Walk Camden,
your way.

Camden is unusual among London neighbourhoods because its identity is built on three pieces of Victorian transport infrastructure - the Regent's Canal (1816), the railway lines and engine sheds (1846 onwards), and the road junction at Camden Lock - and all three are still visible, still functional, and still doing different versions of the same job they did 180 years ago. The canal and the railway brought working-class settlement and industry to what had been farmland north of the New Road (now Euston Road). The market grew out of the canal's lock-side warehouses. The music scene grew out of the cheap warehouse space the industry left behind. Walk Camden today and all of it is still here, stacked on top of each other.

The Regent's Canal and Camden Lock

The Regent's Canal was built between 1812 and 1820 as the final link in a national canal network bringing coal and goods from the Midlands and the north into central London. It runs 14 km across north London from Limehouse Basin in the east to Little Venice in the west, with Camden Lock - a double lock raising and lowering boats by 2.4 metres - at the mid-point. The lock-keeper's cottage at Camden Lock dates from 1818 and is still there (now a museum). The canal-side warehouses, where coal and timber were unloaded, were converted into Camden Market in 1974 by entrepreneur Eric Reynolds, starting with a few craft stalls in the Dingwalls warehouse. The market grew through the 1970s and 1980s into the five connected markets of today.

The 1846 railway brought a different transport network. The London and Birmingham Railway built engine sheds, a horse hospital (for the horses that pulled goods wagons from the railhead to delivery points across central London), stables, blacksmith forges, water-tanks - a small industrial city around the railway. The horse hospital is now the Stables Market; the Roundhouse - originally a circular engine-turning shed - is now a major music venue. The Camden Catacombs (the brick-vaulted underground tunnels and chambers below the Stables Market) housed horses overnight; today they hold market stalls and bars.

1960s squats, 1970s punk, the music scene

Through the 1960s Camden's working-class industrial neighbourhood declined - the canal stopped being used for commercial traffic (the last commercial barge to Camden was 1969), the railways moved their freight operations out, the horse hospital was emptied (the last working horses left in the 1950s). The empty warehouses, the affordable rent and the proximity to central London made Camden a natural home for the late-1960s squat culture and the music scene that grew out of it.

Pink Floyd's first major performance was at the Roundhouse on 15 October 1966 - the "Sound and Light Workshop" night that helped launch the UK psychedelic-rock scene. Jimi Hendrix played the Roundhouse three weeks later. Through the 1970s the venue hosted The Doors, Led Zeppelin, the Sex Pistols, Hawkwind, the entire British rock canon. The Roxy Club on Neal Street (technically Covent Garden but Camden-adjacent) was the original punk club from December 1976; the actual Camden punk scene grew up around the Hope and Anchor on Upper Street (Islington), the Music Machine (now KOKO), and the Marquee.

Madness - the ska-pop band who defined Camden's musical identity in the late 1970s and early 1980s - all grew up around the neighbourhood. The cover of their 1979 debut album "One Step Beyond" was shot at Chalk Farm. The Camden Crawl - an annual multi-venue music festival - ran from 1995 to 2014 and was the apex of the indie-Britpop scene that had Camden as its centre (Suede, Blur, Oasis, all played early gigs in Camden venues).

Amy Winehouse

Amy Winehouse lived in Camden from 2005 until her death on 23 July 2011, aged 27. She rented a flat at 30 Camden Square; she drank at the Hawley Arms and the Good Mixer; she recorded her 2006 album "Back to Black" at Mark Ronson's nearby studio. The album won five Grammys and made her a global star but also accelerated the public consumption of her addiction. The Hawley Arms - the small pub she made her local - was damaged in a 2008 fire and rebuilt; the Good Mixer on Inverness Street is the older, less-renovated pub. After her death in 2011 the neighbourhood became a pilgrimage site. The Stables Market has a 2014 bronze statue of her (by sculptor Scott Eaton, near the central courtyard); the Jewish Museum London (a 10-minute walk south) has a small permanent exhibition about her life. The Amy Winehouse Foundation - founded by her father - runs annual fundraisers at the Roundhouse.

The market and the KOKO restoration

Camden Market grew through the 1970s and 1980s into the largest in London by stall count - about 1,000 stalls across the five connected markets. The 2008 fire in Camden Lock Market was a major setback but the markets were rebuilt within two years. Today the markets are operated by a single company (Camden Market Holdings, since 2014) and the brand has been deliberately modernised - more street food, more curated craft, fewer second-hand-clothes stalls. Some locals miss the older, scruffier Camden; others welcome the upgrade.

The KOKO concert hall on Camden High Street - originally the Camden Theatre (1900), then the Music Machine (1970s rock), then the Camden Palace (1980s indie), then KOKO (2004) - was severely damaged in a 2020 fire and underwent a four-year restoration. It reopened in April 2022 as a £70m music and members' club hybrid, restored to its original 1900 theatre interior but with new state-of-the-art sound, lighting and recording facilities. It hosts indie, pop, electronic and DJ events most nights; tickets typically £20-80.

What's still alive

Walk Camden in 2026 and the layers are still visible. The Regent's Canal still has boats - now mostly residential narrowboats and tourist trip-boats. Camden Lock is still a working lock. The Stables Market is still in the Victorian horse hospital. The Roundhouse is still hosting bands. The Hawley Arms is still the locals' pub. Primrose Hill is still the view. The food court at the Stables has 30 vendors representing 25 different cuisines - the kind of multi-cultural mix that the rest of the country only started getting from the 2010s. The market crowds are tourists, but the people working the stalls are mostly locals who've been here for 20-40 years. Camden is a neighbourhood that has reinvented itself five times in 200 years and somehow remained itself each time.