Immersive London’s Vibrant Camden Town 4K Walking Tour – Camden Market & Babylon Park Walk

Explore the vibrant vintage and street food market in Camden Town and Camden Market in London, England in 4K 60fps. 🎧 Best with headphones for an immersive experience.

London is a beautiful city and Camden Town is one of its most vibrant and picturesque districts. In this 4K video, you’ll get to explore Camden Town on a walking tour and see some of its most famous landmarks.

This is an immersive and thrilling video experience that will take you on a walking tour of Camden Town. You’ll see some of its most famous landmarks, like the Camden Market and Babylon Park, and get to learn about its history and vibrancy. If you’re in London and want to see some of the most romantic and picturesque parts of the city, this is the video for you!

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This route has a total distance of 2 km (1.26 miles).

🗺️ The map route of this walk can be found here 👉 https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1VIPWHxSqwhElUfhsIedx-9hCfuHUx9I&usp=sharing

📍 Location: Camden Town, London, UK

📜 Learn about the history and significance of each attraction by turning on Close Caption [CC]
✨ *Subscribe* to Walk with Wat now to join our community of explorers 👉 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMOg8JDzDejcn7xEtSI3vEQ?sub_confirmation=1

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Timeline of the London Camden Town walking tour:
0:00:00 – Intro/Preview
0:01:10 – Start of the walking
0:01:15 – Camden High Street
0:03:45 – Inverness Street Market
0:06:07 – Camden Buck Street
0:10:30 – Camden High Street
0:17:24 – Camden Market: Stables
0:37:27 – Camden Market: The Coal Exchanges
0:38:35 – Camden Lock Market
0:54:00 – Camden Market: Hawley Wharf
1:03:45 – Babylon Park London

🎥 Filmed in 4K Ultra high-definition for an immersive experience using DJI Osmo Action 3:
https://amzn.to/455gpYx
🎙️ Sound recorded using Zoom H1N Handy Recorder:
https://amzn.to/3ZqrwtI
📸 Additional Footage and Image captured by iPhone 13 Pro Max:

#CamdenTown #London #WalkingTour #4KVideo #Exploring #CityLife #TravelInspiration #UrbanExploration #StreetArt #Culture #Hipster #Vintage #Market #Foodie #Wanderlust

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No part of this video may be used or reproduced without my written permission.
All material in this video is original and personally recorded by myself on location.

Copyright © 2023 Walk with Wat. All Rights Reserved.

Camden Town often shortened to Camden, is an area in the London Borough of Camden Laid out as a residential district from 1791 and originally part of the manor of Kentish Town and the parish of St Pancras, Camden Town became an important location during the early development of the railways,

Which reinforced its position on the London canal network. The area’s industrial economic base has been replaced by service industries such as retail, tourism and entertainment. The area now hosts street markets and music venues that are strongly associated with alternative culture. Camden Town is named after Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden.

His earldom was styled after his estate, Camden Place near Chislehurst in Kent, formerly owned by historian William Camden. The name, which appears on the Ordnance Survey map of 1822, was later applied to the early-20th-century Camden Town Group of artists and the London Borough of Camden, created in 1965.

In front of us is the Inverness Street Market which is part of the Camden Markets Inverness Street Market is a small street market operated in Inverness Street It has been near Camden Town Tube station since the late 19th century, mostly selling produce, rather than ready-to-eat food, until the 21st century.

It started losing its traditional stalls once local supermarkets opened, a trend accelerated by the closing of a nearby bus stop which facilitated access by mid-2013 all the original stalls had been replaced by “touristy” stalls similar to those of the other markets, including fast food but not produce.

The Camden markets are several adjoining large retail markets situated around the Camden Town area Currently, there are six distinct markets in Camden Town including Inverness Street Market, Camden Lock Market Stable Market, Hawley Wharf, Buck Street Market and the Electric Ballroom

The markets were originally a collection of stalls on land with various owners, evolving into a 6.5-hectare (16-acre) patchwork of more than 1,000 stalls, bars, shops, and cafes. In 2014, Israeli billionaire Teddy Sagi started buying property in the Camden Market area.

By March 2015, having purchased the four most important of the six sections of the market, he announced plans to invest £300 million in developing the market area by 2018. The markets, initially a collection of simple stalls plus the Stables building, were heavily developed with permanent structures.

In 2022 they were offered for sale with investment bank Rothschild & Co. overseeing the sale process, the owner hoping for a price of around £1.5 billion for the markets plus housing, co-working spaces, 3,300-square-metre and a three-floor leisure centre called Babylon Park.

We are now inside another part area owned by Camden Markets called “Buck Street Market” The Buck Street Market was an outdoor market focusing on clothes. There is no formal or legal definition of Camden Market; the Buck Street Market’s sign read ‘The Camden Market’.

A few stallholders designed their own wares, while at the weekend these designs were more likely to be found in the Electric Ballroom market. Camden Town stands on land that was once the manor of Kentish Town. Sir Charles Pratt, a radical 18th-century lawyer and politician, acquired the manor through marriage.

In 1791, he started granting leases for houses to be built in the manor and in 1816, the Regent’s Canal was built through the area. The emergence of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century meant Camden was the North Western Railway’s terminal stop in 1837.

It was where goods were transported off the tracks and onto the roads of London by 250,000 workhorses. The whole area was adapted to a transportation function: The Roundhouse, Camden Lock and The Stables were examples of this. Up to at least the mid-20th century, Camden Town was considered an “unfashionable” locality.

The Camden Markets, which started in 1973 and has grown since then, attract many visitors. Apart from being known as a renowned area in London for shopping, eating, and nightlife, The most Iconic thing about Camden is how many of the shops along the high street display the iconic 3D sign

The giant 3D signs of Camden High Street achieve both functions, indicating what the premises have to sell, but also simply standing out and drawing the eye. Many of the shops with 3D signs are shoe shops with giant shoes stuck to the building

Camden is famous for its shoe shops. This is, after all, the spiritual home of Doc Martens. The signs started to appear in the 1990s, around the time that the area started to become a mainstream shopping district.

Until then it had very much been a centre for counterculture, but many businesses from that time like tattoo studios and piercing parlours still exist. In terms of Geography, Camden Town is on relatively flat ground at 100 feet (30 m) above sea level, 2.5 miles (4.0 km) north-northwest of Charing Cross.

To the north are the hills of Hampstead and Highgate; to the west is Primrose Hill. The culverted, subterranean River Fleet flows from its source on Hampstead Heath through Camden Town south to the River Thames. The Regent’s Canal runs through the north of Camden Town.

When talking about Camden Town, it is impossible to talk about the Camden Lock which is the current location of the famous Camden Lock Market and the Stables Street Market Camden Lock is a small part of Camden Town, London Borough of Camden, England, which was formerly a wharf with stables on the Regent’s Canal.

It is immediately to the north of Hampstead Road Locks, a twin manually operated lock. The twin locks together are “Hampstead Road Lock 1”; each bears a sign so marked. Hawley Lock and Kentish Town Lock are a short distance away to the east; to the west is a long-level pound

We are about to cross over the Regent Canal that lies under the bridge in front of us. Regent’s Canal is a canal across an area just north of central London, England. t provides a link from the Paddington Arm of the Grand Union Canal,

550 yards (500 m) north-west of Paddington Basin in the west, to the Limehouse Basin and the River Thames in east London. The canal is 8.6 miles (13.8 km) long. First proposed by Thomas Homer in 1802 as a link from the Paddington arm of the then Grand Junction Canal

With the River Thames at Limehouse, the Regent’s Canal was built during the early 19th century after the Regent’s Canal Act 1812 was passed. Noted architect and town planner John Nash was a director of the company

In 1811 he had produced a masterplan for George IV, then Prince Regent, to redevelop a large area of central north London as a result, the Regent’s Canal was included in the scheme, running for part of its distance along the northern edge of Regent’s Park.

We have now arrived at the Stables market which is the main part of the Camden Market The Stables Market was owned by Bebo Kobo, Richard Caring and Elliot Bernerd of Chelsfield Partners until 2014. It was sold in 2014 for $685 million to Market Tech PLC, a UK AIM-listed public company, later named LabTech.

The market is located in the historic former Pickford stables and Grade II-listed horse hospital which served the horses pulling Pickford’s distribution vans and barges along the canal. Many of the stalls and shops are set in large arches in railway viaducts.

Chain stores are not permitted and trade is provided by a mixture of small enclosed and outdoor shops and stalls, of which some are permanent, and others hired by the day. In common with most of the other Camden markets the Stables Market has many clothes stalls.

T is also the main focus for furniture in the markets. Household goods, decorative, ethnically-influenced items, and second-hand items or 20th-century antiques, many of them hand-crafted, are among the wares. There are also clothing and art pieces for alternative sub-cultures, such as goths and cybergoths.

These shops include Black Rose, which caters for goths, with items such as coffin-shaped handbags, and Cyberdog, which houses much cyber-style “neon” PVC and rubber clothing. In October 2006 a large indoor market hall was built in a yard between the Stables Market and Camden Lock Market that was previously used for temporary open-air stalls.

In the summer of 2007 redevelopment of the back of the Stables Market took place. This redevelopment consisted of two new four-storey buildings housing shops, food outlets, offices, workshops and storage facilities, as well as an exhibition space.

The redevelopment included a new pedestrian route through the rear of the Stables Market exposing 25 of the existing railway arches. Pedestrian walkways—in the style of the existing historic ramp and bridge system has opened up the site and increased access for visitors. A glass roof and cycle parking spaces have also been added.

The History of the Camden Lock can be dated back to 1812. This is when Regent’s Canal was authorised by an Act of Parliament, for a canal from Paddington to Limehouse. When the directors first met, they had decided that all locks would be paired,

So that some of the water from a lock emptying could be used to fill the adjacent chamber. Water saving was an important factor, as they knew that water supply would be problematic. Colonel William Congreve, a military engineer who was later knighted, proposed the use of hydropneumatic boat lifts instead of locks.

Various designs of a similar nature had been tried in the early 19th century, notably at Mells on the Dorset and Somerset Canal and at Tardebigge on the Worcester and Birmingham Canal, but none had proved successful. Congreve’s design used two water-filled caissons, which were moved up and down by hand,

Assisted by compressed air trapped beneath the tanks. With no working examples of such lifts, the directors were understandably cautious, but following an engineer’s report, decided that Maudslay & Co should build a prototype at Camden Town. There were several technical problems, with the canal company blaming Maudslays for poor design,

And Maudslays blamed the canal company for changing the original design and failing to maintain the structure. Congreve’s claim that it could be operated in just three minutes was never proved and in 1818, The directors decided to cut their losses and reverted to using paired locks.

The lift was sold at auction in November 1819, and the 13 lots raised just £404. Construction of the canal was overseen by architect John Nash, with James Morgan acting as supervising engineer. Hampstead Road Locks were built between 1818 and 1820, with the chambers made of brick and stone coping along the top.

The two locks are arranged side by side, with an island platform between them. Each chamber has two gates at both ends, and they have been Grade II listed since 1992 They were the first of 12 pairs of similar locks which dropped the level of the canal by 29 metres to reach Limehouse Basin.

The transfer of water between the chambers made operation of the locks more complex, and so they were permanently manned during the heyday of the canal, with lock-keepers working a shift system to provide 24-hour cover. As the use of the canal declined, in part due to railway competition, manning levels were reduced,

And padlocks were used to prevent the operation of the locks at the weekends. Following the end of commercial traffic and the growth of leisure boating, the locks reverted to operation by boat crews,

In the 1980s most of the pairs were converted to single locks, by replacing the lower gates of one chamber with a fixed weir. Hampstead Road Lock is the only one where both chambers have been retained, although they are now emptied conventionally.

In November 2013, the lock 1B (by the market) was fully drained for maintenance the public was invited for the weekend of the 16th and 17th of that month to see the infrastructure for themselves. A similar operation was carried out on lock 1A in 2016.

The lock is to the west of the Camden High Street road bridge. When the canal was built, the road was carried over it by a brick bridge, but this was found to be inadequate and was replaced by a cast iron girder bridge in 1878.

The cost was met by the St Pancras Vestry and the Metropolitan Board of Works, and the bridge, which has brick abutments with stone coping, carries a plaque recording this fact.Like the lock, it is Grade II listed.

At the southeast corner of the lock is a building dating from 1815, originally constructed to house air compressors for Congreve’s boat lift. It was subsequently used as the lock keeper’s cottage, and by 2010 had become a Starbucks coffee shop.

The building was extended in 1975 when it was also stuccoed, and a crenellated parapet was added. The bridge which we crossed before, west to the lock, is a cast iron roving bridge, dating from the early or mid-19th century. It had wrought iron tension stays when built,

But these were replaced by steel cables in the late 20th century when the deck was also replaced. The towpath is on the northern bank of the canal at this point,

And is carried over the entrance to a dock which formed part of Camden Goods Depot by a cast iron single-span bridge with stone-capped abutments. It was constructed by J Deeley and Co, of Newport in Monmouthshire between 1848 and 1856.

The granite setts which form the approach ramps were taken up and relaid in 1978. We have now arrived at the Camden Lock Market which is another main part of Camden Market Camden Lock Market is situated by the Regent’s Canal on a site formerly occupied by warehouses and other premises associated with the canal.

By the early 1970s, the canal trade had ceased and a northern urban motorway was planned that would cut through the site, making any major permanent redevelopment impossible, and in 1974 a temporary market was established. By 1976, when plans for the motorway were abandoned, the market had become a well-known feature of Camden Town.

Originally, the Lock was a market for crafts, occupying some outdoor areas by the canal and various existing buildings. In front of us is the gate to access the interchange building This huge building in red brick framed with blue engineering brick, dominates the north side of the Lock.

It is a Victorian/Edwardian building, designed as a fortress, solid and secure. Now listed as grade II, it was designed to bring together canal, rail and road transport in one covered building, with three floors of storage above.

Some people have called it the Brunel Building although this cannot be correct since the younger Brunel died in 1859. When Isambard Kingdom Brunel was dying, they laid him on a flat railway wagon and pulled it across the new Saltash Bridge so that he could see his noble trusses soaring high above.

This was perhaps fifty years before the modern Interchange was erected. The present building does not appear on the 1894 Ordnance Survey map but is on the 1912 one. In 1905 the Wharves and Warehouse Committee of the Institute of Surveyors reported that the building had been surveyed.

This settles the date and proves that Brunel cannot have had anything to do with it. Much earlier, on the site of the present Interchange warehouse, there was a single-storey exchange building This had been created above the old wharf sown in the 1834 Parish Map.

The Goad Fire Insurance plans (which record the materials used in each individual building) show that it was mainly in wood and was clearly the main place for transferring general goods between canal, road and rail. It is shown in the engraving of the Camden Town Goods Yard.

The present brick Interchange Building was a later reincarnation of this single-storey building. For years Thames lighters had brought their cargoes to Camden Town where they were transferred to rail, road, or to the narrow boats which took them up the canal towards Oxford, Birmingham and beyond.

Narrowboats are not suitable for sailing on the tidal waters of the Thames, as was shown when some of them did it during the Second World War. In ‘Ramblin’ Rose: the Boatwoman’s Story, Sheila Stewart describes hazardous journeys to London by narrow boat during the height of the Blitz.

Thames lighters, on the other hand, were strong, sea-going craft, so they were used to bring cargo as far as Camden Town, where they were transferred to narrow boats. It was normal for lighters and narrow boats to work in pairs.

For example, six pairs of boats took cocoa beans from Camden Town to the Cadbury factory at Bourneville. Similar regular traffic used rail, road and canal, with Camden Town as the exchange post. Daily traffic was immense. Look at the deep grooves in the iron handrail of the Roving (Diagonal) Bridge across the canal,

Cut by the chafing of innumerable tow ropes. Consider how many barges must have been warped across each day, against the pressure of the water flowing into the lock, to do that damage. Look at the polish on the granite cobbles, made by the iron shoes of huge shire horses.

In Camden Town industrial archaeology is all around us. We have now arrived at the Hawley Wharf Hawley Wharf is previously known as Canal Market and Camden Lock Village Owned by Bebo Kobo and OD Kobo, Camden Lock Village was the section along the canal to the east of Chalk Farm Road

It was known as the Canal Market and had a covered entrance tunnel leading into a general outdoor market. The market was devastated by a fire on 9 February 2008 caused by the unauthorised use of a liquified petroleum gas heater.

After crossing the railway line, the fire badly damaged the rear of the Hawley Arms on Castlehaven Road. The market reopened in May 2009 as the Camden Lock Village. The cover over the original street entrance was removed, and a new entrance was created near the railway bridge.

The market closed in early 2015, to be redeveloped over several years at a cost exceeding £500m as Hawley Wharf The stalls were replaced by a four-storey covered structure, with units housing sixty fast-food providers, 150 shops, and co-working offices. The development also provided 200 homes. Hawley Wharf’s sites started opening in 2021.

In front of us is the Hawley Lock which is another lock that is part of the Regents Canal. Situated next to the Hawley Wharf, It is likely called after the Hawley family who were prominent in Brentford and Boston Manor from the late 1500s onward.

The Hawleys held the lease on the Brentford market for nearly 200 years.