
“I remember that it
had at least four pubs, one at each end of the road and two in the road, there
was a barrage balloon in Castlehaven Road which ran across the middle road and
it was enormous but don't remember it being launched. Us kids used to play
around it. There was an undertakers business called 'Cooks' at the top end of
Castle Road and it had a big clock which was at an angle and we could see
it by standing outside our house and my mum used to send me outside to get the
right time. They buried my Dad in 1943. We lived over the Doctor’s
surgery. Dr Lipitz was a German Jew who, we heard, had escaped the Nazis by fleeing
to England in 1939. When the air-raid siren went he would run to our
brick shelter in the back yard and stand there shaking until the all-clear
went. [When we lived there in the forties and fifties] they were mostly
large Victorian-style houses in Castle Road with steps up and nobody had a car
(except the Doc). There were surface shelters in Grafton Crescent, just off
Castle Road but they were cold and damp which is why we went down the Tube!” (Pat August, nee Blundell, 83)
Camden Town and Kentish Town Then and Now Marianne Colloms & Dick Weindling (2012)
Website: http://www.closedpubs.co.uk/london/nw1_camden_castletavern.html
Website: https://www.camden.gov.uk/ccm/cms-service/stream/asset/?asset_id=3292260&
Blog: http://edithsstreets.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/
