Really great to see the latest architectural wonder in London – the recently opened Coal Drops Yard in King’s Cross. Designed by UK’s ‘star of the moment’ architect Thomas Heatherwick, the conversion of two 19th coal warehouses (whose roofs now take flight and reach out to touch each other) is superbly done and forms the centre piece of almost 10,000 square metres of cool stores, cafes and restaurants set alongside Regent’s Canal with vast spaces of cobbled stones and playful fountains leading in, out and around the whole area.
It looked wonderful on this cold (2 degree) winter’s day with a jet-blue sky – something we haven’t seen in quite a while. Keep it up London!
The whole King’s Cross area has in recent years been revitalised and transformed with both King’s Cross and St Pancras stations now impressively slick and efficient, with connections all over the UK and over to the continent, though who knows what’ll happen once (if ever) Brexit happens, but one can only imagine that it’ll become more difficult to move around as freely as we currently do.
The old gothic St Pancras Hotel has also been wonderfully restored, with its incredibly opulent brickwork façade. Next door is the equally impressive British Library where we saw the ‘Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms – Art, World, War’ exhibition, a superb collection of early English documents, bibles, letters, maps, contracts, artefacts and gold jewellery, including the famous Doomsday Book that lists, in detail, some 13,418 places in England and Wales as they were in the year 1085. It’s now been digitised so you can look up online your town or village. Both our home villages of Hawarden and Carshalton (and Wallington) are listed, detailing the population, taxable units, land value and the Tenant-in-chief by name and lineage. Wonderful!
Travels With My Ant 