For the last twenty eight years Akin Adekeye has been running the African Arts and African Kitchen restaurant on Drummond Street. He serves up a delicious fusion of West African and Caribbean food for diners who can enjoy his culinary delights and feast their eyes on an impressive display of wooden masks and sculptures from ...
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Don Hibbs, born in 1944, is an Australian who has lived in London for longer than he has in Australia. From 1970 – 1976 he worked as Food and Beverage manager for Rowton House in King’s Cross. Now retired, he shares memories of King’s Cross in the early 1970s, the union meetings at his hotel ...
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Alex Smith was born on the 7th of November 1953, in the village of Butley, near Glastonbury. From the sacred landscape of Glastonbury, he has spiralled his way to King’s Cross, where, he told us, Blake took inspiration in the writing of Jerusalem. Alex’s is a life infused with the images and the shapes of myth. In ...
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When Bradley Roberts took over the Thornhill Arms, a 19th century pub on the corner of Caledonian Road and Wynford Road he didn’t quite know what he had signed up to. He had hardly any experience of pulling pints let alone managing the business side of the pub and so not surprisingly he found it ...
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To get to the heart of the story of Drummond Street’s Bangladeshi community you have to first take a seat in one of the oldest Bengali restaurants there and soak up its charming atmosphere. The Diwana Bhel-Poori House lies in the middle of the busy street midway between Euston Station and Hampstead Road. It’s been ...
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When increasing numbers of Italian immigrants arrived in the Kings Cross area in the late 19th century they missed the culinary delights of home. Pastas, olive oil, olives and cheeses were in short supply until an astute hardworking local man by the name of Luigi Donatantonio decided to import local produce from his native Italy. ...
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Martin Sach is the go to man if you want to know about the history of the icemen who lived and worked in Kings Cross. He’s been running the London Canal Museum on the New Wharf Road for the last 20 years. The museum is home to one of the only surviving ice wells in ...
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Edward Margiotta’s grandfather was an iceman. Like many Italian migrants at that time, he worked for the hugely successful Carlo Gatti empire, loading great blocks of ice onto a horse and cart and distributing it around the Kings Cross area in the early 1900’s. Later, when Edward’s mother was born he moved to Hammersmith where ...
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Photographer Mark Cawson moved to Cromer Street in the early 1980’s and began living in a row of four squatted blocks – Hillview Estate. It was an eclectic community of squatters including artists, musicians, circus performers, working girls and a small sub-set of people struggling with addiction. When short-life tenants – often ex-squatters themselves – ...
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