2013 Various Offices

History:

• THE BOYS’ HOME CHAPEL               1872-1920

Interior of the Chapel

Part of the Boys’ Home   (see 119)

At first, the boys attended morning and evening prayers in a schoolroom, joined by local residents who still had no church. St Mark’s was not large enough.

Demand by the many new worshippers led to construction, in about 1867, of a temporary iron church, known to have been somewhere between Erskine and Ainger Roads. This was the predecessor to St Mary’s, Primrose Hill.

The boys had their own Chapel built on this site in about 1872. 

Since the Boys’ Home closed in 1920, this chapel building has had various uses. It was saved from threatened demolition in 1995 by a vigorous local campaign which ended successfully in the High Court in 1997.

•  VENEER MANUFACTURES  Souhami & Co. Ltd   1930-65
•  THEATRE REHEARSAL SPACE         1960-1971 An offshoot of the Hampstead Theatre
•  music recording studios 1970s
  

  1966

• SQUATTERS 1970s
•  NIGHT CLUB The Howff            late 1970s.

Since the original post we’ve been contacted by John Charnock, a friend of the late Seumas Ewens who used to run the Howff night club in the 1970s. He’s supplied the following images, and we’re pleased to add a link to a site paying tribute to Seumas too http://seumasewens.co.uk/ The site quotes the Kentishtowner on the Howff:  “The pubs were faded, the parking options plentiful. Rehearsal spaces and workshops filled disused stables. A former squat operated as a sweaty nightclub, The Howff, in the building that was later to become the Creation Records office. It brought a few people staggering up from the scene around the Enterprise and Roundhouse, but this was otherwise a quiet backwater of the equally down-on-its-luck Camden Town.”

•  [various offices]   1980s – present

2013 and the cars are better