St Pancras Cruising Club

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

St Pancras Cruising Club is a members' association of boat owners located between Camden Town and Islington on the Regent's Canal in central London. Most boats in the basin are narrowboats, the most common form of craft on the British canals. SPCC is located near St Pancras Station, home of the new Eurostar terminal, and St Pancras Old Church, the second oldest site of Christianity in England. It is next to Camley Street Natural Park. SPCC, founded in 1958, has gained a reputation as one of the country's foremost cruising clubs, based not least on the year-round safe navigations that it conducts and marshals on the Tideway, the tidal Thames. One of the most notable cruises was the 2007 one to the Houses of Parliament protesting DEFRA cuts to the inland waterways budget ^[1]

SPCC has always played an active part in waterways events. It is a founder member of the Association of Waterways Cruising Clubs ^[2], of which the current chairman, David Pearce, served for seven years as the commodore of SPCC. The club helps organise events such as the Angel Canal Festival ^[3] and the Canalway Cavalcade, in which the boat handling competition novice winner's trophy is named after a former commodore of SPCC, Dr Roger Squires ^[4].

SPCC has a clubhouse with a bar. It constructed the first new dry dock in London for many decades, now the only dry dock in the London area. In 2001 SPCC became the guardian of a Victorian waterpoint designed by the office of Sir George Gilbert Scott around 1870. The tower was moved a few hundred metres to save it from the path of the Eurostar ^[5]. As the club is also near to King's Cross Station, it is affected by the ongoing developments at King's Cross Central, formerly known as the Railway Lands.