Twenty past five
Beneath the old clock, crowds board trains
At busy Kings Cross
At Kings Cross railway station
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The moving story of St Martin’s School of Art
THE MOVING STORY OF ST MARTINS SCHOOL OF ART
MY INTEREST IN the St Martins School of Art derives from the fact that my mother made sculpture there during most of the 1950s and in the first half of the 1960s.
St Martins was founded in 1854 by the Vicar of St Martins in the Fields, Henry Mackenzie. It was first housed in Shelton Street (formerly, ‘Castle Street’), near to the Seven Dials and Covent Garden. In 1859, it became independent of the Church. By the 1930s, the school had moved into a Modernist building designed for the London County Council by E. P. Wheeler and H. F. T. Cooper, about whom very little is known. It was in this building, now occupied by Foyles bookshop, that my mother worked as a sculptor.
In 1989, St Martins merged with the Central School of Art and Design. The new entity is called Central St Martins. Since 2011, it has been housed in a converted warehouse complex on Granary Square at King’s Cross. Today, the 17th of September 2024, I visited its splendid, spacious premises, which combine well-preserved elements of its industrial precursor with excellent 21st century architectural features. I was there to look at material in the archives, which proved most interesting, and about which I will write in the future.
Whenever I think of St Martins, I am moved, not because it has shifted several times, because I am moved remembering my mother’s association with it.
Gas holders at London’s Kings Cross now reused for householders
The remains of former gas storage units (gasometers) have been spruced up and repurposed as blocks of flats (near King’s Cross Station). Where the telescopic, cylindrical gas holders used to be, there are now cylindrical apartment blocks.
A friend pointed out:
” I marvel at the ingenuity and question how you’d furnish such impractical circular geometry that would probably require bespoke furniture. But frankly if you can afford to buy/rent one, you should be able to foot that expense!”
She has made some good points about these buildings.
A ghost sign on a building near Kings Cross railway station
Definition: GHOST SIGNS are ” … fading advertisements once painted by hand onto buildings …”
The photograph above is a simple example. Now a branch of Nando’s, this place in York Way (near Kings Cross station), which bears a ghost sign. It used to house a place where other refreshments were available long before Nando’s company was established.
Gasometers
New developments at King’s Cross, London
Once they stored gas,
now to dwellings converted
where trendy people reside
yamey 