Queen’s Crescent was laid out in 1862 though being on the edge of expanding suburbia and not particularly near to a useful station, did not develop immediately. A small street market started in 1867 but in 1876, existing market traders were moved from Malden Road to Queen’s Crescent when electrification works were undertaken on Malden Road to replace horse-drawn trams. One of the quirks of the new market location was the whistle blown to mark the start of trading each day.
The Sir Robert Peel pub dates to the earliest days of Queen’s Crescent and in 1872, no. 133, (later Frank’s Superstore) was the bookshop of literary scholar Bertram Dobell, who subsequently opened a couple of outlets on Charing Cross Road. Alongside more standard trade, Queen’s Crescent attracted artists – echoes of this aspect remain to this day in a number of establishments.
Quite separately to the initial story of Queen’s Crescent and supposedly starting with £100 of savings and capital, in 1868 a recently-married dairyman called John Sainsbury opened a grocery shop at 173 Drury Lane in the West End. The new business was immediately successful. The young couple started a family and upon the birth of their second son in 1872, decided to move to the then-edge of London and its fresh air. In their case they chose 159 Queen’s Crescent in Kentish Town. At their new home address, John and Mary Ann Sainsbury had already opened their second shop the year before and came to live in the flat above it.
The long, curving Queen’s Crescent had a ready young and affluent clientele for the Sainsbury’s grocery business, especially given the street market. While the business also opened new shops elsewhere, by the close of the 1880s, Sainsbury’s had no fewer than three shops along the street: 151 Queen’s Crescent opened in 1875 and specialised in bacon and ham. In 1884, a third branch was added at number 98.
1881 was the year of the census which showed the Sainsbury family living at no. 159 above their shop with four sons and two daughters. The census also showed 94 Queen’s Crescent being used as a hostel accommodation for six young men, aged fourteen to eighteen, who worked as ’shop men’ in the Sainsbury stores along the Crescent.
Even with the three shops, Sainsbury’s took additional stalls along the Crescent to increase selling space. The market was open late on Friday and Saturday evenings and trade was brisk. From 1867 until 1927, street trading was regulated by the police with no licensing or regulation other than the size and spacing of pitches.
Three Sainsbury stores might seem excessive but in 1914, there were also eight butchers alone on Queen’s Crescent selling “hot baked sheep’s heads, sets of brains, cowheel, hot faggots and pigs trotters 3d a feast”. One of the more famous of these butchers shops was Cole’s which closed in 2005.
The Sainsbury business was expanding rapidly and moving into bulk buying. By the 1880s, this required a large warehouse and wholesale depot which John built in Allcroft Passage situated at 90 Allcroft Road nearby. At Allcroft Passage, along with the warehousing, bacon was smoked and it also had stabling to for horses supplying the growing chain of Sainsbury stores and other businesses.
The company headquarters moved to Blackfriars in 1891 but the depot remained.
Manager and assistants at 98 Queen’s Crescent (1939)
There were few other grocers in Queen’s Crescent and the three Sainsbury’s managers competed against each other – especially during the Second World War. They watched each other’s deliveries carefully and if one was supplied with something notable and the others were not, phone calls to the depot became heated.
But shopping habits changed after the war. By the 1960s great changes were taking place in the way Londoners lived – supermarkets were arriving.
Tea shops – considered a feature of many a suburban high street – were disappearing. The Aerated Bread Company, which supplied many of the tea shops (and grocers) with bread and cakes, began to fail. In 1976, located at the corner of Camden Street and Camden Road in an imposing red-brick building with white facings, ABC made 800 people redundant and set up a smaller firm called Allied Bakeries elsewhere.
Despite a local campaign the Department of the Environment refused to list the building and within months it was demolished.
Sainsbury’s proposed to build a new supermarket on the ABC site, with 32 000 square feet of sales area and room below for 427 cars. Nicholas Grimshaw, the Waterloo Station architect designed a large market hall for the new supermarket. The three Sainsbury shops of Queen’s Crescent disappeared, overtaken by events.
The main Sainsbury’s store was replaced by Studio Prints, a workshop run by artist and printer Dorothea Wight which was responsible for printing the etchings of many prominent British artists including Lucien Freud, Ken Kiff, R. B. Kitaj, Stephen Conroy and Celia Paul. Studio Prints closed in 2011.
Despite the departure of Sainsbury’s and indeed other sad losses such as Woolworth’s, Queen’s Crescent market is still held twice-weekly (Thursday and Saturday). The market sells food, discounted clothing and a variety of household products. In 1893 there were 44 food stalls and 19 non-food stalls and over a century later in 2011, the Camden Council reported 77 operating stalls.
In 1956, Shanta and Lakshmishankar Pathak moved to Queen’s Crescent from Kenya. Whilst Lakshmishankar worked cleaning drains for the council, Shanta started a business from her kitchen making and selling Indian sweets and snacks. This business would grow into Patak’s. She soon had queues outside the door and was making deliveries across London.
Following complaints about noise and the cooking smells, in 1962 the Council gave them three months to find alternative premises. They found a converted mill in Northamptonshire and left London.
Queen’s Crescent Library was opened after a redesign by author Gillian Tindall in 1978.
In 2018 Camden Council was awarded £1.1 million from the Greater London Authority ’Good Growth Fund’ to reinvigorate Queen’s Crescent.
