Coal office, King's Cross

The Victorian industrial landscape immediately to the north of King's Cross station has been undergoing dramatic changes over the past few years and once its redevelopment is complete, this part of London will be barely recognizable, even if many buildings will be preserved. These include the former Fish and Coal Offices, which rise over the Regent's Canal. This group of buildings, which housed the offices of the goods yards as well as some storage space, certainly dates from the 1850s. They were identified by very basic painted signs. Following the completion of the Great Northern Railway, goods from the north of England and Scotland were brought to the railway yards and warehouses that mushroomed in the area and transferred onto barges and horse-drawn carts for distribution around London.


According to the developers of King's Cross Central, the Fish and Coal Offices and the adjacent arches on Wharf Road will house a food and drink 'cluster.'

Coal
Office
Location: Wharf Road / Pictures taken in June 2011

Refreshments, King's Cross

After the Great Northern Star yesterday, here is the ghost sign left by one of its closest competitors. Found a few meters further up the street, Celestino Bertolini's refreshment rooms opened in 1916. They closed in the 1960s.

Refreshments
Location: York Way / Pictures taken in January 2012

Great Northern Star, King's Cross

Taking its name certainly from the Great Northern Railway that operated services into King's Cross station just across the road, the Great Northern Star was one of several places where travellers could have something to eat before boarding a northbound train or upon their arrival into the great metropolis.

Great Northern Star
Coffee & Dining Rooms
Great Northern Star
Coffee & Dining Rooms
Location: York Way / Pictures taken in January 2012

British Petroleum, King's Cross

Sadly the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico isn't the first and won't be the last major environmental disaster caused by extracting industries. As a major player in that field, BP has had its fair share of catastrophes and has lots to answer for.
Still, let's move away from the current controversies to the post-First World War years, a time when BP was just a trade mark of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (the name was changed to the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1935 and to the British Petroleum Company in 1954. In 1998 it became BP Amoco and finally BP in 2000. The new name doesn't mean anything). Indeed the slogan "BP The British Petrol" seems to appear on adverts printed between 1924 and 1928 only. Consequently it is reasonable to assume the painted sign below date from the mid-1920s. By then the company's logo, with the boxy 'B' and 'P', with wings on their edges, was relatively new. It had been designed by company employee A R Saunders in 1920.


Once more we've got several ads painted on this wall. The most obvious one is of course BP
The British Petrol
Of the other ones, only a couple of words are still legible but one may well have been for some breakfast cereals.Creamed
B...ey [Barley]
... [Breakfast?] Food
Something else was written in red and there was the drawing of a box on the left. What they were for may remain a mystery.

Location: King's Cross Road / Picture taken on: 19/03/2008