Year 12 geography students spent two days in the Coal Drops Yard area of Kings Cross, London, and in Brighton, collecting data for their A-level projects. These projects vary widely and include topics such as how architecture unites the history and future of the area, or reasons why people visit certain areas. Questionnaires, photos, air quality and historical data are gathered to help answer enquiry questions, although there is always time for an ice cream.
Inquisitive, ambitious, hard-working and creative, they have proven themselves to be scholars and geographers of the highest order.
In 1851, the first brick was laid in Coal Drops Yard, ready to serve the brand-new Kings Cross station that was being built just a little distance south. Before long, the coal drops were receiving thousands of tonnes of deliveries a week, including coal, grain, and occasionally whole whales, beached in Scotland and destined for the Natural History Museum. Fifty miles south, Brighton bustled with growing numbers of Victorian and Edwardian tourists, sunning themselves and paddling amongst rocks deposited thousands of years earlier.
Brighton weathered the changes of the 20th century with ease, but by the 1980s, industry had abandoned Coal Drops Yard to raves and revelry. Indeed, it was supposedly at a party here in 1993 that the artist formerly known as Prince adopted his new moniker. While Brighton has gentrified steadily since the 1990s, the financial crash of 2008 saw the coal drops finally fall to total dereliction, until a £1bn regeneration scheme started a decade later.
