The last of the light blues connects the other two, namely Euston Road and the Angel Islington. That's because it's another segment of the New Road, London's first bypass, which was driven across fields in the 1740s to help speed livestock to market. It's named Pentonville Road after the 'new town' of Pentonville, an early suburb which grew up in those fields in the 1770s, which in turn was named after the local landowner Henry Penton. It became more industrial in the 1800s, then more mixed, and today it's a not entirely attractive hotchpotch with a few heritage leftovers. A one-way system in the King's Cross area means it's only possible to drive the full length from west to east so I'll be walking it that way too, even though it's uphill.
Pentonville Road kicks off at the major road junction outside King's Cross station under the watchful eye of The Lighthouse. This lead-covered tower sits atop a flatiron-style block of shops built in the 1870s after digging the Metropolitan Railway had messed up the area somewhat. Today the sharp end contains a Five Guys restaurant and the upper floors have recently been gutted to create swish office space with meeting room names like Atari and Abacus, which just goes to show that appearances can be deceptive. The northern side of the road starts with a McDonalds, then an unprepossessing alleyway leads to the first fruits of a major redevelopment called Regent Quarter. I watched as workmen at the former Pompidou Cafe smashed up the floor tiles and ripped out the counter, this because a traditional 'Breakfast Sandwiches Pasta Salads Cakes Coffee Coca-Cola' offering alas has no place in the RQ vision going forward.
The next major landmark is the Scala, originally the King's Cross Cinema when it opened in 1920, which is topped off with a chunky dome. A blue plaque on the wall confirms that Lou Reed and Iggy Pop played their first gigs here in July 1972 and, less obviously, that it's also where their respective album cover photos were taken. In the 1980s the film offering went more leftfield, then went bust, and since 1999 the building's housed a fairly iconic nightclub (where yes I absolutely have). Alongside is the former satellite entrance to King's Cross station which closed 'temporarily' during lockdown, is now fully boarded up and in the absence of cash is unlikely to ever open again. As footfall fades the retail offering starts to decline, now with minimarkets and off licences amid the eateries, although it is still possible for wandering travellers to buy a wide selection of London postcards. And then the climb begins.
A second flatiron building protrudes on the corner of King's Cross Road and is again propped up by a sitdown burger chain. The Ethiopian Christian Fellowship Church merely shows its backside to the street, and has been saving the souls of Ethiopians and Eritreans living in the UK since 1990. Nextdoor the blight of facadism is in full flow, the front and side of a former Victorian terrace propped up with scaffolding so that fresh floors of office space can be concocted behind. It's just another chapter in the story of Pentonville Road's former fabric being sequentially destroyed, indeed it's proved to be a highly replaceable street. Already modernised, across multiple former footprints, are chunky office developments called Malvern House, Caledonia House, York House and something glibly called Chapter, a panelled bulwark where student accommodation is available from, eek, £315 a week. If you're the white-haired man who at this point asked me 'Are you lost?' thanks, but I was merely taking notes.
In good news Pentonville Road has an interesting bit and we've just reached it. It's Joseph Grimaldi Park, a former churchyard where the gravestones have been shifted to create lawns, gardens and recreational space, indeed the local primary school appear to use it for their PE lessons. Joseph Grimaldi's grave has not been cleared but is instead surrounded by ribboned railings and decorated with red roses, creating a point of panto pilgrimage for the famed Regency clown. An odder tribute is a black coffin-shaped panel embedded in the grass closer to the road, which it turns out is made from springy panels with bells underneath, which you're supposed to jump on like a game of musical hopscotch. And the building in the centre isn't the original chapel, merely a 1990s office block designed to resemble it, and which since last summer has been the cutting edge London office of the RNIB. Told you it was interesting.
Back on the main road a brief interlude of multi-storey council housing is followed by a lot more tediously modern commercial development. One's got a Tesco under it, one's occupied by another sensory-based charity and one substantial former warehouse is now used for lockable self-storage. Only one pre-war parade of shops survives and it includes the street's most intriguingly named store, Pentonville Rubber. You may or may not be disappointed to discover it's a proper old-school business specialising in flooring, sheeting and piping, where aproned gents will cut you multiple thicknesses of latex and whose window display is currently promoting different shades of memory foam. Long may it survive. The next turnoff (by the pub) is called Penton Street and was originally a footpath leading from Clerkenwell up towards Highgate before the suburb of Pentonville came along.
The unusual thing about Claremont Square is that it has a reservoir in the middle. Normally it'd be the three sides of pristine Georgian terraces that'd draw the eye but instead the 4m-high grassy mound in the middle is dominant, especially when scattered with daffodils. This conceals a Victorian reservoir capable of holding 16 million litres of water, which itself was built on the site of the Upper Pond added by the New River Company in 1709. The north side of the square on Pentonville Road instead boasts dull prestige flats, plus a DoubleTree hotel I once paid to stay in but then spent the night in an entirely different room. Just before The Castle pub a green road sign points in capital letters towards The NORTH, suggesting you turn off here via White Lion Street (another Pentonville spine road) rather than staying on the ring road until the Angel.
You finally get some idea of Pentonville Road's former glories from the mightyterrace comprising number 25 to 73. This magnificent run of four-storey houses dates back to the 1820s and followed the then-rule that all buildings must be at least 50 feet back from the roadway. Residents have semi-shared front gardens behind a line of iron railings, and judging by the letters ABCD on most front doors must get only one floor of each building to themselves. The chapel opposite has recently been converted for use by the Crafts Council, and I would have gone inside to enjoy their latest exhibition had I not passed by on a day they're closed. As modern architecture re-intrudes, including a particularly horrible grey cuboid that replaced a bike shop, we reach the empty shell of a former Co-op bank. And that's the site of the Angel Islington, the first of the light blue squares I reported on a few weeks' back, so the first side of the board is complete.
