Stories – Page 4 – King's Cross Story Palace

1990s Chalton St, London, UK

Lost and Found

Andrea Smith was born in 1966, and adopted as a baby. She grew up in Manchester, and moved to London in the early 1990s. The knowledge that the people who had raised her were not her blood family sparked an ‘existential quest for self’ in Andrea that took the form of meticulous research into her ...

1980s Somers Town, London, UK

Where the Buffalo Roam

Jane Penton was born a Kiwi, but having an English grandfather allowed her to move to the UK during the eighties. Over the ten years that Jane was in London, she spent time living and squatting around Somers Town, an area of King’s Cross behind The British Library. I spoke with Jane via e-mail last year, ...

1985 Somers Town, London, UK

The lovely Somers Town people

It isn’t Somers Town Father Philip Dyson grew up in the north of England, and moved to Somers Town in 1980. He spent 15 ½ years there, as the Vicar at St Mary’s Church. A community of “old Cockneys” inhabited the Somers Town that Father Philip remembers. There was no development around either of the ...

1972 Crowndale Rd, London, UK

From life to art, and back to life again

George Eugeniou approaches playwriting as a cycle: it starts on the ground, with his community, where he embeds himself in the lives and struggles of the people around him. He then pours that experience back into the creative melting pot, and makes work that is rooted in the concerns of his time and place. This ...

1970-1980 King's Cross, London, UK

Heavy duty partying in King’s Cross

Eileen was born on Christmas day, 1954. She was reportedly due ‘before or slightly after’ Christmas, and her mother hoped she’d stick to that appointment, not wanting the new arrival to interfere with the festive jollities. But baby Eileen was eager (or else reticent) and arrived on the 25th, and luckily, everyone was glad. For ...

1980s Argyle Street, London, UK

Window boxes and needle exchanges

Sioned Churchill’s first job in King’s Cross was at the Neighbourhood Centre on Argyle Street, where she organised activities for older people. At the time she was struck by the camaraderie and sense of community that she found there. The residents were cheerful, resilient and full of humour, despite the hardship that some of them ...

1980-2000 King's Cross, London, UK

Contestation on the dance floor

Huw Arfon Williams was born in 1959, and came to London in 1983. We meet him to discuss gay London from the 80s onwards, in a stylish members’ club in Soho. It’s a fitting place to meet Huw, who is a stylish man, but when he declares that the sartorial choices he made in the ...

1980 - 1990s Pentonville Rd, London, UK

There was something in the gritty, shitty air of King’s Cross

After graduating from Warwick University, Rob Pateman moved into a rundown flat in Finsbury Park and spent his 20’s exploring his sexuality on London’s gay scene. A key part of his education and centre of his social universe was The Bell, an iconic gay pub at Kings Cross. He worked on the door for several ...

1980 - 1990s Pentonville Rd, London, UK

Ghosts on the dance floor

Debbie Smith, Heritage Coordinator, Musician and DJ on her memories of King’s Cross and The Bell. I met Debbie one chilly October morning in her offices at the grand and glorious Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives at Bancroft Library. We talked about her past as a frequenter of The Bell (now The Big ...

2018 King's Cross, London, UK

It’s very much an interaction, between the people and the place

Sue McCarthy is a member of the Camden and the Clerkenwell & Islington Tour Guides Associations, with a special interest in Women’s History. Sue helped devise a walking tour around an exhibition on notable women in the King’s Cross area created by the King’s Cross Visitor Centre. In the few hours Sue and I spent ...

1972 King's Cross, London, UK

I wanted to jump, I wanted to turn

I interviewed James Stewart Grant at his house in Stoke Newington in July 2017. James has one of those wonderful homes that you sometimes stumble across working on projects like this – full of original artworks, and lined with books. Over the course of the morning we spoke about his arrival in London from Edinburgh, ...

1987 King's Cross Station, London, UK

I’ve always been interested in transport

As Collections Officer at the London Transport Museum, Keith Raeburn helps look after London’s rich and varied transport history. For as long as Keith can remember transport, trains and buses have framed his life. Growing up in West London without a car, family trips were always taken using public transport, leaving Keith with an enduring ...

1920-2017 Caledonian Rd, Kings Cross, London

Let me call you sweetheart

We first met Queenie while running a story sharing event at the Millman St Community Centre in Camden. Queenie’s presence at these sessions was always felt. Shouting out when she remembered things – always keen for a sing along, her love for the area she has spent a lifetime in was clearly evident. At 97 ...

1980s King's Cross, London, UK

If you can’t kill yourself, you get on and live

Jonathan Blake was born in 1949. That makes him 68 years old when we meet him to talk about his memories of King’s Cross and LGSM, in September 2017. He is officially a pensioner, he tells me proudly; he never expected to be able to say that, having been diagnosed with HTLV-3 – which later ...

1980s Pentonville Rd, London, UK

Movements: The Bell

On May Day 1980 a boy from Manchester and a boy from Plymouth arrived in London. They were Martin and Berni of Movements and had met in Plymouth a year earlier when Berni was a student and Martin was a local. They had been involved in local gay and anti-Nazi activism movements. They also shared ...

1980s The Scala, King's Cross, London, UK

It was such a good time

Growing up in suburban Surrey was a far cry from the edgy world of King’s Cross in the 1980’s. Sue Smallwood escaped what she describes as the back stabbing environment of rural England to experience something altogether different. Despite it’s reputation as a dangerous place filled with prostitutes and drug pushers – Sue found a ...