Roll out the red carpet, for Delancey Street sparkles with the glamour of the silver screen. The luxury apartments at Chant House occupy the site of the ‘The Fan Cinema’, renamed the ‘Electric Cinema’ in 1911. It boasted an innovative sliding roof for ventilation. Later this building became the home of the Camden Snooker Club. Nearby was the area’s first purpose built cinema, the ‘Electric Palladium’, which opened in 1912, thrilling audiences with the magic of silent-era movies . If your taste is more ‘Life of Brian’ than Rudolph Valentino, head to number 68 Delancey Street, where you’ll discover the site of Milkwood Studios, purpose built for Monty Python in the 1980s.
Delancey Street itself was built in 1795 by James Delancey of Marylebone, on land he leased from the Fitzroy family. At that time, the Parkside end of the street was called Stanhope Street, and Warren Street encompassed what is today the Camden High Street end of the road. It’s a busy one-way street well supplied with cafes and restaurants. The street abounds with period architecture, is adorned with chestnut and Norway maple trees, and illuminated with graceful street lamps. But the highlight of the street is one that cannot be pinned down in words: the luxurious, tantalising and mouth-watering scent of roasting coffee beans that stimulates the senses of anyone who ventures towards the coffee shop near Arlington Road en route to Camden Bus to buy a home.
The sweeping curve of Delancey Street delights in a number of period terraces punctuated with unusual single houses, some of them double-fronted. The period houses are all faced with stone on the basement and ground floors. Four steps, flanked by railings, lead up to the main doors, which are suspended over deep light wells. Decorative wrought ironwork graces the first floor windows and lends an extra touch of class to this refined street.
The period terraces continue, past Delancey Studios and over Albert Street. Here there’s a delightful Portugese grocery store which serves superb coffee and delicious sandwiches, and number 54 sports a blue plaque marking the former home of poet Dylan Thomas. Follow in Thomas’s footsteps, past Mornington Crescent to the popular Edinboro Castle pub. Surely if he were alive today he’d approve of their craft cider festival. Then, after enjoying the bonhomie, head to the peace, light and air of the railway cutting and Regent’s Park.