North London Food & Culture

Should Kentish Town be renamed “Camden North”?

Yesterday the Londonist published a map suggesting alternative names for all 270 tube stations. Those of a sensitive K-Town disposition should cover their eyes now

Eh? The bizarre Londonist map.
Eh? The bizarre Londonist map. Image: Londonist

A couple of weeks ago our pals at the Londonist asked their readers to “rename” the stations on the tube map.

“Not peculiar or outrageous names,” they wrote, “but ones that might equally serve the location. For example, Tottenham Court Road could be named after nearby Soho Square. Or maybe Holborn could be called Kingsway.”

Okaaay. Readers inevitably left hundreds of suggestions, varying from the pragmatic to attempts at humour – and lashings of the idiotic. The results were published yesterday, and what a by turns pragmatic and strange old map it makes.

For example, why is Tufnell Park rebranded Waterlow Park (surely nowhere near)? Archway as the dour-sounding Whittington?


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And Camden Central for Camden Town, a name which evokes a thousand pop songs? Really? (Incidentally, have you seen which station is renamed Grafton?)

But most bizarre is that Kentish Town has disappeared to become Camden North. As any resident will bang on about, this doesn’t make any sense at all in 2014, its identity being entirely separate from its rowdier southern cousin. Thank goodness, then, that this is all only a bit of fun.

The map in full.
The map in full. Can’t read all the names? Head to the original here.

“We’re rather proud of our brand new parallel London,” say the Londonist here. “Now we just have to start using these new monikers in public — and slowly replace each map at every single tube station, then our work is done.”

Not according to Kentishtowner reader Joe Flatman. “This is close on being a declaration of war,” he emailed us yesterday. (There was at least one smiley-face emoticon after that sentence.)

So: does Camden North have a nice ring to it? Or is it over your dead body? Ahem.


7 thoughts on “Should Kentish Town be renamed “Camden North”?”

  1. I think that perhaps you should chill out and learn to take the branding and marketing exercise you are taking forward with this publication (which I admire, btw) not so seriously every now and then?

  2. Why would Mornington Crescent be called Grafton? Not only is it famous for being a game on radio’s I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue but it also features in the very old music hall song The Night I Appeared As Macbeth, where the actor laments “and they made me a present of Mornington Crescent, and they threw it a brick at a time.” The song originated at the Bedford Music Hall which once stood on Camden High Street (and where my grandmother worked in the ticket office).

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7 thoughts on “Should Kentish Town be renamed “Camden North”?”

  1. I think that perhaps you should chill out and learn to take the branding and marketing exercise you are taking forward with this publication (which I admire, btw) not so seriously every now and then?

  2. Why would Mornington Crescent be called Grafton? Not only is it famous for being a game on radio’s I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue but it also features in the very old music hall song The Night I Appeared As Macbeth, where the actor laments “and they made me a present of Mornington Crescent, and they threw it a brick at a time.” The song originated at the Bedford Music Hall which once stood on Camden High Street (and where my grandmother worked in the ticket office).

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