Camley Street Natural Park: A Secret Wildlife Haven

Minutes away from the hustle and bustle and general hurly-burly of King’s Cross station is a wonderful little pocket of greenery.

At just 2 acres, the Camley Street Natural Park may be small, but it is mighty and provides a haven for wildlife in central London.

It has been closed for the last few years but this year reopened to visitors!

As is often the case with these spaces in London, its existence was far from inevitable.

Green Shoots

Before the 19th century, this area was first part of the Middlesex woodland and following that; fields.

Regent’s Canal carved its way through the landscape here in 1820, conceived to connect to the Grand Union Canal, heading North. This brought brought coal, into central London: the lifeblood of the 19th century city. The canal started to bring industry into the area (you can read my Regent’s canal walk here).

Industrial Wasteland

By the middle of the 19th century the railways had started arriving. They would proceed to utterly transform the area into a web of railway tracks, stations and goods depots. King’s Cross station opened in 1852 and St Pancras followed in 1868.

The site of the nature reserve was the location of the Great Northern Railway Company’s coal shutes or ‘drops’. These allowed coal arriving on trains to be sorted and transported elsewhere by canal or road. This is where the modern regeneration development Coal Drops Yard, just the other side of the canal, gets its name.

Fast forward to 1956 and we get the introduction of the Clean Air Act, cleaning up central London of polluting industries and fuel, such as coal. The coal drops on the site were abandoned and then demolished in the 1960’s.

Lorry Park Or Nature Park?

Various plans were put forward for this strip of ‘wasteland’, including a lorry park, more industrial buildings or perhaps a playground.

Jacqui Stearn, a local, had other ideas. She had noticed that in the absence of humans, nature had started to re-takeover the space and therefore proposed a nature park instead. With the help of others, she was able to persuade the authorities to get on board.

Camden Council gave management of the site to the Wildlife Trust in 1984, who proceeded to encourage both grassland and wetland habitats to support wildlife.

A Wildlife Haven

The park opened in 1985 and over the years thousands of local school children were welcomed through the dramatic wrought-iron gates to go pond dipping and learn about ecology.

It was nearly destroyed soon afterwards due to the initial proposed route for the Channel Tunnel’s rail link in 1988 into a new station here. The route was thankfully changed to go into St Pancras instead of building an entirely new station, find out more on that in my Keystone Crescent blog post.

The park closed in 2017 for an upgrade and reopened in October 2021.

The Park Today

The iron gates remain, but the landscape has changed a lot.

An eco-friendly new visitor centre, a cafe and education rooms has been constructed.

There are walkways, canal-side seating areas and hidden quiet corners such as the ‘dead-wood area’.

There are various different habitats, including wetland, woodland and reedbeds. Reed warblers, kingfishers, common frogs and stag beetles can all be found here amongst many other species.

Camley Street Nature Park is a lesson in, not only how quickly a space can be transformed to support nature, but also become an educational and eminently pleasant place for Londoners.

How To Visit

The nature park is free to visit and their opening hours are Wednesday-Sunday 10am-4pm. Donations however are encouraged and recommended to keep the park running, so give generously if you can.

The address is: 12 Camley Street, N1C 4PW and you can find out more on their website here.

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