Market stalls fill setted lanes and railway arches in the old stables off Chalk Farm Road, beside a twin lock worked by hand.
What Camden Town looks like
holds two chambers side by side with an island platform between them, worked by hand. A cast iron girder bridge takes over the water at the east end. West of the lock a diagonal roving bridge crosses the , its parapet rail and stone abutments deeply grooved.
The horse hospital along dates from the 1880s and 1890s, and the stable blocks behind it from the 1850s. Yellow stock brick in English bond is banded and corniced in red, under pitched slate roofs with wooden ventilation louvers on the ridge. A brick horse ramp curves round the west end to the upper floor, and the roadway beside the boundary wall is laid in stone setts.
Stalls fill the lanes between those buildings and stand inside the twenty five railway arches at the back of the site. Modern shopfronts sit in the wide ground floor openings between pairs of cast iron pilasters. Inside, cast iron columns with bell capitals carry brick jack arching. Twelve horse stalls survive on the floor above, some with their mangers and hay racks.
Camden High Street runs south from the , shopfronts on both sides. Several shops carry oversized signs on the first floor facade, among them giant shoes and dragons.
The Underground station on the corner is faced in ox-blood glazed tile. Its platforms are narrow, the northbound sitting directly above the southbound on each branch.
At the south end of the street, curves in three and four storey blocks with rounded corners at the side streets. Channelled stucco runs along the ground floors under brick upper storeys, with iron balconies across every first floor. The blocks at the corners are stuccoed to the roof. stands inside the crescent, 550 feet long in white cement coloured to look like sand, with twelve papyriform columns across the front and a pair of black cats at the entrance.
Shot in Camden Town
Two productions have shot the canal at Hampstead Road Lock. At the other end of the high street, Mornington Place has been a hideout in two films and a rundown property in a third.
Spectre, 2015
The way into MI6
Played the boat entrance to Q's MI6 basement, the Thames, London, present day
Q's MI6 workshop sits in a basement off the Thames, reached by boat through a water tunnel. That entrance was shot on the Regent's Canal at Camden Lock. Paddington 2 shot the chase along the towpath here after the book is stolen from Gruber's.
Brighton Rock, 2010
Played the gang's hideout, Brighton, East Sussex, 1964
The gang's Brighton hideout is Mornington Place, at the Mornington Crescent end of Camden High Street. The same corner was the IRA hideout in the 1952 drama The Gentle Gunman and a rundown property Peter Sarsgaard's character runs in An Education.
Brick railway viaducts stand over the canal basin at Lock 92 where the Bridgewater and Rochdale canals meet, and restored warehouses line the water there. Both places put a working lock and railway arches within one frame from the towpath. The Manchester viaducts are far wider than the single girder bridge over the lock here, and the Beetham Tower shows up in a wide shot. Keep to street level and to the towpath. Try searching canal basin railway viaducts now.
A blue brick railway viaduct runs through Digbeth and the Digbeth Branch Canal passes the Typhoo Tea factory, which has a basin off it. Small units trade under the railway arches there in the same way stalls do in the market lanes here. Staffordshire blue brick is much darker than the yellow stock brick here, so a long facade run gives it away. Frames under the arches and along the water hold up better. Try searching blue brick railway arches now.
The Dark Arches at Granary Wharf are brick tunnel vaults under Leeds City station, reached from the towpath at the end of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. Shops and bars have traded inside them, and the railway arches off the towpath here hold the same kind of unit. The Leeds vaults are taller and darker than anything on this canal, and modern towers stand over the wharf. A tight frame under one arch is the only place the two meet. Try searching canal towpath brick vaults now.
