• Turn down Vernon Rise and, at the bottom, turn right and begin walking up Kings Cross Road…

On your immediate right you’ll see the Kings Cross Baptist Chapel, formerly called Vernon Baptist Chapel, and built between 1843 - 4. By 1871 it could hold more than 1,300 worshippers.   ///oasis.stews.seated

A simple brick building with a heavily buttressed stone-dressed Gothic front, it originally had three galleries which were removed in 1937. The basement hall was first used as a school.The houses that flanked the chapel were replaced on one side in 1933 by Vernon Hall, a low Gothic–fronted block. On the other side the house was bombed in 1941.

The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) building was formerly Vernon Square school. Built by the London County Council in 1913 –16 it is a large, austere triple-decker, stock-brick building with the infants classrooms on the ground floor, the boys above and the girls at the top had the use of a roof playground.

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It became a secondary school in 1949, and was renamed Sir Philip Magnus School in 1952. This closed in 1979 - 80, and the site became part of Kingsway Princeton College in 1983.  In 1999 it was acquired by the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies to be its second campus.