Dance received the commisson via his old friend Sir Charles Pratt, later 1st Earl Camden (1714-94) who, in 1749, had married the granddaughter and heiress of John Jeffreys of The Priory, Brecknock, Powys. In 1786, on the death of his mother-in-law Mrs Frances Jeffreys, the widowed Lord Camden came into possession of 300 acres of pasture land east of the road to Hampstead that was eventually to become the nucleus of Camden Town and the south end of Kentish Town. In 1788, the Kentish Town Act was passed enabling him to lay out streets on his property and in 1791 Lord Camden could grant leases for the building of 1,400 houses, though these were taken up only slowly.

Dance's design focused on The Circus and Camden Coliseum, The Circus, to the northeast, consisted of an inner and an outer circle cut by three roads, with 24 pairs of semi-detached houses, the whole 1,470 feet wide. The southwesterly of the three roads led from the Coliseum to the Circus. The Camden Coliseum, essentially two facing crescents, was elliptical on plan (approximately 980 by 1120 feet), with a part-crescent sited to the north and another crescent, Bayham Crescent, to the south. A straight terrace of 14½ semi-detached houses faced west on the road to Hampstead with Bayham Crescent and some rows of small houses located southwards. About 400 plots are marked though there is space for many more on the other streets shown on the plan. Of the plots, 126 were for large semi-detached houses - rare at this time. John Summerson, in a discussion of Dance as a town-planner (1949, p.104), wrote that his 'masterpiece ... would certainly have been the great scheme he designed for Lord Chancellor Camden's property'.

A map titled Topographical survey of the Borough of St Marylebone ... also principal landed estates with a dedication to the Marquis of Camden and others, published in 1834, shows that development on the Camden Estate was not to Dance's plan. The only faint memory of it is the road linking the Circus and Coliseum marked 'new road to Tottenham' (and now Camden Road) and a segment of the Circus on either side marked 'Brecknock Crescent' and only half built. Land to the east still remains as fields and the laid-out area has terraced houses and some cottages with many streets quite empty of buildings. Development is piecemeal with a burial ground and chapel for St Martin-in-the-Fields in a prominent position in the centre, some Nonconformist chapels, a National School and a Veterinary College in the southeast corner. The owners of the Estate are commemorated in Camden Cottages, Place, Street, Terrace; Jeffrey's Street; and Brecknock Crescent.

For a design probably based on Dance's Camden Town scheme see Spurrier & Phipps, 'A Plan / for the improvement of a / FREEHOLD ESTATE / call'd ST JOHN'S WOOD ... 1794. For other designs made by Dance for or associated with the 1st and 2nd Earl of Camden see Camden Place in Kent, Wilderness Park in Kent, and Bayham Hall in Kent/Sussex.

LITERATURE. Stroud pp.165-6; J Summerson, 'John Wood and the English town-planning tradition', Heavenly mansions, 1949, pp.104-06; J Summerson, 'The Beginning of an early Victorian suburb', London Topographical Record, XXVII, 1995, p.17; B. Cherry & N. Pevsner, London 4: North, 1998, p.384.