Kings Cross Road – Breathless Bamboo

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Marchmont Street

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Kings Cross Road – Metal Church mirrors

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Kings Cross Jail and the Riceyman Steps

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A spacious country house stood on this spot for hundreds of years until the 19th century called Bagnigge House, next to the two local springs (now lost).It is documented that it was a summer residence for Charles II’s mistress Nell Gwynne. The spa was opened to the public around the 1760’s, and it became a fashionable meeting place; there was a bowling green and skittle alley, and tea and ale was served. The site is now heavily built upon but the springs are commemorated in local road names of ‘Wells Street’ and ‘Gwynne Place’. A stone inscription said to have come from Nell Gwynne’s House is now set into the wall of number 63, Kings Cross Road.

Farringdon Road – Mount Pleasant

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The Royal Mail Mount Pleasant Sorting Office (often shortened as Mount Pleasant) is the largest sorting office operated by Royal Mail in London, England and probably the largest sorting office in the world.
It was officially opened on 30 August 1889 when the Post Office Sites Act was passed by Parliament. It was built on the location of the former Coldbath Fields Prison, that ceased to function in 1885. The original prison gate was incorporated into the post office and not demolished until 1901. The remaining sections of the prison were demolished in 1929, when the new wing was built as an extension to the Letter Office. From 1927 to 2003 Mount Pleasant was connected to other major Royal Mail offices and railways stations in London via the London Post Office Railway. In the 1970s, it pioneered the use of Optical Character Recognition for sorting purposes with the installation of a machine in 1979.
Mount Pleasant hosts the British Postal Museum & Archive, located in Freeling House on the back of the sorting office.

Mao Zedong at Kings Cross Bridge

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For many many years a stencil of Mao Zedong has looked down on the Kings Cross traffic above the Americana shop.

Grays Inn Road North – Scales, Weights and Weighing Machines

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