What exactly is the Kentish Town Panorama?

Of course Kentish Town is ancient – dating back to 1206 – and has many claims to fame. But did you realise that there exists a Kentish Town Panorama, depicting four and a half miles of local scenery at the turn of the 19th century?

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Historians say the work, completed by artist James Frederick King in 1850, is ‘without comparison’ in London, showing us ‘modest and grand buildings, domestic, public and agricultural on both sides of the principal roads of the time.’

And in many instances the Panorama, drawn in pen and wash and consisting of three rolls (one 20ft, another 15ft and a last one 3 ft), is the only record we have of what the area was like.

The longest roll shows the east side from Swain’s Lane following Highgate Road through Kentish Town Road to St Pancras Way (and St Pancras Old Church); the second depicts the west side from what is now Camden Town tube and back up to Swains Lane. The third runs from the Castle Tavern (now an estate agent’s), the old entrance to Kentish Town, right down to the Mother Red Cap in Camden (now the Camden Eye.)

When the Panorama was republished in 1986 as 26 panels, John Richardson, who provided the commentary, wrote that little is known of the artist. King was born in 1781, a middle class boy sent to ‘one of the better schools in the area.’

In the 1851 census, around the time he drew the Panorama (which aimed to depict how the area looked around 1800, in his childhood) he entered himself as a ‘retired artist’, although a death certificate gave his occupation as ‘collector of the paving rate.’

In 2025 we’ll be regularly dipping into the stories that make up the Panorama. But let’s start with the often-overlooked Assembly House pub (above).

James Frederick King handwrote this on the scroll: ‘The old Assembly House of very long standing was held in great repute, being a pleasant distance from London, when those who sought a Country Walk could meet there with every enjoyment a Country Inn could supply; besides which it was famed for Club dinners annually given, called ‘Beanfeasts.’ There was also a reserved Parlour where none but the Members of a Society called ‘Social Villagers’ were permitted to enter, which consisted of the aristocracy of the village and where many cheerful evenings were spent as far as the Glass and Pipe could furnish, to pass a convivial hour, which often cheered their buoyant spririts and sent them home ‘merry.'”

So basically nothing’s changed. Except that the pub, then one of Kentish Town’s principal drinking places (and known as the Bull until 1784), was a large, partly wooden house with a long room on the south side entered by an outside covered staircase (see above, on the left).

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The original building wasn’t to last, and it was rebuilt in 1852 and then again in 1898 in all its current Grade II-listed Victorian gothic splendour: note the etched glass and spooky corner turret.

Safe to say the building certainly looked foreboding in the rain yesterday, perched on its ancient roots right in the heart of Kentish Town.

The Kentish Town Panorama, published by the London Topographical Society in 1986, is available online at various prices upwards of around £15.