Camden Town was laid out as a residential district from 1791, named after Charles Pratt, the 1st Earl Camden, whose earldom took its title from an estate in Kent once owned by the historian William Camden. But the area's real shaping came from the industrial revolution. By 1837, Camden was the North Western Railway's terminal stop in London — the point where goods transferred from tracks to road, carried by some of London's 250,000 working horses. The Roundhouse opened in 1846, the canals were already carrying freight, and the whole district adapted itself around the need to move things. The culverted River Fleet still runs beneath its streets, buried since the 18th century; the Regent's Canal, built above it in 1820, still carries narrowboats past the lock where horses once slipped into the water and ramps were cut in the bank to pull them out.

Up until at least the mid-20th century, Camden Town was considered an unfashionable place to live. The transformation began in 1974, when Camden Lock Market opened in a former timber yard beside the canal. It drew people looking for something different — clothing, records, art, food, things that didn't belong in department stores. Five more markets followed: Buck Street, the Stables, Camden Lock Village, an indoor market inside the Electric Ballroom, and the ancient Inverness Street market, which had served the local community for over a century before giving way to tourist stalls. By the late 20th century, weekends brought crowds from across London and beyond. The markets became synonymous with alternative culture — punk, goth, indie — though the area's edges were always rougher than the image: a 1993 IRA bomb injured 18 people on Camden High Street, and a 2008 fire gutted the canal market.

The list of notable people connected to Camden Town cuts across every field. The physicist Oliver Heaviside was born here. The actor Daniel Kaluuya grew up on a council estate here. B.R. Ambedkar, the Indian social reformer and principal architect of the Indian constitution, lived at 10 King Henry Road in 1921 and 1922. The pub at 1 World's End Passage, built in 1690 and known variously as Old Mother Red Cap and Mother Damnable's before its current name, has been serving locals for over three centuries. Painter Walter Sickert led the Camden Town Group of artists from a studio in Mornington Crescent. And Madness, the ska band who captured the area's chaotic warmth better than anyone, grew up in these streets and made them famous.

Amy Winehouse moved into a flat at 2 Jeffrey's Place in 2003, then to Prowse Place in 2008, then finally to 30 Camden Square in 2010. She was found dead there on 23 July 2011. Her connection to Camden Town had become so complete by the end of her life that it was hard to imagine one without the other — she was photographed in its markets, performed in its venues, walked its streets when she was well and when she wasn't. A statue of her now stands near the tube station, her hair sculpted in the beehive she made iconic. Camden was the kind of place she could disappear into when she needed to, and be found when she wanted to be found. That ambivalence — shelter and spotlight at once — is something the neighbourhood has always offered.