Our tour starts at the one bit of King’s Cross I think I know well, The Meeting Place statue, inside St Pancras International station.

The nine-metre-high statue was designed by British artist Paul Day, and the embracing couple are hard to miss, directly beneath Tracey Emin’s neon pink sign: 'I want my time with you'.

I’ve looked at the statue on my way to and from Paris by Eurostar – but did I ever really see it, I wonder?

Because through the eyes of Unseen Tours, a not-for-profit social enterprise offering tours of London, suddenly I’m aware there’s more to the sculpture than a romantic depiction of rail travel bringing two lovers together.

Behind the scenes

The couple rest upon a circular frieze, that features scenes from train travel throughout history including soldiers going to war and workers repairing the tracks after the July 7 bombings. There are commuters reading books in the days before mobile phones, a woman checking her phone over the shoulder of her lover, and even a tribute to the sex workers of Kings Cross. 

A faithful dog accompanying a bag lady gleams especially bright: “Everyone polishes the doggy’s nose,” explains Ben, our Unseen Tours guide, who has interpreted the frieze for us.

© Katherine Masters

Ben, like all Unseen Tours guides, has experienced homelessness, and designed this King’s Cross to Clerkenwell tour himself, with the help of Unseen Tours. As well as creating opportunities for the vulnerably housed to earn an income and develop new skills, the joint venture aims to deliver eye-opening, original tours of London neighbourhoods.  

Unseen Tours has been operating since 2010, but thanks to a partnership with Intrepid Travel, it’s recently entered the trade space, with tours now available to book for customers travelling on Intrepid Travel’s UK trips. New tours are also in development thanks to Intrepid Foundation funding. UK travel agents can book these tours on behalf of their clients and earn commission, by negotiation with Unseen Tours.

Introducing his tour, Ben says that people who’ve been through the mill tend to have intense knowledge of particular areas, and guiding a tour can give them a voice.

London's onion layers

“This tour is not homelessness from beginning to end but it is one of the threads in the tapestry,” he explains. “London is like an immensely complicated onion, with many layers to unpeel.”

And so it proves with his fascinating tour of Kings Cross and Clerkenwell, that links the Spice Girls dancing on a St Pancras staircase with one-time resident Lenin, and the Spa Fields rioters with the poet John Betjeman, saviour of St Pancras.

Ben proves himself as a fountain of knowledge; he readily admits his two-hour tour could easily become five.

Initially, I’d assumed that Ben knew the area well because it’s where he had ‘lived’ while homeless. But it turns out there’s a more heartfelt reason he knows the area so well:

“These neighbourhoods are saturated with memories of my father, who worked as a newspaper journalist in the area,” he says, his words heavy with nostalgia, as we stop outside Attica restaurant, painted a vivid blue, on a corner of Exmouth Market.

“This used to be called Kolossi, a well-known authentic Greek-Cypriot establishment. It was my father’s favourite restaurant and where he had his retirement party from The Guardian,” he explains.

© Katherine Masters

This is as personal as it gets for Ben on the tour. He’s guarded about his own experiences of living on the streets, which is fair enough. He’s a tour guide, not the main character.

“What I will say, what I’ve been through, it’s given me empathy for the underdog,” he says.

Social history

There are more hints at being dealt a rough hand in life as he describes the shrinking access to social housing. “We’re sold the story, it’s their fault they are homeless,” he scoffs. “But there’s a bigger picture when you realise how much social housing has been sold off over the years.”

And he has a twinkle in his eye when we stand beside Google’s new £1 billion London office and he declares: “I don’t know why I get so bored talking about Google’s HQ. And now there are urban foxes running wild in the rooftop garden, which I find amusing.”

Within eyeshot of Google’s ‘urban utopia’ is the Stanley Building, which dates back to 1864 and was designed as flagship social housing. One of the details Ben highlights is that all the residences' front doors are visible from the street, linked by open corridors.

This was done deliberately to prevent crime, he explains. “This was the first Stanley building and the design was copied elsewhere. All comings and goings have to be on display.”

“There’s no evidence that people who are poor are more prone to crime, but it’s revealing about their classification,” he adds.

Outside the German Gymnasium restaurant, which was built in 1865 to house London’s first Olympic gym, he points out the original hooks used for rope climbing and aerial moves.

The proliferation of publoids

As we linger in this revitalised corner of King’s Cross – a curious intersection between Google’s future and the Victorian past – Ben describes how outdoor ‘publoid’ areas like this have proliferated in recent years but he doesn’t believe they are necessarily a good thing.

“There are strict rules here, which the private owners aren’t obliged to make public. We can do walking tours, we can bring our own sandwiches, children can play in fountains, but we cannot begin a political demonstration, we can’t film with large video cameras, we can’t beg. And all this is policed by security guards with red baseball caps, which makes accountability more difficult.”  

Unseen Tours has given Ben and others like him a voice. And through Ben’s eyes, I now have a fresh appreciation for a London neighbourhood I didn’t know that well. 

Next time I pass through St Pancras on my way to Paris, I will let my eyes rest upon a different statue, of Sir John Betjeman, and recall Ben's story about how he saved the magnificent Victorian Gothic station from demolition.