The beautiful houses were never finished. Instead, they were subdivided into for the poorest of London's working class. The street became a place of transient poverty, lodging-house keepers, and market workers.
The story begins with the Alexander family , the Earls of Caledon. They owned a vast estate of muddy fields in North London. As London swelled, they decided to cash in, laying out a grand new thoroughfare— Caledonian Road —designed to be a rival to Oxford Street. They envisioned elegant townhouses for the upper-middle class, with a wide, tree-lined boulevard leading to a new railway station (King’s Cross). The Secret History Of Our Streets S01E01 PDTV x...
Would you like a similar story summary for another episode in the series (e.g., "Depford High Street" or "The Strand")? The beautiful houses were never finished
The final act brings us to the present day (when the episode was made, around 2012). We see the current residents —a mix of longtime working-class families, new young professionals priced out of Islington, and immigrants. The original Victorian houses are being restored again—not by aristocrats, but by architects and bankers. A woman who grew up in a cramped tenement in the 1960s returns to find her childhood home now worth over £1 million and converted into luxury flats. The story begins with the Alexander family ,
The episode ends with a long, slow pan down the Caledonian Road today. A Sainsbury's lorry rumbles past a Greek bakery. A Somali café sits next to a gastropub. An old man remembers the smell of cattle. A young couple argues about parking permits.