We live very near to the railway lands of Kings Cross. I walked home from the British Library earlier this week and took some phone photos. The coal drops are still scaffolded. The new spaces become more and more exciting. We bought our house on the way to thirty years ago. We were students and it was pretty much derelict. The floors had collapsed, there was a dodgy 5 amp lighting circuit, no heating, and our bathroom was a lean-to against the back wall of the house. We moved in, and did house stuff after work and at weekends. The boys came along. We still have open fires, and our bath stayed in the lean-to between the kitchen and the garden until very recently.
For a long time I used to walk down to Kings Cross and wander onto the demolition sites. Nobody bothered about my being there. I had a hard hat and my camera and I took thousands of photos, and made drawings. All the negatives are put away, and my drawings are on a bit difficult to photograph butter paper. I love stealing onto a site close to the moment before a building is demolished, I always will. There's a kind of stillness that's rare.
I found some prints of the flats which were demolished, next to the German Gym, they were the ones which I cared about the most. Below are a couple of faded old scanned demolition drawings which I made years ago. They're of a site in Kentish Town Road, by the Canal, and a site in Barnet Grove, Bethnal Green.
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