The Mysterious Bollards Of King's Cross

M@
By M@ Last edited 79 months ago

Last Updated 05 September 2017

The Mysterious Bollards Of King's Cross

Walking through the back streets of King's Cross, we've long been intrigued by a series of bollards placed in seemingly useless locations — in the middle of open grass, or right up against a tree. The oddball street furniture is typified by this little ragamuffin in Regent Square:

In Regent Park, totally encouraging people to keep off the grass.

Here are others we've spotted:

Cromer Street sticks two bollards up at all the street furniture haters.
Cromer Street sticks two bollards up at all the street furniture haters.
Just in case your vehicle breaks through all the surrounding bollards, you've still got to tackle this on Loxham Street.
Just in case your vehicle breaks through all the surrounding bollards, you've still got to tackle this on Loxham Street. UPDATE: Since we wrote this, a vehicle did indeed manage to knock this one down, and it has not been replaced.
Tree-hugging bollard near Wakefield Street.
Tree-hugging bollard near Wakefield Street.
Lonesome bollard on Cromer Street.
Lonesome bollard on Cromer Street.
And a bonus bollard, not part of the art work, outside Camden Town Hall.
And a bonus bollard, not part of the art work, outside Camden Town Hall.

Case partially solved by the London Remembers website:

The bollards were an art work, installed... at the same time that the blocks of flats were painted the orangey colours that they have now.  There are six onyx bollards, and they were meant to be a bit mysterious.

It's certainly had us scratching our heads for several years. Here's a map of the upstanding impediments, should you wish to inspect them yourself.

We've since learnt that the artist was Judith Dean, and that the bollards were installed in 1999.

Post fetishists might also enjoy the Bollards of London website, which chronicles the diverse bollardiverse and our very own family tree of London bollards.

Map and images courtesy of London Remembers. With thanks to Joe Kotroczo for further information.

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