Wollstonecraft Walk

To celebrate 27 April 1759, the birth of Mary Wollstonecraft in Spitalfields, London

The walk on 26 April 2009 traversed Bloomsbury, St Pancras, and Kings Cross - from Tavistock Square to Old St Pancras churchyard, to Wollstonecraft's tombstone.

1. Gandhi's statute (Fredda Brilliant)
2. BMA House by Lutyens
3. The Place Centre for Contemporary Dance Flaxman Terrace - (accessible)
4. St Pancras New Church - NeoClassical
5. Camden Town Hall - 1930s Landmark for Borough of St Pancras
6. St Pancras - the origins, Borough and Station
7. Argyle Square Kings Cross
8. St Chads Well Kings Cross, by the Fleet River
9. Regent Quarter regeneration
10. Kings Cross Station rapidly changing
11. Platform 9 3/4 - Hogwarts Express
12. German Gymnasium
13. Camley Street Reserve - Nature in Kings Cross and the Regents Canal
14. Old St Pancras Church - return to Wollstonecrafts tombstone memorial

1. Gandhi
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was a prominent political and spiritual leader of India and the Indian independence movement. He was the pioneer of satyagraha—resistance to tyranny through mass civil disobedience, firmly founded upon ahimsa or total non-violence—which led India to independence and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. He is commonly known around the world as Mahatma Gandhi.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi

Tavistock Square is uniquely significant. Statue of Gandhi by British sculptor Fredda Brilliant, was gifted to London by the Indian High Commissioner in Britain in 1967, installed in 1968, and unveiled by the Labour prime minister of the day, Harold Wilson. (opendemocracy.net)
There is also a memorial to conscientious objectors (unveiled in 1995), busts of Virginia Woolf and Dame Louisa Aldrich-Blake as well as a cherry tree planted in 1967 in memory of the victims of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tavistock_Square

2. BMA
BMA House, a grade II listed building, was originally designed for the Theosophical Society before the First World War. Sir Edwin Lutyens' wife, a theosophist, introduced him to the Society's President Mrs Annie Besant who subsequently commissioned Lutyens to design a headquarters for the Society.

3. The Place Flaxman Terrace - (accessible)
The Place is the UK’s premier centre for contemporary dance, uniting training, creation and performance in one unique building. Working with dancers from age 5 upwards, The Place brings new talent into the dance profession and guides artists through their careers. The Place’s activities include London Contemporary Dance School, Richard Alston Dance Company, The Place Prize and the Robin Howard Dance Theatre, together with pioneering education, outreach and professional development projects.
http://www.theplace.org.uk

4. St Pancras New Church
The church is on Euston Road, in the northern boundary of Bloomsbury. It was built as a new principal church for the parish of St Pancras, which once stretched almost from Oxford Street to Highgate. The Old Church became a chapel of ease (and now has its own separate parish). During the 19th century many further churches were built to serve the burgeoning population of the original parish, and by 1890 it had been divided into 33 ecclesiastical parishes.
The steps of the church were one of several sites used for floral tributes after the 7 July 2005 London bombings.

5. Camden Town Hall
Camden Town Hall is the town hall for the London Borough of Camden, located along Euston Road (opposite the main front of St Pancras railway station) and Judd Street to its rear. It was built on the site of Georgian terrace housing in the 1930s in the neoclassical style and extended in the 1970s

6. St Pancras
Saint Pancras, the saint martyred c.304 AD
St Pancras was originally a medieval parish which ran from close to what is now Oxford Street north as far as Highgate, and from what is now Regent's Park in the west to the road now known as York Way in the east, boundaries which take in much of the current London Borough of Camden, including the central part of it. However, as the choice of name for the borough suggests, St Pancras has lost its status as the central settlement in the area. The district now encompassed by the term "St Pancras" is not easy to define, and usage of St Pancras as a place name fairly limited.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Pancras,_London

7. Argyle Square
The Argyle Square Sound Trail was a participating feature in The London Architecture Biennale 2006, which ran from June 16-25 2006
http://www.kingscrossvoices.org.uk

Battle Bridge The area was previously a village known as Battle Bridge which was an ancient crossing of the River Fleet. The original name of the bridge was Broad Ford Bridge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kings_Cross,_London

8. St Chads Well
St Chad's Well stood near the 'Battle Bridge', an ancient arched bridge which crossed the Fleet. The area surrounding the bridge was called Battle Bridge until 1836 when a statue of King George IV was erected at the meeting of what are now Grays Inn Road, Kings Cross Road and York Way, thus Battle Bridge became the 'King's Cross'. The strongest tradition associated with Battle Bridge is that the name commemorated the final battle between the British led by Boudicca, and the Romans. Boudicca and 80,000 Britons are said to have been slaughtered here.
http://people.bath.ac.uk/liskmj/living-spring/sourcearchive/fs1/fs1cp1.htm

9. Regent Quarter
"King's Cross is set to become one of London’s liveliest urban areas, with its business and residential communities diversifying in response to regeneration and investment."

"Regent Quarter is a major new development in the area, boasting a refreshing mix of refurbished Georgian and Victorian buildings and state of the art new construction. Providing space to suit all tastes, preferences, and uses, offering large scale, high specification office buildings and smaller studio-style offices."
http://www.regentquarter.com

10. Kings Cross Station
King's Cross station is a major railway terminus opened in 1852. The station is located on the edge of Central London, on junction of the A501 Euston Road and York Way, in the Kings Cross district and within the London Borough of Camden on the border of the London Borough of Islington.

King's Cross forms the southern terminus of the East Coast Main Line, one of the UK's major railway backbones. Immediately to the west is St Pancras station, the terminus for international Eurostar trains, and the two stations share King's Cross St. Pancras tube station on the London Underground network.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_King%27s_Cross_railway_station

http://www.kingscrossenvironment.com/

Website about efforts by the local community to keep the streets of Kings Cross in London clean and live-able. See also http://www.kingscrossaccess.com/

11. Platform 9 3/4
The ride on the Hogwarts Express starts from King's Cross railway station platform 9 3/4, which is invisible to Muggle eyes and is reached by walking through the barrier between platforms 9 and 10.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_9_3/4#Platform_Nine_and_Three_Quarters

12. German Gymnasium (51° 31' 56.45" N, 0° 7' 32" W)
The German Gymnasium is in Pancras Road, London close to the new international railway station of St Pancras. It was constructed in 1864-65 for the German Gymnastics Society, a sporting association established in London in 1861 by Ernst Ravenstein. The German Gymnasium was designed by Edward A Gruning and built by Piper and Wheeler.
Laminated roof timbers showing cast iron fillets and supporting brickwork.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Gymnasium,_London

13. Camley Street Reserve
Camley Street Natural Park is an urban nature reserve near King's Cross in central London and within the London Borough of Camden. Comprising 0.8 hectares (2 acres) of land on the banks of the Regent's Canal – near St Pancras Lock, the park is a sanctuary for wildlife and an education centre. It is run by the London Wildlife Trust. A visitors' centre caters for casual visitors and school parties, though tours must be booked. A variety of habitats co-exist in the park's small environs, including wetlands, meadow and woodland, which attract insects, amphibians, birds, and at least six species of mammals - not counting homo sapiens!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camley_Street_Natural_Park

14. Old St Pancras Church
St Pancras Old Church is a parish church on Pancras Road in the London Borough of Camden. It is believed to be one of the oldest sites of Christian worship in London and in England, although the building itself is largely Victorian. It forms part of the Church of England and is dedicated to St Pancras, a Roman martyr. The surrounding area and its international railway station are named for the church and parish.

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, St Pancras was famous for its cemeteries, and as well as the grave yard of Old St Pancras Church, it also contained the church yard cemeteries of St James's Church, Piccadilly, St Giles in the Fields, St. Andrew's, Holborn, St. George's Church, Bloomsbury, and St George the Martyr Holborn.[4] These were all closed under the Extramural Interment Act in 1854, and so the parish bought new land near East Finchley, so that burials could take place far away from the city at the new St Pancras Cemetery.[5] These deserted cemeteries were left alone for over thirty years until the building of the Midland Railway, meaning bodies and graves had to be removed. The famous author Thomas Hardy was involved in removing many of the graves whilst he was studying architecture. Particularly, he added a number of stones around a tree, now known as Hardy's Tree. [6]. The cemeteries were later disturbed in 2002 - 2003 for construction of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, but much more care was given to the removal of remains, than in the 19th Century.

Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft 27 April 1759 – 10 September 1797 was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and feminist. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book. Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason.

She was buried at Old Saint Pancras Churchyard, and a memorial to her was constructed there, though both her and Godwin's remains were later moved to Bournemouth. Her tombstone reads, "Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: Born 27 April 1759: Died 10 September 1797."

Mary_Wollstonecraft (wikipedia)
Mary Wollstonecraft twitter
Timeline_of_Mary_Wollstonecraft
Kings Cross