Camden's canal bridges still bear grooves cut by barge-towing ropes
Along the Regent's Canal in Camden Town, handrails near the bridges are scored with deep marks left by the ropes of horses that hauled barges until the 1950s. Ramps on the bank once helped horses that fell in after being spooked by passing trains. The industrial hub is now London's alternative market quarter.
The area takes its name from Charles Pratt, the 1st Earl Camden, a radical 18th-century lawyer and politician who acquired the manor of Kentish Town through marriage. His title came from Camden Place, an estate in Kent once owned by the historian William Camden. In 1791 Pratt began granting building leases, and the name appears on an Ordnance Survey map of 1822. It later passed to the Camden Town Group of early-20th-century painters and, in 1965, to the whole London Borough of Camden, whose administrative centre this is.
Transport shaped everything. The Regent's Canal cut through in 1816, and in 1837 Camden became the terminus of the North Western Railway, where goods moved from rails to roads pulled by some of London's 250,000 workhorses. Structures such as the Roundhouse of 1846, Camden Lock and the Stables were built for that trade. Even so, the district was regarded as unfashionable until at least the mid-20th century.
The markets changed its image. Camden Lock Market opened in a former timber yard in 1973, and others followed in the Stables, Buck Street and the Electric Ballroom, drawing weekend crowds hunting alternative clothing, antiques and oddities. Rising rents later pushed out many independent shops in favour of chains, and the Dr. Martens global head office moved here in 2017.
Popularity brought a bottleneck. The Tube station, designed in 1907, had to run exactly beneath narrow streets to avoid paying landowners, so its platforms are cramped and stacked one above another. Crowding became so dangerous that the station closes to outbound passengers on Sunday afternoons. A 2004 rebuilding plan that required demolishing a block of buildings was rejected after local opposition; only two of 229 letters supported it. A later redevelopment was postponed in 2018 for lack of funds, and no work had been announced by March 2026.
Source: Camden Town
