My sister read an article about how Kings Cross development was menacing a relict of the past, the Kings Cross Gasholders.She sent me the cutting and one day I visited the area by chance and discovered this almost unknown London landmark.
Kings Cross is now a territory taken over by civil works firms busily completing the new train station and urban development.
This is a satellite view of the area taken from Google maps (NW1 1UR). The round is the frame the only gasholder surviving from a total of eight.
The huge railway building of the photo occupies the area where a number of gasholders were built between 1879 and 1881 for the Gas, Light and Coke Company.
Decommissioned and abandoned for decades, the Kings Cross Gasholders are being dismantled. The only one left lies now suspended in time and surrounded by the piled frames of its former neighbours. I took the picture above in the summer of 2005.
I could see a happy kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) perching in the tallest section of the remaining frame. It would be wrong to remove the last surviving witness of the industrial past of London.
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