Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Lewis Carroll to Alice Liddell. You can also hear recordings of several authors reading
extracts from their works. Similarly, in the
music
section, which contains oddities such as
Mozart's marriage contract and Beethoven's tuning fork, you can listen to works by Bach
and he
Beatles while perusing Purcell's autographed score.
The other galleries
The BL has several galleries in which it stages temporary exhibitions (occasionally with an
entrance charge), employing more of the library's wonderful texts, supplemented by items
from the British Museum. Stamp lovers should make their way up to the BL's gargantuan
Philatelic Collections
, made up of over eight million items, eighty thousand of which are
displayed in vertical pull-out drawers just outside the John Ritblat Gallery. The Tapling
Collection kicks off the proceedings, as it did when it was bequeathed in 1891, and in
drawer number one you'll find the famous “Penny Black”, the birthmark of modern
philately. After that you get a world tour of stamps from long-forgotten mini-kingdoms
such as Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Nowanugger. Those with a political interest should
head for the Bojanowicz Collection, which covers Polish stamps from 1939 to 1946,
including ones from the German and Russian occupations, and even POW and displaced
persons' camps. Real bo
ns should head for the Turner Collection of railway letter
stamps from the likes of the Pembroke & Tenby Railway.
7
St Pancras Old Church
Pancras Rd • Daily 9am to dusk • Free •
T
020 7387 4193,
W
oldstpancrasteam.wordpress.com •
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King's Cross St Pancras
Allegedly the first parish church built in London,
St Pancras Old Church
lies hidden and
neglected behind iron railings on raised ground behind the British Library, up Midland
Road. Apart from a little exposed Norman masonry and the sixth-century Roman altar
stone, most of the church dates from the nineteenth century. The
churchyard
, which
is overlooked by the lugubrious former Victorian workhouse (now the Hospital for
Tropical Diseases), was partially destroyed by the arrival of the railway, with the
majority of graves being heaped around an ash tree under the supervision of the writer
(then architect) Thomas Hardy.
John Soane's mausoleum
from 1816 still stands in its
original location, to the north of the church - designed initially for his wife, it was the
inspiration for Giles Gilbert Scott's red phone box design, along with the mausoleum
at Dulwich Picture Gallery (see p.312). Also originally buried here was Britain's great
protofeminist,
Mary Wollstonecraft
, who died a few days after giving birth to her
daughter, Mary. At the age of 16, the younger Mary was spotted visiting her mother's
grave by the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who immediately declared his undying love,
before eloping with her to Italy - both Marys are now buried in Bournemouth.
A list of the graveyard's most illustrious corpses is inscribed on the monumental sundial
erected by Baroness Burdett-Coutts, below which sit four beasts, two of which are
based on her collie dog - there's also a map of the prominent graves by the entrance.
THE GERMAN GYMNASIUM AND THE GASHOLDERS
King's Cross is undergoing its biggest ever transformation, and although a whole host of lovely
old buildings have bitten the dust, around twenty venerable structures have survived, among
them the
German Gymnasium
on St Pancras Road, built in the 1860s and now set to house
a restaurant. To the east of here, King's Boulevard slopes up past Google's new UK
headquarters, over the canal to the old Granary building which houses the campus for the
University of the Arts
, complete with dancing fountains, and, in the reception area, a model
of the development and a visitor centre (Mon, Thurs & Fri 10am-5pm, Tues & Wed noon-5pm,
Sat 11am-5pm), from which you can take a guided tour of the area (book on
T
020 3479
1795). Look out, too, for the brooding skeletal
gasholders
, Victorian monsters that hark back
to an era when nothing was too lowly to be given Neoclassical decoration - viz George Gilbert
Scott's ornate
St Pancras Waterpoint
, just beyond Camley Street Natural Park (see opposite).
