If you like the Gothic – that is, the macabre, rather than the medieval style – there’s no better place to visit in London than Old Saint Pancras cemetery.

Huge trees shade the place; in winter, their trunks are stark, and you can  hear their twigs rattling above you. Sometimes one hurtles down, blown off by a gust of wind. Behind loom tall brick tenements, bare and gloomy like Scottish castles. And everywhere, of course, are gravestones. Just take a stormy sky and the threat of rain, and you could fancy yourself on the set of a horror film.

Both the railway and the canal are close – Thomas Hardy, in his first career as an architect before he discovered his gift for writing, worked on the railway and apparently had to rebury bones that were dug up in the process. But despite that, this place seems hidden away. It goes back to before the Norman Conquest, and perhaps you can sense that in the atmosphere, though there’s nothing medieval left here now.

There are some fascinating people buried in this cemetery. Mary Wollstonecraft, early feminist, was buried here with her husband William Godwin; you can still see the monument, though the bodies were moved some time ago. Sculptor John Flaxman, England’s greatest neoclassical artist, is buried in a vault here. So is the Chevalier d’Eon, a French transvestite and spy.

There’s one tomb here that’s particularly interesting – it’s that of Sir John Soane, the architect who built the Bank of England and the fine house on Lincoln’s Inn Fields that is now the Soane Museum. It’s typical of Soane in the way it takes reserved classical forms, but uses them to create a memorable and quite distinctive outline.

Look carefully and you’ll see he has also used some interesting symbolism. Besides the little weeping figures, which are typical of Neoclassical sculpture, he’s added the ouroboros – the snake which eats its own tail, and is a symbol of eternity – and pineapples.

It’s an elegant piece that doesn’t seem particularly gloomy – the only thing around here that is, instead, delicate and refined. (Indeed one critic even calls it cheerful!)

By the way, there’s a lovely irony in the fact that St Pancras Old Church is actually younger than New St Pancras! The ‘new’ church on Euston Road, a splendid classical building, was erected in 1818-22. But the Old church, in this cemetery, was refurbished – in fact almost totally rebuilt – in 1848.

Photo credit: Matt Brown on flickr

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London station pubs are generally rather disappointing. Their prices are often high, the beer offering lacklustre (fizzy keg for the most part), and the premises depressing.

The Betjeman Arms might mark an interesting new departure.  It has real ale – Adnams, Meantime, and Sharp’s (‘Betjeman Bitter’) as well as Belgian beer. That’s a very interesting list for a London pub, with three ales usually on handpump.
At £3 a pint, prices are not extortionate for London. And while I’m not a lover of the faux-traditional style, at least it’s not a fluorescent strip-lit waste of seventies decor, like so many other station pubs. Still,  I’d rather sit outside (there’s a little roped off area with tables as you can see in the picture) and admire the Victorian glass roof of the station, and watch people passing by.

The only downside, I think, is the food prices. The menu looks interesting, but the prices are steep.

Oh yes. One warning, which I have from North London CAMRA (I didn’t use the facility myself when I was there) – the toilets are really, truly, unisex! You have been warned!

Photo credit – Ewan Munro on flickr 

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When William Henry Barlow set up the train shed, it was the largest single span structure ever built. The lovely pale eggshell blue of the painted ironwork  and the fine curves of the roof are still one of London’s great sights.

In front of the station, the Midland Grand Hotel by Giles Gilbert Scott looks like a mixture of Addams family haunted house and fairy tale castle.  Scott mixed eclectic elements of Gothic style from France and Italy to create a highly decorative, polychrome exterior.

But unfortunately though the train shed has been preserved, the whole townscape behind St Pancras and King’s Cross has been destroyed. All the gasometers are gone except one (though some are apparently in storage, broken down into pieces) – and if you think a gasometer can’t be beautiful, go and have a look at it. The classical detailing is every bit as fine as if it were a Renaissance palace.  All the little buildings tucked in the railway have been razed, and instead we’re going to get some great new office buildings, just like anywhere else in London.

And the Culross Buildings are coming down, too. Here they are, surrounded by barbed wire, unloved and condemned. No, this isn’t a listed building and it’s not as fine as the train shed, but it’s a fine little building in its way – look at that lovely yellow-brown brick where the sun has caught it, and the touches of red brick that give it definition and articulation.  This 1890s building encapsulates the spirit of late Victorian London – dignity, a certain plainness, and the use of that lovely brickwork.

I was quite impressed at first by the restoration of St Pancras station. But the hypocrisy and the high level of spin involved in restoring one Victorian building while making away with an entire urban landscape right next to it is appalling. If the developers really cared about the architectural heritage, the Culross buildings and the gasometers would have been saved.

Photos: Andrea Kirkby

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I rather like this statue of Sir John Betjeman in St Pancras station. (It’s on the upper level, on the way to the champagne bar.) How much nicer it is than the much bigger ‘kiss’ statue which takes pride of place in the restored Victorian station.

Martin Jennings created the image of the poet looking up at the wonderful Victorian roof of the station, as if he was seeing it for the first time. Betjeman is slightly rumpled, his coat blowing around him, his hat probably about to fly off, but the sense of wonder on his face gives the statue a little seriousness too.

As I stood in the station I watched people reacting to the statue. Some read the words of one of Betjeman’s poems which are written in a circle around the statue; others stood next to Betjeman for a photograph. Since the statue is slightly super-life-size, the photos probably show them like children standing next to a rather bumbling headmaster – so the statue’s nice sense of humour comes out strongly. But no one looked at the statue’s face – which I think is a pity.

Photo credit: Andrea Kirkby

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His Angel of the North started a trend for public authorities to commission sculpture. But he’s disappointed in the standard of what is being set up.

One work that deserves this ire is “Meet me at St Pancras” by Paul Day. Gormley singles it out, and I dislike it too. Its photo-finish makes the folds of fabric seem almost slimy, everything is rounded like a Beryl Cook painting, but without the humour. And it tugs at the heart-strings in a nauseous way like a three-year-old Hollywood child star – “Look at me! I’m being passionate!” Ugh. I really do think kitsch is the word for this. Woolies will probably start doing figurines for your mantelpiece.

The restoration of this fantastic Victorian station scores highly on architectural merit. But this is not one of its successes. Oh dear.

Photo credit: Victoria Peckham, on Flickr

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But I’ve discovered a secret. Just follow the street that goes along the right hand side of the station (looking down the tracks), and you’ll find Camley Street Natural Park- a lovely little hideout just ten minutes’ walk from the station.

You’d think there’s not much you can do with two acres on an ex-industrial site. But by creating little mounds and hills, ponds and thickets, the London Wildlife Trust has made a semi-wilderness where you can wander, lost, for half an hour, protected from the traffic just a couple of hundred yards away.

There’s a willow wigwam. There’s a ‘garden in a skip’ which has been made entirely out of salvaged materials. And from the hill at the south of the garden there are fine views of the one remaining gasometer – a beautiful remnant of the Victorian industrial glory that was swept out of the way by the new Eurostar terminal.

There are reeds waving in the wind, rustling against each other, and coots in the pond paddling frantically to evade you. This little green oasis is now my regular stop if I have half an hour to spend before checking in. How I wish all railway stations had a park like this one close by!

Camley Street Natural Park is open Thursday to Sunday 10-5 in term time, 7 days a week in school holidays

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