SURVEY OF LONDON Old St. Pancras and Kentish Town
Now that the London County Council is giving generous support, the work of the London Survey Committee proceeds apace. The nineteenth instalment of this remarkable topo- graphy (London County Council, 2 s.) is the second devoted to St. Pancras, and Mr. Percy W. Lovell and Mr. W. McB. Marchant, who dealt so ably with the Highgate portion of the parish, here treat of the section from West Hill to the Euston Road. This drab quarter, made drearier still by the railway stations and goods yards, was a century ago almost open country with a mansion here and there, and Camden Town was growing up round the old " Halfway House." It was then possible to visualise the several manors, Rugmere, Tottenhall, Cantlowes, and the lay and prebendal manors of St. Pancras, all originally held by St. Paul's Cathedral, which the authors describe so precisely, with a good map. About that date a civil servant, J. F. King, ske(ched every house on both sides of his daily route from West Hill to Old St. Pancras Church, and his drawings and notes, enlarged by the authors, give one a very accurate idea of Highgate Road and Kentish Town Road when Queen Victoria came to the throne. The hundred illustrations include Nash's eastern Regent's Park terraces and the recon- structed St. Katherine's Church, a good many old prints and drawings of Kentish Town, and some photographs of the few little Georgian houses that survive in that district. For every student of London history the book and the series are of course indispensable.
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