Summary : This red-brick viaduct on the east side of Pancras Road and immediately south of St Pancras Gardens was built c1870 as a Midland Railway Company coal depot. Coal was transferred from rail waggons on top of the viaduct through drops with chutes into sacks and onto carts in the vaults below. The viaduct was constructed on the site of Church Terrace, which had been laid out around the turn of the 19th century. One of the houses, no 7, was known as Baxter House and it was to the rear of this building that Sir Henry Bessemer built his bronze powder factory around 1840. This was also the site of his experiments with steel-making that resulted in the invention of the Bessemer Converter in 1856. |