Enduring Ephemera: How the Squatting Communities in Vauxhall have Shaped the Contemporary Landscape

ENDURING EPHEMERA

How the Squatting Communities in Vauxhall Have Shaped the Contemporary Landscape

Mathilda Lewis Royal College of Art MA Architecture 2019 Tutors: Eddie Blake & Amica Dall Word count: 9,950

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I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Eddie Blake for his guidance throughout the process of research, development and writing. Many thanks to Amica Dall for organising engaging discussions that sparked my initial interest in the subject of squatting.

I would also like to thank Adam Kaasa for constructing a stimulating lecture series and giving his time to help progress my ideas.

My very sincere thanks are due to James Frazer and Mark Prizeman for allowing me to interview them about their experiences of squatting in Bonnington Square. I am also grateful to Carlos Villanueva Brandt for putting me in contact with those who lived in the Square.

Special thanks to Julia Traimero, Tish Francis and John Froy who enlightened me on their personal involvement in the development of Vauxhall City Farm and their experience squatting in St Oswald’s Place in the 1970s.

I am indebted to Alison Ewan for putting me in contact with the original squatters that initiated the development of the farm.

Acknowledgements

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CONTENTS PAGE

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Abstract

Map of Vauxhall

Introduction

History of Vauxhall

History of Squatting in the UK

Radnor Terrace and Rosetta Street

Vauxhall City Farm

Bonnington Square

Conclusion

Bibliography

Appendices

Contents Page

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ABSTRACT

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This dissertation examines the initial ambitions and enduring influence of three historical squats on the contemporary landscape of Vauxhall: a Women’s Liberation Movement squat in Radnor Terrace and Rosetta Street, Vauxhall City Farm, and Bonnington Square. All three of these squats demonstrate radical structures for domestic inhabitation, away from the nuclear family, but within the architecture of the traditional home. They set precedent for acts of Spatial Agency as they collaboratively responded to “spatial problems”1, in this case the excess of empty houses and neglected land, and developed solutions that engaged directly with the community. Many of the squatters were young, white and held university degrees, their Embedded and Institutionalised Cultural Capital must be considered in relation to their success. Their awareness of the governing structures and available grants allowed them to work within the systems of control to considerable effect. Though many considered these organisations to be “hippy”2 ventures, their prevailing impression on the landscape of Vauxhall is significant.

KEY WORDS Squatting, Spatial Agency, Vauxhall, Participatory Urbanism, Guerrilla Gardening, Embedded Cultural Capital, Institutionalised Cultural Capital, Women’s Liberation Movement, political activism, grassroots organisations.

1 2

Spatialagency.net. (2019). Spatial Agency/about.

Froy, J. (2018). Teacher, Squatter, City Farmer.

Abstract

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Maps of Vauxhall from 1960 and present day overlaid & locating three squats

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Figure 1

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Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens

Vauxhall City Farm

Harleyford Road Gardens

Bonnington Square Gardens Vine Lodge Bonnington Square

Radnor Terrace & Rosetta Street

Map of Vauxhall

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INTRODUCTION

My interest in the historical and contemporary development of Vauxhall as a community and district has grown intrinsically through living in the area and experiencing the rapid regeneration currently underway. Born in Vauxhall in 1994, my early memories are centred around pockets of the neighbourhood built by squatters from the 1970s onwards. In this dissertation I aim to explore how the squatting communities in Vauxhall have shaped the contemporary landscape physically, culturally and politically.

Through analysing the impact of a few relevant squats, I intend to uncover what we can learn from this kind of Spatial Agency and examine the impact of these grassroots organisations.

Spatial Agency, as defined by Tatiana Schneider and Jeremy Till, promotes more collaborative and unconventional methods of resolving spatial conditions.1 Their ideas originate in the philosophy of Cedric Price, who believed that architecture should be a “self organised process”,2 and interrogated the traditional association of architecture with the built form.

I will first establish a contextual understanding of the development of Vauxhall and the distinct waves of squatting within the UK. I go on to examine the initiation, development and contemporary relevance of three prominent squats based in Vauxhall. The Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM) squatters in Radnor Terrace and Rosetta Street, Vauxhall City Farm, and Bonnington Square. The WLM based in Radnor Terrace and Rosetta Street in the 1970s can be considered in connection to a wider community of politically active squats in the Lambeth area, specifically the Railton Road and Villa Road squats in Brixton. I will bring particular focus to 14 Radnor Terrace that functioned as the South London Women’s Centre (SLWC), and provided the infrastructure for an art exhibition in 1974 entitled A Woman’s Place.3 Vauxhall City Farm started its development in 1976 by a group of architects squatting in St Oswald’s Place. It now operates as a community run inner city farm that cares for livestock, grows produce and provides educational programmes. I will examine how the farm was initiated, its development over time, and how it functions in the present day. Bonnington Square was first squatted in 1979 after the houses were evacuated for demolition. The residents began to repair damages, and embark on a community led gardening initiative to bring life into the grey and dilapidated street. I investigate how they have been successful in relation to their initial ambitions to “save the houses, save the square, and plant trees”.4 I consider the advancement and prosperity of these squats in relation to Bourdieu’s social theory entitled Cultural Capital. French sociologist, Bourdieu, argues that the more Cultural Capital an individual has, the greater influence and power they hold. Cultural Capital can be considered in three respects; Embodied, Objectified and Institutionalised. Embodied referring accent and disposition, Objectified relating to physical wealth, and Institutionalised indicated by level of education and status.5 Although the squatters rejected Objectified Cultural Capital, the Embodied and Institutionalised Cultural Capital they possessed as predominantly middle class, educated, and white gave them deeply rooted cultural dominance and an understanding of how to operate in compliance with the governing authorities.

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1 Spatialagency.net. (2019). Spatial Agency: About. [online] Available at: http://www.spatialagency.net/about.

2 Spatialagency.net. (2019). Spatial Agency: Cedric Price. [online] Available at: http://www.spatialagency.net/database/why/ political/price.

3 Tobin, A., Budd. (2017). A. and Pearce, N, 14 Radnor Terrace: A Woman’s Place.

4 James Frazer. (June 08, 2019). Personal interview.

5 Ltd, W, Cultural Capital | Social Theory Rewired. (2019). [online] Routledgesoc.com. Available at: http://routledgesoc.com/ category/profile-tags/cultural-capital.

ENDURING EPHEMERA

My research has taken the form of documenting newspaper cuttings and leaflets from Lambeth archives, carrying out a series of interviews with previous occupants of the squats, collecting exhibition research, reading extensively on the history of squatting and agrarian movements within urban environments, and evaluating the contemporary relevance of these spaces.

Introduction

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HISTORY OF VAUXHALL

Vauxhall is a district located in the London Borough of Lambeth.

Proximity of the site to The River Thames and The City of London, has meant the area has long been a centre for civilian inhabitation and subject to rapid transformation throughout documented history.

Vauxhall initially gained prominence for being home to The Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens (VPG) in 1661, however the landscape has been continuously redeveloped since the 1700s.1 The VPG was a twelve-acre plot of land that presented itself as a utopian space of entertainment and leisure that engaged with a diverse blend of social classes and age groups.2 Vauxhall continues to provide space for a community of varied social and ethnic backgrounds, and it is considered that the gay culture that now characterises the nightlife of Vauxhall originated from ethos of The VPG. Proximity of the site to the river and The City of London made Vauxhall a suitable area for industrial development. By the late 1700s The VPG was encroached by plate glass manufactures, a corn distillery, a vinegar factory and rows of Georgian housing.3 Economic pressures prioritised the profitability of industrial developments and housing over recreational open spaces. The once flourishing VPG decreased in appeal as the illusion of a rural idyll evaporated into the steam of the industrial revolution. The transient nature of the visitors to the space, meant there was no strong organisation to dispute the redevelopment of the site and the eventual financially motivated evolution of Vauxhall.

The introduction of key infrastructure links to Vauxhall improved accessibility, and suitability for industrial and residential development. Vauxhall Bridge was opened in 1816, with the purpose of promoting urban expansion to the greenfield sites. In 1848 the overpass for the railway line was built, further disrupting the allure of the urban gardens.4 From this point onwards, Vauxhall retained its mixed industrial and residential character. The railway line viaduct consists of 290 arches that provide housing for various industrial and commercial functions.5 These infrastructural developments greatly altered the composition and function of the site and continue to be influential features of Vauxhall.

The Albert Embankment, a retaining wall to reduce the risk of floods, was constructed between the years of 1866 and 1870.6 The introduction of the embankment increased the security of the riverside sites against flooding and justified increased investment into substantial growth of the area. The period following the construction of the embankment saw the development of further industrial functions including “a vinegar distillery, the potteries, a flour mill, a rubber works and a soap works.�7 Environmental pollution from the industrial works eventually led to many residents abandoning the area, leaving properties empty and neglected. Lambeth experienced considerable bomb damage during World War 2, Vauxhall being a particular focus due to the presence of key infrastructure links.8 The lack of funding to Lambeth Council meant that these abandoned houses and bomb damaged sites were left undeveloped and neglected until squatters would eventually take ownership of them.9

1 Coke, D. and Borg, A. (2011). Vauxhall Gardens. New Haven: Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press.

2 ibid.

3 ibid.

4 ibid.

5 Lambeth.gov.uk. (2019). [online] Available at: https://www. lambeth.gov.uk/sites/default/files/pl-Albert-Emb-CA-appraisal-2017.pdf.

6 ibid.

7 ibid.

8 ibid.

9 James Frazer. (June 08, 2019). Personal interview.

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Vaux Hall Gardens engraving, 1751

History of Vauxhall

Figure 2

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The residents of Vauxhall began to collaborate, forming a residents association, with the intention of confronting further encroachment of industrial growth and road pollution. The first Vauxhall Society publication was released in 1969, with the stated intention to “encourage the preservation, development and improvement of features of general public amenity or historic interest”.1 This group was propelled by the introduction of conservation areas within Lambeth that protected sites of historic or architectural value, the proposed development of Vauxhall Cross, and the forthcoming expansion of the Victoria line to Vauxhall. This is the first example of residents taking a collaborative approach to shaping the landscape of their neighbourhood. Many of the residents involved in the society came from middle class households. The Embedded and Institutionalised Cultural Capital that they had in comparison to the previous occupants consisting of railway and industry workers is significant in relation to the power they had over institutions. Between 1972 and 1976 demolitions threatened many of the buildings in Lambeth, encouraging local people to take responsibility for the disused sites.2 It was in this context that the three squatting groups that I examine began their interventions.

1 Site, B. and century, 2. (2019). 1969: The Vauxhall Society Seven ‘resist further intrusions by industry and road traffic’ Vauxhall History. [online] Vauxhallhistory.org. Available at: https:// vauxhallhistory.org/1969-the-vauxhall-society-seven-resist-furtherintrusions-by-industry-and-road-traffic/.

2 Vauxhall City Farm, History. [online] Available at: https:// www.vauxhallcityfarm.org/history, 2019.

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Vauxhall society poster, April 1969

History of Vauxhall

Figure 3

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Construction workers in Vauxhall 1974

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Figure 4

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Brownfield site in Vauxhall adjacent to The River Thames (1981), Photograph taken by Mark Prizeman

History of Vauxhall

Figure 5

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HISTORY OF SQUATTING IN THE UK

Squatting: “Unlawfully occupy an uninhabited building or settle on a piece of land.”

- The Oxford English dictionary, 2004

The habitation of unoccupied dwellings has experienced numerous waves in the UK over the past several decades, from the post world war two surge in family orientated squatting communities, to the more politically motivated youth revolt movements of the 70s and 80s. These urban movements engage in the production of socio spatial networks and present themselves as an alternative lifestyle on the margins of capitalist society, valuing the use of housing as a basic human need over its commodification and privatisation.1 Although for many squatters the motivation is purely for the acquisition of shelter, all squatting is political and many of the squatting communities in London became platforms for political movements and campaigned for social change. The distinct movements can be seen in parallel to the legislation put in place regarding squatters rights, and the various groups developed provide support and advice to squatters.

Squatters initially depended on the Forcible Entry Act of 1381 that allowed for the entry to a property if done in a manner that was not forced.2 In the Elizabethan era it was accepted that if a dwelling was constructed overnight on barren land, the constructors had the right to uninterrupted occupancy.3 The first notable example of squatting as a form of direct action came in 1649 with the True Levellers, who occupied disused land and cultivated it, in the pursuit of “common ownership”4 of land.

Although the True Levellers were unsuccessful in giving back the land to the people, their ideas in opposition of Capitalism laid the groundwork for many movements to follow.

The post war squatters from 1945 onwards represented a form of “deprivation-based”5 squatting, as they directly responded to the housing shortage through the occupation of army camps with a “do it yourself”6 approach in the renovation of these dilapidated spaces. Large scale squatting began in this period as 200,000 homes were destroyed by bombing and 250,000 left uninhabitable. Alongside the demolition of 250,000 slums from 1933-1938, there was a severe shortage of houses in the years following and housing remained an issue up until the 1970s.7 The long term impact of this was a perspective on squatting as a productive means of reformation, in the same ilk as the “make do and mend”8 approach to old clothes, laying the groundwork for a culture of repair and re-use in later years.

The squatting movement in the late 60s began in response to the severe housing shortage and considerable number of neglected properties. The Family Squatters Advisory Service (FSAS) was set up in the late 60s through a £5000 grant from Shelter: the volunteers took control of empty properties and gave them over to homeless families on the council house waiting list. The FSAS was followed by the Advisory Service for Squatters (ASS) in 1975, a volunteer based charity providing advice to squatters as well as publishing The Squatters Handbook.9 These organisations give squatters a network of support that unified their collective power, and educated people in how to thrive as a squatting community.

1 Martínez López, M. (2018). The urban politics of squatters’ movements. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

2 Spatialagency.net. (2019). Spatial Agency: Diggers / Levellers. [online] Available at: http://www.spatialagency.net/database/ diggers.

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid.

5 Pruijt, H. (2013). The Logic of Urban Squatting.

6 Cattaneo, C. and Martinez, M. (2014). The squatters’ movement in Europe.

7 Somerville, P. and Sprigings, N. (2005). Housing and social policy: contemporary themes and critical perspectives.

8 Bl.uk. (2019). Make Do and Mend. [online] Available at: https://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item106365.html.

9 Squatter.org.uk. (2019). About ASS | Advisory Service for Squatters. [online] Available at: https://www.squatter.org.uk/aboutass/.

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True Levellers manifesto, 1649

History of Squatting in the UK

Figure 6

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Squatters in the post war period and the late 60s/ 70s contextualised their conditions within public policy. The Criminal Law Act of 1977 made it illegal to use violent action to gain access to a property if the premises are occupied. Section 7 stated that it would be a criminal offence if a trespasser refuses to leave property if asked to do so by the displaced resident.1 Housing the Homeless act of 1977 was the first time that the authorities had a legal duty to help homeless people.2 These opposing laws, to simultaneously help homeless people whilst also creating further restrictions on squatters, are reflective of the conflicting attitudes towards squatting in this period. The laws represent the first move to pass legislation limiting the rights of squatters, providing precedent for subsequent hostility and future legislation.

The face of urban squatting in London during the 1980s was that of the anarchist libertarian youth movement, dominated by radical politics and subcultural organisations.3 Housing issues merged with broader movements including the Women’s Liberation Movement, Gay Liberation Front, Civil Rights Movement, and anti capitalist groups. These grassroots radical organisations, collectively had power to make lasting political and societal change. The number of people squatting in London reached a peak in the 1980s as many squats formed Housing Co-operatives or became legalised.4 The formation of Co-operatives had a positive effect in creating democratic housing networks and engendered a supportive environment for more vulnerable residents. The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 gave the rights to the legal owners of a property to enter using force.5 In response to this, Squatters’ Action for Secure Homes (SQUASH) was initiated in the mid 90s, in attempt to combat the gradual criminalisation of squatting.

The Land Registration Act of 2002 allowed squatters to apply for possession of property following ten years of possession, however the initial owner would be informed and holds the ability to object to the request.6 These laws did not entirely prohibit squatting, however they functioned to diminish the power and rights of squatters.

In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, the growing number of squatters in western cities was a manifestation of the economic recession.7 Neoliberal policies put in place from the 1980s that diminished housing benefits, and introduced the Right to Buy scheme, contributed towards the contemporary housing crisis and increase in homelessness. Squatting became a reaction to financial disparity exacerbated by capitalism. Urban renewal and processes of gentrification escalated social divisions, whilst rising housing costs limited possibilities for the working class, migrants, and refugees. This resulted in a rising number of those from disadvantaged backgrounds to view squatting as their only viable option. The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act of 2012 criminalised trespassing in residential properties. SQUASH continues to function with the goal of repealing this law, but to no avail. It is interesting that the change

1 Legislation.gov.uk. (2019). Criminal Law Act 1977. [online] Available at: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1977/45/.

2 Legislation.gov.uk. (2019). Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977. [online] Available at: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ ukpga/1977/48/contents/enacted 3 Steen, B., Katzeff, A. and Hoogenhuijze. (2014). L, The city is ours. Oakland: PM Press.

4 Cattaneo, C. and Martinez, M. (2014). The squatters’ movement in Europe.

5 Legislation.gov.uk. (2019). Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. [online] Available at: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ ukpga/1994/33/contents.

6 Legislation.gov.uk. (2019). Land Registration Act 2002. [online] Available at: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2002/9/ contents.

7 Martínez López, M. (2018). The urban politics of squatters’ movements. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

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The 1979 Squatters’ Handbook published by the Advisory Service for Squatters

History of Squatting in the UK

Figure 7

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in social background of the squatters increased the limitations put upon them. The middle class squatters from the 1970s and 1980s were tolerated and allowed to thrive, whereas when the face of squatting becomes those from impoverished backgrounds constraints increase. With heightened legislation on squatting, it is hard to imagine groups of squatters having the same influence as they did in the 20th century.

Although many of these squatting groups leave no physical trace, it is the development of their progressive ideas and notions of common ownership that prevail. The post war squatters, instilled a positive perspective on the regenerative potential of inhabiting neglected buildings, which would carry through to an acceptance of squats in later years. Relative freedom for the squatters in the 1970s allowed grassroots groups to have significant and lasting impacts within political movements and the direct landscape.

Squatters highlighted key social issues that would transform politics, whilst the development of co-operatives provided a safe space for more vulnerable or marginalised members of the community. More stringent legislation throughout the years has made it increasingly difficult to evolve grassroots organisations to such effect.

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ENDURING EPHEMERA

History of Squatting in the UK

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RADNOR TERRACE & ROSETTA STREET

Radnor Terrace and Rosetta Street, inhabited by a group of female squatters in 1972, became an autonomously run organisation that was focussed around the Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM).1 As there remains no physical trace of the squat itself, my research predominantly consists of material sourced from archives, and information from a recent exhibition detailing their temporary occupancy. To give context to their intervention, I will provide a brief history of the initiation of the squat, outline the position of the WLM in the 1970s, and describe their standing within a wider network of politically active squatting communities in the Lambeth area. I go on to analyse their methods of challenging the structure of the traditional nuclear family and gender roles.

Following this, I focus on a period of three months in which the squat was taken over by an art exhibition, presenting itself as a critique of the woman’s role within the domestic realm. Analysing a poster proliferated by the group gives further insight into their ambitions and self perception. Through examining remnants from the community and analysing their position within a broad network of squatting activists, I aim to consider how the ideas infiltrated by these groups have potentially had long term societal influence.

In 1972 the residents of Radnor Terrace and Rosetta Street, inhabiting two rows of run down Georgian terraced houses set back off the South Lambeth Road, were evacuated for demolition to make room for a new estate development. In the interlude, between the clearance of the houses and their demolition, the streets were squatted. For the duration of the decade, the houses accommodated a fluctuating society of women. Whilst most of the dwellings maintained residential function, 14 Radnor Terrace began to operate as the South London Women’s Centre (SLWC).2 The SLWC formed part of a larger network of groups that coordinated WLM activists called the London Women’s Liberation Workshop (LWLW). This group comprised of over 300 organisations and dominated the scene of feminist activism in 1970s London.3 The WLM developed as a result of accelerated cultural and social transformation, advancing parallel to the progression of the Civil Rights Movement (CRM) and the Gay Liberation Front (GLF). The WLM mostly functioned as a series of grass roots autonomous organisations. Their activism predominantly took the form of challenging laws restricting women and the position of women in society, using marches, lobbying, and various forms of publication to spread awareness. The slogan “sisterhood is powerful”4 demonstrates their understanding that the formation of organised groups gave a platform for women to have greater power. These societies allowed individuals to gain deeper understanding of female oppression through shared experiences and communication.5 The majority of the women campaigning in the WLM were white and middle class, it could be a product of their embedded and institutionalised capital that they had the freedom and education to question the oppression that they experienced.

The Lambeth area was home to many politically active squats during the 1970s, as well as the Women’s Liberation Movement, there were squats that focussed on the Civil Rights Movement and the Gay Liberation Front. Railton Road and Villa Road in 1 Tobin, A., Budd, A. and Pearce. (2017). N, 14 Radnor A Woman’s Place.

2 Tobin, A., Budd, A. and Pearce. (2017). N, 14 Radnor A Woman’s Place.

3 Setch, E. (2002). The Face of Metropolitan Feminism: London Women’s Liberation Workshop, 1969-79. Twentieth Century History, 13(2).

4 Morgan, R. (1970). Sisterhood is powerful. [Place of publication not identified]: Vintage Books.

5 Sisterhood and After Research Team. (2013). Activism Women’s Liberation Movement.

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Terrace: Terrace: The British

and the

ENDURING EPHEMERA

Interior of Rosetta Street, 1976

Radnor Terrace & Rosetta Street

Figure 8

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Brixton were particular cores to these communities, the close proximity allowing for mutual support between the organisations.

By 1972, many women had begun to establish distinct female orientated activist groups, the South London Women’s Centre at Radnor Terrace and Rosetta Street representing a breakaway party from the GLF on Railton Road. There remained a strong affiliation between the WLM and the struggle for gay and lesbian rights. Newspaper clippings from 1974 and 1976 demonstrate the continued cooperation between the women’s centre and the GLF, a GLF spokesman articulated “we shall be working in close co-operation with the women’s centre and hope to do the same kind of community work”.1 This mutual support allowed for the groups to prevail, despite numerous council evictions and negative portrayal in the media. Representation of the Brixton squatters in the right wing media centred not on the view of squatting as a logical temporary solution, but on the perception of it as disorderly, antisocial and problematic. Distinct from the family squatters movement, the occupants of the squats around Villa Road and Railton Road were a predominantly young crowd, confronting the economic and social disparity in one of the most disadvantaged districts in London. They proposed alternative ways of living, developing radical political movements and disseminating their ideas. However, there was a danger of these groups becoming insular and unapproachable due to the intimate living arrangements and their particular perspective. On Railton Road, the garden walls were demolished to create substantial communal space. Although this move had the intention of creating more openness, the effect was to create an insular community from the neighbouring groups. Many of the occupants of the squats came from middle class backgrounds and held university degrees, their Embedded and Institutionalised Cultural Capital allowed them to fight against the injustices they saw in society but meant they were only representative of a privileged sector of society.

The inhabitants of Radnor Terrace and Rosetta Street comprised a politically motivated community of women. Squatting allowed the occupants the financial freedom to become active members of the WLM, and challenge the relationship between the architecture of the traditional home and gender roles. They presented alternative structures of living that were a departure from the traditional nuclear family. The squatters demonstrated an alternative to the traditional heterosexual family framework, proposing a more fluid arrangement with the intention of engendering an environment in which the women had the capacity to be “activists, lovers and friends”.2 This proposal for a new definition of domestic network was radical at the time and encouraged women to step back from their reproductive familial roles, allowing them to live in a more creative and diverse residence. The squatters temporarily salvaged Georgian terraced houses, ironically preserving the longestablished architecture which they identified with as a familiar domestic environment. Although the women were advocating a radical reconsideration of family structures, they remained within the context of the traditional construction of the home.

As a continuation of their ideas to challenge the conservative way of living, they began to interfere with the composition of the physical fabric of the houses, to correspond to the changing needs of the residents. The manipulation of conventional forms is a consistent theme throughout their narrative, manifesting itself physically in the fabric of the house, as well as through their radical ideas. Although the occupants were diverse 1 South London Press. (1974). Gay Liberationists take over a shop.

2 Tobin, A., Budd, A. and Pearce, N. (2017). 14 Radnor Terrace: A Woman’s Place.

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South London Press newspaper clipping, 1974

South London Press newspaper clipping, 1976

Radnor Terrace & Rosetta Street

Figure 9

Figure 10

South London Press newspaper clipping, 1976

Figure 11

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in class identification and political interests, they predominantly associated as white, lesbian and female. This relatively singular perspective skews the voice of these women to a particular struggle, a contemporary understanding of this group points to the difficulty of collective politics. The South London Women’s centre at 14 Radnor Terrace produced a feminist newsletter, advertising its services as providing “meetings of mothers in action, the power of women collective, a women study group, pre-natal and antenatal classes as well as self defence”. 1The nature of these support classes demonstrate the empowering aspirations of the centre, performing to educate and give a platform for women from a variety of backgrounds. The advertisement for “Lesbian liberation”2 in this newsletter further evidences the mutual interests of the GLF and the WLM. Over a period of a few months, 14 Radnor terrace was occupied by the South London Art Group (S.L.A.G), transforming the typical terraced house into a commentary on female roles within the domestic realm. The exhibition was entitled A Woman’s Place.

The narrative based itself around the structure of 1973 exhibition, Womanhouse, which used the house as the framework for a feminist art show that examined the traditional duties of women in the home. Like Womanhouse, A Woman’s Place made use of the existing architecture as the theoretical framework, allowing rooms to retain their initial function.3 The exhibition became a collaborative piece, carried out by a group of artists and WLM activists living in the squat. It enacted a departure from the established duties of women and exposed the Sisyphean labour routinely carried out, a critique on the societal expectations of women to take the burden of these repetitive monotonous tasks.

A Woman’s Place demonstrates the insecurity of working on the borders of society through its impermanence, yet simultaneously proves that it is possible. The poster for A Woman’s Place reveals a lot about the context in which the women were working, their goals, and their affiliations with other groups. The crossing female gender symbols adjacent to the title in the poster for the show is indication of the association between the WLM and GLF. The image of the house appears twice, once as a photograph, and once redrawn and flipped upside down. Perhaps this gesture of reinterpreting the existing structure through drawing and turning on its head could be symbolic of the re-examination of gendered roles that occurs within the exhibition. The writing appears in many different fonts and the information on the page is crowded, typical of the squatters leaflets and posters of the time. Perhaps indicative of disrupting the conventional ways of thinking and giving the poster a grassroots quality, reflective of the small scale nature of these groups. The poster acts as an invitation to the house, functioning as an abstract map with directional arrows. The outline of the poster is in the form of an artists palette, a subtle gesture that is given away by the upper groove and oval grip.4 The depiction of the palette informs the observer immediately that it relates to an art show, a world that is predominantly a luxury of the middle class. The working class are massively underrepresented in the majority of artistic fields, so their poster would speak to a particular audience.

1 Tobin, A., Budd, A. and Pearce, N. (2017). 14 Radnor Terrace: A Woman’s Place.

2 Tobin, A., Budd, A. and Pearce, N. (2017). 14 Radnor Terrace: A Woman’s Place.

3 Schapiro, M. (1972). The Education of Women as Artists: Project Womanhouse. Art Journal, 31(3), p.268.

4 Tobin, A., Budd, A. and Pearce, N. (2017). 14 Radnor Terrace: A Woman’s Place.

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ENDURING EPHEMERA

A Woman’s Place exhibition poster, 1974

Radnor Terrace & Rosetta Street

Figure 12

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These interventions were temporary in their presence, and the individual stories of occupants have now almost entirely disappeared from history. However, what endures, is the collective narrative of the women and the gradual change over time towards a more equal society. This WLM group squatting in Vauxhall represents a small component of a much larger movement that would eventually use their localised power to make significant changes for women in the UK. The relative prevalence of the Railton Road and Villa Road squats in the media, in comparison to the all female squatting community in Vauxhall, is suggestive of the continued patriarchal influence and subversion of female politics at this time. The shared concerns and mutual support of the Women’s Liberation Movement and the Gay Liberation Front helped the groups to sustain their presence and make a significant collective impression. Their inhabitation of the houses challenged conservative family structures and gender roles, advocating alternative living arrangements that broke down outdated conventions and stereotypes.

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ENDURING EPHEMERA

Map of Women’s groups in the Greater London area

Radnor Terrace & Rosetta Street

Figure 13

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VAUXHALL CITY FARM

Vauxhall City Farm, initiated by a community of architects squatting in St Oswald’s Place from 1975, was a collaborative project with the aim of engaging residents in the curation of allotments and nurturing rescue animals sourced from the RSCPA.1 In order to communicate an understanding of the project and its significance within the district of Vauxhall, I will first consider the practice of urban farming as an act of Spatial Agency within the urban landscape. I interview two of the early squatters of St Oswald’s Place to gain further insight into how the farm was initiated and their ambitions from the outset. Through the analysis of archived newspaper clippings, leaflets from the farm and information from the council I proceed to consider how the farm has developed over time both in its physical manifestation and in its social intent. Finally, I will examine how the farm continues to operate in the contemporary landscape of Vauxhall and contemplate the sustained influence that their intervention has had.

The process of harvesting crops and breeding farm animals within urban contexts can be referred to as “urban farming”2.

Growing environmental consciousness, sub-culture movements in opposition to capitalism and a backlash to consumer culture during the late 1960s and 1970s led to a renewed interest in sustainability and an increase in subsistence farming; taking the form of allotments, city farms, communal gardens, and public parks. The majority of city farms in London were built on disused plots of land in the rubble of demolished neighbourhoods as an act of activism and resistance to reclaim autonomy over neglected land. The majority of these farms continue to operate on a community volunteer basis and rely on donations and funding from the council to continue running. The benefits of introducing agricultural land into urban areas include: enrichment of mental and physical well-being, community engagement and growth, agricultural education, job opportunities, improved natural diversity, provision of space for wildlife and waste recycling. City farms facilitate learning through providing educational facilities and programmes, which allow urban residents to have direct access to agricultural processes. However the dangers of inner city farms lie in the risks of soil contamination on previously industrialised sites and noise and air pollution in plots of land adjacent to busy roads. It is also important to consider that urban agricultural land tends to be less efficient with water, harvesting, fertilising and other processes compared to conventional methods of farming. Urban farming practices are common amongst squatting communities due to the underlying desire for systems of autonomous living and self sufficiency. There is a strong relationship between the principles of the self-governing squatting movement and the positive effects that their ethics have in relation to sustainable living, reduced energy consumption and reuse of existing materials. Urban squatters demonstrate localised solutions to the environmental and economic problems, making use of waste materials, imparting knowledge within communities, promoting unity and collaboration, sourcing leftover food, and creating organic agricultural plots. Vauxhall City Farm remains as a relic of a former squatting community and is one of the longest running and most central of the 13 farms in the Greater London area.3 The initiation of Vauxhall City Farm, originally known as Jubilee City Farm due to its establishment in 1977, began development in 1976.4 Extensively planned demolitions between the years 1972 1 Julia Tremaino. (June 14th, 2019). Personal interview.

2 Spatialagency.net. (2019). Spatial Agency: Urban Farming. [online] Available at: http://www.spatialagency.net/database/urban. farming.

3 Montgomery, I. (2019). The Changing Face of Urban Farming in London. [Blog] The polis blog.

4 Vauxhall City Farm. (2019). History. [online] Available at:

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Vauxhall City Farm Newsletter, 1991

Vauxhall City Farm

Figure 14

33

and 1976 in the Lambeth area led to the creation of the North Lambeth Neighbourhood Council (NLNC).1 The NLNC encouraged the community to take back the land through direct action by leading self initiated projects on the neglected plots around the Vauxhall area. In 1975, a group of architecture students “took the crinkly tin off the doors and windows”2 of a property in St Oswald’s Place. This property was positioned in a cluster of three abandoned and dilapidated terraced houses. The architecture students used their knowledge of construction to develop the properties into habitable dwellings, knocking through walls to remove the partitions between the separate buildings. The group were quick to form a Housing Co-operative with Lambeth Council, demonstrating their knowledge of the political climate and the councils sympathetic stance towards squatters: an indication of their Embedded and Institutionalised Cultural Capital that gave them an inherent advantage in accomplishing their goals. In 1976, the group began their intervention to create what would later become known as Vauxhall City Farm. The process began in the rubble of a fire ravaged building on the adjacent street.

Julia Traimero describes how, each day, she “bought some grass seeds and started scattering seeds round”3 on the fertile ashy ground. Her intention was to create her own patch of greenery in the crumbling concrete landscape. John Froy, who published an autobiography detailing his experience living in Vauxhall entitled Teacher, Squatter, City Farmer, describes their intervention as being a “block of the city reclaimed by nature”.4 Their actions were reflective of the desire at the time to “regenerate the urban environment in a greener way”.5 Julia describes how this small patch of green land began to attract others, in particular a man who had knowledge about the establishment of city farms and suggested that they initiate the process of development. Originally their intention was to become self sufficient with food growth and house some rescue animals. Their horizons broadened as local residents indicated their interest in participating with the project through the curation of allotments. This collaborative intervention is very much in the spirit of Cedric Price, presenting itself as a “self organised process”6 that gives agency to the citizens.

This collective effort also began to bring people together from a range of backgrounds, including a number from the Greater London Council housing developments on the opposing street, creating a shared space for a society divided by wealth and class.

Jubilee City Farm became a registered charity in 1977, originally operating on two thirds of an acre of neglected land. The original development was sparsely populated, John Froy describes how there were “no fields and trees, no outbuildings, a corrugated tin fence like a stockade surrounded by blocks of flats”.7 Despite the proximity to flats, Julia describes how it still very much felt like a farm due to the basic nature of the facilities and the lack of obtrusive physical constructions on the site itself. This lack of physical construction was perhaps due to the self financed nature at the outset. Planning permission for Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, then known as Spring gardens, was granted in October 1976 after the development of the farm had begun.

The development of Vauxhall City Farm can be considered through; the physical transformation of the space over the years, fragments of evidence collected from archives, and first hand

1 Vauxhall City Farm. (2019). History. [online] Available at: https://www.vauxhallcityfarm.org/history.

2 Froy, J. (2018). Teacher, Squatter, City Farmer.

3 Julia Tremaino, (June 14th, 2019). Personal interview.

4 Froy, J. (2018). Teacher, Squatter, City Farmer.

5 Froy, J. (2018). Teacher, Squatter, City Farmer.

6 Spatialagency.net. (2019). Spatial Agency: Cedric Price. [online] Available at: http://www.spatialagency.net/database/price.

7 Froy, J. (2018). Teacher, Squatter, City Farmer.

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Front cover of Teacher, Squatter, City Farmer, depicting makeshift fencing and animals at the farm

Vauxhall City Farm

Figure 15

35

narratives. The analysis of the evolution of physical artefacts can be studied using information collected from photographs, maps, planning applications and first hand descriptions of the terrain.

Investigation into the archived information over the relevant years, reveals the media perception of the farm’s development, the community of architects’ own conception of themselves, and the attitudes of the local residents. The physical transformation of the site has seen an increase in density of man-made constructions, as well as natural growth and parkland. Julia, one of the first inhabitants who is no longer involved with the farm, describes how the site used to have more of an agrarian feel to it, due to the lack of physical construction on the site itself. She laments that the farm has “gotten so built up now, so many buildings on the site”1 that it gives the impression of being “more of a zoo”.2 Newspaper clippings from 1979 depict the vast expanse of grassland stretching out beyond the farm boundaries and confirm the barren nature of the land that Julia describes. Examining historical photographs reveals the humble beginnings of the farm structures, which consist mainly of timber and metal wire fences. Planning documents report that, up until 1985, the structures on the site had been constructed using donated or found materials, predominantly timber, and described by community worker in the South London Press as “Temporary and pretty grotty”.3 The intention with the proposed development in 1985, was to create block-work animal houses “improving the image of the farm”.4 These block-work constructions were demolished in 1990 and replaced with London Stock bricks, a language that continues through to the later developments. This change in language, from making use of discarded materials, to a more conventional approach to construction, indicates a change in direction and a departure from the initial intentions of the squatters. Newspaper clippings from the South London Press, a left wing newspaper focussing on events within the South London area, reflect positively on the guerrilla intervention of Vauxhall City Farm. Titles such as “Donkey business”, “Spot of paint”, “It’s the good life”, and “A taste of the ‘good life’ in the heart of vauxhall”5 dominate the archives and are reflective of the positive perception of the farm in the left wing media. Not all newspaper coverage on the farm was positive however, John Froy details in his book that the farm was “vilified in the right wing press”.6 The right wing perception of the farm was that the development was “a bit hippy, bit dippy”,7 undermining the project as they deemed it to have no calculable value. Analysis of the evolution of leaflets given out by the farm demonstrates a development from a grassroots handmade approach, to a more polished and well funded impression that seems to boast of the proximity to the luxury high rise developments. The progression of the leaflets can be seen in conjunction with the evolution of the buildings themselves, and is reflective of the change in organisation and increased levels of funding to the farm.

Vauxhall City Farm continues to operate as an independent registered charity, relying on donations from individuals and corporations rather than funding from the Borough of Lambeth or the City of London. I will consider how their current goals to promote “healthy living, family, education, skills-development, and social cohesion”8 have been successful and whether the results are true 1 Julia Tremaino. (June 14th, 2019). Personal interview.

2 Julia Tremaino. (June 14th, 2019). Personal interview.

3 South London Press. (1985). Down on the farm S.E.11.

4 Planning.lambeth.gov.uk. (2019). 003QJ7BOBU000 | Vauxhall City Farm 165 Tyers Street London SE11 5HS. [online] Available at: https://planning.lambeth.gov.uk/online-applications/propertyDetails. do?activeTab=relatedCases&keyVal=004MXQBOLI000.

5 South London Press. (1974-1976). [Newspapers].

6 Froy, J, Teacher. (2018). Squatter, City Farmer.

7 Froy, J, Teacher. (2018). Squatter, City Farmer.

8 Apps.charitycommission.gov.uk, [online] Available at: http://apps.charitycommission.gov.uk/Accounts/Ends12/0000281512,

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South London Press article, 1978

South London Press article, 1979

Vauxhall City Farm

Figure

17

South London Press article, 1979

Figure

16

Figure

18

37

to the initial ambitions of the squatters who set up the institution.

Lambeth is home to one of the “most diverse populations in the UK”,1 however it also suffers from extreme levels of poverty, mental health issues, and child obesity rates. The educational programmes provided by the farm aim to counteract these issues by running workshops with the purpose of educating young people in sustainable and healthy eating practices. The allotments may not provide enough space to contribute food for the surrounding area, however they function to educate and engage youth in sustainable agricultural processes. True to the initial ambitions of the squatters to gain a level of self sufficiency. The diversity of animals has increased throughout the years and the farm is now home to over 100 animals, including chickens, ducks, rabbits, alpacas, horses, sheep, goats, ferrets, pigs, cats, aviary birds, turkeys, cows, rats, a tortoise and chinchillas. Ex squatter Julia’s observation that the farm now functions as more of a “zoo”,2 could be an accurate analysis as the animals are predominantly for display to the public, rather than having any sort of agricultural purpose. The proximity of the farm to polluted industrial soil and busy roads could be perceived as an inappropriate location for the rearing of animals, but the educational benefits and opportunity for interaction with these animals, are positive for the wider community who might not otherwise have these experiences.

The farm continues the legacy of squat culture through caring for those more vulnerable in society. Acting as a riding centre to support mentally and physically disabled people to develop communication skills, emotional wellbeing and physical strength and ability. The Pleasure Gardens continue to provide a buffer between Vauxhall City Farm and the high rise developments along the river, however the visibility of these developments and proximity to the hum of the main road, dismantle the illusion of peaceful rurality. Lambeth resides within the inner London area, an expanse that suffers from extreme levels of wealth disparity and one of the “lowest ratios of green space to population in the country”.3 The sustained provision of green space, in the form of Vauxhall City Farm and The Pleasure Gardens, is an important resource to lower income families who might not otherwise have personal access to outdoor space in such a densely urbanised area.

Overall, the legacy of the squatting community that began in 1975 prevails to this day, demonstrating the potential capacity that individuals hold to make lasting change on the landscape of a city. It must be considered however that all of the occupants living in the squat came from middle class backgrounds and held a certain amount of Embedded and Institutionalised Cultural Capital. Three of the original squatters were architecture students and one was studying for a PHD. Would they have had the same success, power and self confidence if they had come from a background that did not instil them with the knowledge of institutional structures and organisations. Ideas that the farm was “a bit hippy, bit dippy”4 prevailed, especially to those on the political right. However the farm has endured the test of time, despite extensive redevelopment of the area, demonstrating the benefits of this collaboratively run community resource.

This in turn, it could be speculated, has led to the surrounding area in the Vauxhall pleasure gardens being transformed into parkland. This small intervention of one woman scattering a few grass seeds on a neglected piece of land, has had a knock on effect of creating a whole landscape of greenery within a highly developed area. This kind of community led intervention has become increasingly challenging, due to the regulations put in place over land ownership that now limit squatters rights.

1 Apps.charitycommission.gov.uk. (2019). [online] Available at: http://apps.charitycommission.gov.uk/Accounts/Ends12/0000281512_ AC_20140331_E_C.PDF. 2 Julia Tremaino. (June 14th, 2019). Personal interview.

3 Apps.charitycommission.gov.uk. (2019). [online] Available at: http://apps.charitycommission.gov.uk/Accounts/Ends12/0000281512_ AC_20140331_E_C.PDF. 4 Froy, J. (2018). Teacher, Squatter, City Farmer.

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Vauxhall City Farm, 2015, depicting proximity to high rise developments

Figure 19

Vauxhall City Farm, 2018, depicting built up development

Figure 20

Vauxhall City Farm

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BONNINGTON SQUARE

Horticulturalist and ex squatter of Bonnington Square, James Frazer, articulates the goals of those who inhabited the space as endeavouring to “save the houses, save the square and plant trees”.1 I will use these three ambitions as the basis for my analysis of the success and failures of their intervention into the urban landscape of Vauxhall. The initial ambition to “save the houses”2 demonstrates the direct action taken by individuals to seize ownership over neglected land in response to the excess of empty houses. I gain insight from Mark Prizeman, an architect living in the square from 1981-1989, in relation to his role in renovating many of the dilapidated apartments into habitable dwellings. I consider the ambition to “save the square”3 in relation to the social fabric of the community as a whole and observe how the development of co-operative living arrangements affected the relationships of those occupying the space and the evolution of the community. Through analysing the experience of two contrasting co-operative organisations, I hope to establish a balanced investigation into the outcomes of various groups. The final initiative to “plant trees”,4 promoted the guerrilla gardening that defines the unique character of the neighbourhood to this day. I interview James Frazer, a leading figure in the operation to cultivate a sub-tropical haven, about the various environmental improvement grants and ventures throughout the years.

Bonnington Square, comprising tightly packed “Italian gothic style terraced houses”,5 is located in a cul-de-sac off the South Lambeth Road. During the 19th century the site functioned as a nursery garden, growing grapes for the production of wine vinegar. Overlooking the garden was one property called “The Vinery”6. This building, which is now known as “Vine Lodge”7, prevails as the oldest house in Bonnington Square and was the first property to be squatted in 1979. Bonnington Square and Vauxhall Grove were constructed on the nursery garden in 1881 to provide housing for railway workers. These buildings reference the previous function of the site through sculpted Coade stone lintels and door arches that detail the grapes grown for vinegar production. Vauxhall was highly industrialised and the riverside area was frequently redeveloped to make way for new functions.

A fragment of the industrial history is located in Bonnington Square Garden in the form of a large metal wheel, used to wet marble during the cutting process. Industrialisation in the late 19th century cultivated unsanitary environmental conditions in Vauxhall, leading many residents to abandon the properties. The deserted properties became slums or were separated into separate lodgings. The area fell into further disrepair during World War 2 due to heavy bomb damage and neglect of certain areas. During the 1960s the dilapidated buildings were rented out at low rates to a group known as the Bonnington Housing Co-operative. These occupants were mostly rehoused in the 1970s to Bannerman House, a new high rise development on the adjacent road, built for the purpose of relocating those living in slum conditions and to prepare for the demolition of certain properties.8 From the late 1970s, squatters began to occupy the empty flats in the square, making use of found items to repair the damage from years of neglect. The formation of Housing Co-operatives allowed people to take collaborative ownership over the surrounding spaces.

The bomb damaged sites from WW2 have been landscaped and curated into community gardens, providing pockets

1 James Frazer. (June 08, 2019). Personal interview.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid.

5 https://www.lambeth.gov.uk/sites/default/files/pl-VauxhallDraft-CA-Statement-FINAL.pdf 6 Lambeth.gov.uk. (2019). [online] Available at: https://www. lambeth.gov.uk/sites/default/files/pl-Vauxhall-Draft-CA-Statement-FINAL. pdf.

7 Ibid.

8 James Frazer. (June 08, 2019). Personal interview.

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Bonnington Square, 1980s, depicting tightly packed terraced houses with Stone lintels

Figure 21

Bonnington Square, 1990s, development of the gardens with industrial wheel abutting the houses

Figure 22

Bonnington Square

41

of agrarian land in the now densely urbanised area. Bonnington Square is now part of the conservation area in Vauxhall, deemed an area of importance and worth preserving as part of the urban fabric due to its historic significance and unique character.

The social fabric of Bonnington Square has been built through the formation of various Housing Co-operatives, a residents association, and the development of shared amenities. During the 1980s, many of the squatters began to form Housing Cooperatives with varying outcomes. James Frazer, an occupant of the square from November 1980, formed Vine Housing Cooperative in 1983. The democratically run organisation comprises 23 houses in Bonnington Square and Vauxhall Grove.1 The co-operative addresses the importance of helping the more vulnerable in society, and being “representative of the ethnic mix of Lambeth”2, by constructing a list of criteria that new occupants must fulfil. James describes how forming a co-operative led the group to start “taking members off the housing list from Lambeth, Afro Caribbean people, refugees and vulnerable gay people at the time”.3 The co-operative continues to take the approach of prioritising those in need of housing and on the Lambeth council waiting list. This decision demonstrates an awareness of the cultural capital of the existing occupants, an acknowledgement that their predominantly creative middle class community is not an accurate reflection of the population of Lambeth as a whole.

James articulates how the structure of co-operatives “transcended the political divide”4 as they were seen as a productive way of integrating more vulnerable members of society into co-living environments and showed “initiative, people doing stuff”.5 The co-operative models in Bonnington Square can be considered successful in that they brought in vulnerable individuals to live in a community housing model and demonstrated productive redevelopment of the site, however it was only through well informed individuals and a democratic model that the group were able to achieve this effectively. Mark Prizeman formed his cooperative in 1987 with 10 other residents. This co-operative was not as democratically run and there were frequent disagreements surrounding who got priority in renovating their properties.6 The individualistic interests of some of the members caused clashes within the organisation, demonstrating the fragile nature of autonomous arrangements. Other unions, such as the residents association for Bonnington Square, used their collective voice to fight off unwanted developments. Their objective was to contest designs that they did not think were “sympathetic to what was going on in the environment”.7 The group managed to successfully resist one of the first unwanted developments in Vauxhall however, since the dissolution of the residents association in Bonnington Square, habitants “don’t have a common voice”.8 Communal organisations are important in ensuring a collective power to be heard by larger institutions. The loss of a united power alongside reduced authority of Lambeth council through limited funding, has led to the erosion of the of residents influence in relation to new developments.

The presence of shared amenities, such as the whole food shop, cafe, milk-bar, a nightclub and community gardens, helped build relationships and create establishments which continue to operate prominently. The whole food shop has transformed throughout the years to accommodate the changing needs of the occupants and now functions as a popular delicatessen and cafe. The Bonnington centre was conceived after one of the residents sourced some 1 Available 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

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Sites.google.com. (2019). Vine Housing Co-op. [online] at: https://sites.google.com/site/vinemembers/.

James Frazer. (June 08, 2019). Personal interview.

James Frazer. (June 08, 2019). Personal interview.

James Frazer. (June 08, 2019). Personal interview.

James Frazer. (June 08, 2019). Personal interview.

Mark Prizeman. (June 06, 2019). Personal interview.

James Frazer. (June 08, 2019). Personal interview.

James Frazer. (June 08, 2019). Personal interview.

ENDURING EPHEMERA

Bonnington Square cafe, 1980s, photograph taken by Mark Prizeman

Figure 23

Bonnington Square cafe, 1980s, photograph taken by Mark Prizeman

Figure 24

Bonnington Square

43

“industrial gas cookers”1 allowing the users to have cook ups using free food from the markets. The cafe still functions through a communally run effort, with a different cook and varied cuisine each night of the week, reflective of the cultural and ethnic diversity of the area. These public domains benefit from the intimate nature of the cul-de-sac, providing the sense that “there is still a strong sense of community”.2 The initial intention was for these spaces to provide collaboratively run amenities that improved relations within the area and were not for profit. The spaces now function as a relatively highly priced delicatessen and restaurant so do not remain true to the initial intention and attract a more bourgeois clientele. The freedom of living in the co-operative allowed many of the occupants to pursue and succeed in creative fields that they otherwise might not have had the opportunity to fulfil. James describes how he “wouldn’t have gone into creative horticulture if it wasn’t for Bonnington Square”.3 This kind of creative pursuit predominantly remains a privilege for the middle class. As the majority of the occupants came from middle class backgrounds, the squat did not provide opportunity to a society that would not otherwise have found their way into creative professions.

The development of the houses themselves into more liveable spaces began as groups started forming Housing Co-operatives.

Mark Prizeman became involved in drawing up plans for renovating many of the houses in Bonnington Square whilst living there in the 1980s. His observation was that “when it was being run as a squat, you’ve got no sense of ownership or obligation” and it was “through the transformation of the squat into various Housing Co-operatives that people took ownership of the space more”.4 This concept of ownership is culturally ingrained within our society and the distinctive treatment of the squats before and after inhabitants achieved ownership of the spaces is observable. As an architect, Mark’s skills were widely sought after and his role in renovating many of the flats was crucial to the development of the spaces into safely habitable dwellings.

He describes how “each house had its own little culture”,5 his measured drawings providing a catalogue of a snapshot in time of the different groups living within the square. The population of the square may have been varied in terms of their creative pursuits, beliefs and countries of origin. However the reality of the situation was that the majority of the occupants shared similar privileges through their upbringings in terms of security and education. The Embedded and Institutionalised Cultural Capital of the occupants gave them a cultural advantage that allowed them to prosper. Mark’s architectural education, allowed him to provide occupants of the square with proper surveys of their spaces and improve the state of the dwellings. The certified skills of many of the occupants meant that they were able to renovate properties competently and inadvertently increase their value. Mark reflected on the creative freedom that living in the squat permitted as “you could do these things that were meant to be radical architectural experiments but thats just the way that you lived”.6 Their reconstruction of social living arrangements was able to translate itself physically through transforming the traditional architecture of the home, in a similar way to the WLM in Radnor Terrace and Rosetta Street. Their ambition to salvage the houses was successful, “in 1980 they were going to demolish all of those houses and now we have a thriving community”.7 However their ambition to subvert authoritative structures of ownership was perhaps not as they had hoped for, as the houses are now worth in excess of £1,000,000 and properties attract a more bourgeois buyer. The houses that successfully managed to 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

44

James Frazer. (June 08, 2019). Personal interview.

James Frazer. (June 08, 2019). Personal interview.

James Frazer. (June 08, 2019). Personal interview.

Mark Prizeman. (June 06, 2019). Personal interview.

Mark Prizeman. (June 06, 2019). Personal interview.

Mark Prizeman. (June 06, 2019). Personal interview.

James Frazer. (June 08, 2019). Personal interview.

ENDURING EPHEMERA

The Guardian Housing Supplement, 1994

Bonnington Square

Figure 25

45

set up Housing Co-operatives however have had lasting influence and continue to operate at low rates to those in need of housing.

The planting initiative in Bonnington Square, Langley Lane and Vauxhall Grove developed during the years of squatting inhabitation and continues to flourish due to a number of residents that share a passion for cultivating the urban landscape. James Frazer, a trained horticulturalist who began living in Bonnington Square in 1980, is responsible for much of the guerrilla gardening on the streetscape, The Pleasure Garden and Harleyford Gardens.

Since the squatters began to occupy the space in 1979, residents have applied for three major environmental improvement grants.

The first considerable grant came in 1983 and allowed for the inception of the street planting. “Left to their own devices”1 the residents, led by a few experienced gardeners residing in the square, began to “dig holes in the road and plant trees”.2 The space is now dominated by a wide variety of sub-tropical plants and the council regard their sites of horticultural intervention as a park due to the complexity and range of species. This permits the continued and specialised care for the diverse range of subtropical planting. The second grant in 1994 was to develop the relics of a WW2 bomb site into what is now known as The Pleasure Garden. The bomb site had previously been covered over in tarmac by the local council in the 1970s with the addition of some swings and benches, however the space was not maintained and fell into a state of disrepair. The considerable difference between the current maintenance of the site and the previous maintenance could be put down to the community engagement with the project and their collective power as middle class citizens.

The third grant in 2015 created a connecting patio between the pleasure gardens and Italo cafe, enhancing the relationship between the cafe and the park whilst providing an extended seating area. The small gesture of manipulating the texture of the road materiality gives the space a pedestrianised atmosphere and creates a more substantial external expanse for locals to reside. This same grant application also considered the root damage caused by some of the trees that had been planted in the 1980s, leading to the removal of particularly damaging trees and the careful consideration of paving around planted areas. Though the guerrilla gardening was successful in terms of engaging the community and creating a pleasant and verdant environment, it did not consider the long term impact of how the plants would interact with the existing hard landscaping. From 1984, residents teamed together to develop another bomb site in the adjacent street, Harleyford Road, into what is now Harleyford gardens.

They collaboratively formed Harleyford Road Garden Association3 and began to use the space for allotments. With all of these project the residents used Vauxhall City Farm as a “resource for getting horse poo”,4 these projects are connected through their roots as squatting communities and their shared agrarian pursuits. Both interventions demonstrate examples of “guerrilla gardening in its purest form”5 and continue to grow and thrive long after the temporary presence of the squatters that initiated the projects.

It is now forty years since Bonnington Square became inhabited by a community of squatters. What remains from their intervention is the preservation and renovation of historical buildings, the development of a community through the formation of Housing Co-operatives and the provision of verdant space within a densely urbanised district. Their intervention set precedent for radical structures of domestic inhabitation, and like the WLM at

1 James Frazer. (June 08, 2019). Personal interview.

2 James Frazer. (June 08, 2019). Personal interview.

3 Londongardensonline.org.uk. (2019). Harleyford Road Community Garden. [online] Available at: http://www.londongardensonline.org.uk/ gardens-online-record.php?ID=LAM017.

4 James Frazer. (June 08, 2019). Personal interview.

5 James Frazer. (June 08, 2019). Personal interview.

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Radnor Terrace and Rosetta Street, translated this through the architectural manipulation of the traditional family home.

The formation of organisations and Housing Co-operatives demonstrated the power of the collective voice as residents were able to have tangible influence over the surrounding landscape. Like the Vauxhall City Farm squatting community, the residents used guerrilla gardening tactics as a method of taking ownership over the land in response to the neglect of certain areas. The insight to apply for environmental improvement and Housing Co-operative loans came from cultural awareness and an ingrained knowledge of governing systems. Like the Vauxhall City Farm and Radnor Terrace squatters, their Embedded and Institutionalised Cultural Capital played a role in ensuring the success of the occupants.

Bonnington Square Gardens, 2018, Planting led by horticulturalist James Frazer

Bonnington Square

Figure 26

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CONCLUSION

My research has investigated the evolution of three squats over a period of 50 years in Vauxhall. Radnor Terrace and Rosetta Street, Vauxhall City Farm, and Bonnington Square.

Through analysing the historical development, fragmented relics and the contemporary presence of these three squats, my intentions were to gain insight into how temporary periods of autonomous living can have long term impacts on the landscape of cities. I have examined how these interventions set precedent for methods of Spatial Agency, demonstrating a collaborative approach to transforming space through guerrilla operations and the construction of intimate social networks.

All three of the squats that I have examined establish radical living structures, away from the nuclear family, but within the context of the conventional home. Their inhabitation of the spaces was temporary. However the long term impact of these squatting communities is a gradual social acceptance of non-traditional living arrangements and the advancement of their progressive political ideas. All three of the squats reconstructed the conservative terraced houses into spaces that were appropriate for communal living. The subversion of traditional architectural forms is in line with their desire to interrogate the status quo of societal structures and political ideologies. Radnor Terrace and Rosetta Street, challenged gender stereotypes and the female role within the domestic realm, using the architecture of the home as a framework to confront and translate inequalities.

Bonnington Square was established during a period in which 300 people from all around the world inhabited the majority of the 100 dilapidated dwellings.1 This intervention saw the recovery of neglected 19th century buildings and the evolution of a strong social fabric through the formation of Housing Cooperatives. The inhabitants of Bonnington Square and St Oswald’s Place (VCF) knocked through walls and floors to create shared spaces, utilising the architectural skills of individuals living there to improve conditions. The physical architecture of the buildings became temporary vessels to develop enduring social networks and collaborative urban interventions. The Embedded and Institutionalised Cultural Capital of the occupants gave them an inherent advantage in terms of how they were perceived and a knowledge of how to work within the governing structures to apply for grants and support to considerable effect.

The squatters of Vauxhall City Farm and Bonnington Square used guerrilla gardening as a method of regeneration and resistance.

Vauxhall City Farm, set up by a group of architecture students squatting in St Oswald’s Place, had the initial intention of improving the quality of life for inner city residents through the provision of green space. The evolution of the grassland into allotments and an animal rescue farm, was in the pursuit of a self sustainable lifestyle, which then drew the interest of locals who began to participate. The collaborative community engagement with the project allowed the farm to thrive and gain popularity within the neighbourhood. The development of VCF over the years has transformed the site into more of a “zoo”2, this is indicated through the displayed nature of the animals and departure from the intended agrarian functionality. Despite this, the farm continues to provide a positive educational resource to the local community.

The initial intervention could be seen as a catalyst for creating The Pleasure Gardens, granted planning permission the year after the inception of the farm, which provides parkland in a densely urbanised area. The guerrilla gardening initiative in Bonnington Square transformed the traditional hard landscaping into a subtropical oasis. James Frazer used his skills as a gardener to take ownership of the surrounding streets and bomb damaged sites to 1 Bonnington square. (2011). [film] Directed by A. Oldham.

London: Acacia films.

2 Julia Tremaino. (June 14th, 2019). Personal interview.

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ENDURING EPHEMERA

create green interventions in a heavily developed landscape.

They took advantage of environmental improvement grants and Housing Co-operative funding to establish their presence in the area. The proficiency of the occupants to work within systems of control to their advantage is indicative of their Institutionalised and Embedded Cultural Capital.

My investigation has carried out firsthand research allowing me to gain a deeper understanding of the social structures and context within which these squatters were working. Speaking to individuals who were there at the time gave further insight into the objectives of the interventions and their perception of the resulting outcomes. The original developments of Bonnington Square and Vauxhall City Farm have taken on lives of their own, beyond the initial intentions of the squatters. The spirit of the projects endure through the maintenance of community resources and agrarian pockets of land. Their actions have resulted in the unlikely provision of extensive green space in a densely urbanised environment. A resource that is invaluable to lower income families in the area, who might not otherwise have access to sufficient outdoor space. However, it must be quesioned whether they would have been as successful in achieving their goals were it not for the Embedded and Institutionalised Cultural Capital that the individuals possessed. Had the squatters been from working class backgrounds, they might not have received such effective support. It must also be considered that these interventions took place at a specific period in history when there was more freedom to take ownership over land without serious legal repercussions.

The interventions of the squatters themselves were temporary, but the seeds they sowed and the networks that they produced have had lasting influences on the contemporary landscape of Vauxhall. The ephemera and physical marks left behind from these temporary acts of Spatial Agency tell a dispersed and altered narrative. The reality of their interventions may be preserved through collective memory. They demonstrate that people have agency over their environment and that temporary interventions have the potential to produce profound enduring effects.

Conclusion

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APPENDICES

Appendices

57

INTERVIEW WITH JAMES FRAZER 05|06|2019 James Frazer is a horticulturalist who began living in Bonnington Square in 1980 after moving to the UK from New Zealand. He is responsible for much of the guerrilla gardening in the surrounding streets and the pleasure garden, which was previously the relics of a WW2 bomb damaged building.

He became part of a permanent housing Cooperative within Bonnington Square in 1983 with 22 other members and continues to have a relationship with Bonnington Square and its community. I interviewed him in his partners garden in Brockley where he has applied his unique approach to landscaping similarly to his intervention in Vauxhall. Relics of Bonnington Square in the form of an art studio made from old windows removed from the Bonnington Square houses as development favoured double glazing.

James: Talking about serendipity, as far as where you go in your career, that was an amazing break for me. I had just literally arrived from New Zealand after traveling for about six months to get here, and was staying with a friend in a bedsit in Tooting. And I just got a call from a friend of my brothers actually a New Zealander and he said “we’re breaking into a house tomorrow do you want to come and give us a hand?”. Just a couple of kiwis and I’d never met them before and that was in Bonnington Square. In the early 80s, November 1980.

Mathilda: You were there right at the beginning?

James: So there was one house before, Vine Lodge, which had been squatted in Bonnington square. There were squats already all over Brixton and Stockwell because there were so many empty houses, particularly public housing.

Mathilda: And they weren’t developing those houses?

James: That was extraordinary. Lambeth was struggling, still is, but there was a there was what they call hard left, there was a guy there called Ted Knight who ran Lambeth council. Those were the days of Thatcher. The local authorities were anti-Thatcher…

Bonnington Square was derelict. Anyway I turned up, there were five of us, apart from one couple, none of them, we didn’t know each other, we’re just five Kiwis. The word of mouth thing, we turned up, Vine Lodge, jimmied the door and then we’re in. I could not believe that then you’re protected by law, with squatter’s rights. If you didn’t actually get caught doing the breaking and entering, then once you were in, it was a whole process to get you out again. Yeah, I just couldn’t believe it, you know, straight off the Kiwi free boat. Crikey. It was amazing.

So anyway, the house Vine Lodge, which is the oldest house in Bonnington Square, had been stripped out by the tenants they had done a runner. They’d taken out all the plumbing, all the pipes. But the electricity was on, and the telephone was on.

They just stole all the pipes, you know, copper, toilets. Because it had been emptied out to expand the school, which is now the Academy on Lawn Lane, you know the old school that’s now an apartment. They had been buying these houses and apartments in Bonnington Square, also Vauxhall Grove from the 50s.

GLC education was run by the Inner London Education Authority, and they were part of the GLC, that was a political thing too.

So anyway, yeah, they’d been buying all these houses and they built this tower block in the 70s, which is there now in Lawn Lane, you know that tower that’s between Bonnington Square and your place. They built that to house the people, the tenants, from Bonnington Square. So they build that so gradually all those people went, and they just let these houses go derelict.

And when I turned up there was probably about a quarter of them occupied. And they were people that they just couldn’t rehouse house for one reason or another, there was one woman with 30 cats. There was a family of huge fat people… terrible.

58

Yeah so, anyway, the GLC at that time when we moved there.

Yes, so there were squats on Lansdowne Way in Stockwell.

Those beautiful Georgian terraces, they were squatted, and they were established as squats and we started going down there, you know we had our meeting… Yeah so we were in this house, there was one house before us was squatted. And from then on, we started opening up other houses but we were automatically facing eviction as soon as we went in, because the GLC was run by the Conservatives and that was their policy to make sure they got you out. So we started, you know, meeting up and meeting people down at Stockwell who, you know they knew the process knew the ropes.

Mathilda: So there were kind of alliances between other squats?

James: Yeah, yeah… so there were quite a few around, there were some in Brixton... what’s that famous crescent in Brixton? Only I think only in the last few years it has stopped.

Biddy: …Bonnington Square was the only one that was Kiwi dominated…

James: May 1981, the GLC became Labour, Ken Livingston took over and they immediately stopped evicting people, what’s the point in evicting people? We formed a co-op to establish those houses, open up the rest of the houses and that was called the Vauxhall Housing Co-op. From May 1981, that summer, a lot of the houses were opened up as squats. So we’re come in and get materials from one… kit out another.

I spent that winter in Vine Lodge but it was pretty bleak, we had to break into a house, find a bath, put that in… find someone who could do the plumbing for us… and just did it like that, by piecemeal. Vine Lodge was freezing, we had some open fires, there was no central heating. So I became friendly with one of the remaining tenants at 76 Bonnington Square. That house was 3 flats. The squatters looked out for these tenants, as I say, there was one elderly woman who had all these cats… and it was seriously derelict, there was no street lighting, people would come park up there in the day… cars everywhere and then bugger off at night. No streetlights, you know, just deserted. So people would come park for free and then get the tube into town, it was jammed up in the day with commuters.

So this lady, this really nice woman let me into this house, into 76 and we took the top two flats of that house which was a lot more kitted out, it had the carpet, the plumbing, toilets, sinks, stuff like that and it was secure. So I moved there pretty smartishly, in 1981 and stayed there until 1989 I think? By then it had come on a long way and we sort of so lucky because of our timing, with Ken Livingstone for one thing because he ran the GLC from County Hall which is opposite Parliament… they called him Red Ken… and he would put up all these banners against Thatcher. Because Thatcher was in the House of Commons and Ken was over the river (laughs)… lots of messages on County Hall ‘Remember…’ ‘Fair is Fair’. But Thatcher was determined to smash Ken and the GLC and she abolished it. And when that came along the GLC were of course very sympathetic to coops, we were lucky because we transcended the political divide.

Labour liked it because it was cooperative and Tories funnily enough liked it as well… were sympathetic as well because it was initiative, people doing stuff, co-ops… the members had to do the hard yards, it wasn’t like you just go to an agency… . So we sort of thrived within the Tory regime as well, they made loans available through the housing co-operation for co-ops.

Mathilda: So was that later on?

James: Yeah that was later on, that was probably from about 1985, or maybe a bit earlier… Because there was Vauxhall Housing Co-op ENDURING EPHEMERA

maybe a bit earlier… Because there was Vauxhall Housing Co-op first and then we set up Vine Housing Co-op as a permanent housing co-op.

Biddy: But only because there were some very smart cookies…

James: …Switched-on people…

Biddy: …Switched-on people who knew how to form a co-op properly…

James: …what buttons to push basically.

Biddy: Who to contact, how to go about the whole thing.

James: Because that was the other thing, apart from knowing how to break into a house and stay there… the opportunities available… you could get short life housing grants. So if you were in a coop, say, with the arrangement with the local authorities to be there for a couple years, they got their act together to develop it, maybe? So there were grants to help you set up the house as a short-life housing co-op, there were grants to do what we did in the end, a permanent housing co-op or loans, cheap loans through The Housing Corporation. There were environmental improvement grants because that was my thing, horticulture.

Mathilda: So that was for all the planting? That started later on as well didn’t it?

James: The first major grant we got was 1983. Because that was my thing, I didn’t know much about you know, bureaucracy, I was a trained horticulturalist. So I would just go out and start digging holes. We were lucky again, another lucky thing was we were in the north part of Lambeth borough, we were away from Brixton/ Lambeth headquarters sort of thing. And we were left to get on and do what we liked. It’s like a cul-de-sac Bonnington Square… it was two squares, Vauxhall Grove… we were just left to our own devices. And then literally get out and dig holes in the road and plant trees and they sort of forgot about us really.

Biddy: What was the first tree you planted? Was it that big LUP tree…

James: Well the first, like I say, was 1983 where we got our inner city partnership improvement grant where they would pay for all the materials.

Biddy: Was that the council or the government?

James: It was actually through the council but it was the government, yeah. It was a way of spending money that hadn’t been spent.

It’s highly centralised here with local authority… their funding, it’s tightly controlled basically by one person, the Minister of the Environment. They determine what local authorities get.

Anyway so, local authorities, if they’re coming up to the end of the financial year ‘oh my god, we haven’t spent this grant, we haven’t spent that money’ they go out into the community, ‘do we need a crossing here? Or does this school need a playground?’

Something quick and fast, that they can fund within a year kind of thing, get it in the pipeline.

So yeah, we put in for this grant to plant up all these trees and we were successful… So 1983 we did a major planting, we dug up the corners of Bonnington Square, we sort of blagged a lot of these curb stones that was from a depot around the corner Appendix 1

and we did all the grunt ourselves and we sort of got on with it.

Mathilda: Did you get inexperienced people to come and help with gardening as well?

James: Yeah the squatters, like Biddy says at first a lot of them at first were Kiwis… because Kiwis are really good at ‘oh yeah I can do that mate! I can rewire…’ and I was 25, ‘this is a…we’re doing… it’s a cultural thing, it’s political’ Biddy: And also very community which we’ve lost now James: Do you know the Bonnington Square Café?

Mathilda: Yeah James: That was squatted and that became a…

Biddy: …Hub… James: People would go to the vegetable market and get all this free stuff that they chucked away and have huge cook ups. It was a meeting place. The corner store was there.

Mathilda: Is that where Italo now is?

James: Yeah and there was this Cypriot guy. It was run by this Tony and Di, Tony was a Cypriot and his wife who was an English woman and they had two kids and of course they loved the squatters. Because the squatters were mostly middle class, gentil, educated, motivated, creative lots of creatives… musicians, film-makers. Because of course, you know, you had free accommodation, it was amazing. That’s how for me, like I say, serendipity sometimes sets you on a path, on a career because that gave me the break to get my business going. From there, I sort of got into horticulture and set up my business and a creative way to use plants in landscaping and that’s thanks to being in Bonnington Square because I didn’t have to pay any rent.

Biddy: And where the garden is in the middle… what was that?

James: That was a bomb site, a couple of bombs, yeah…

Mathilda: So you also developed Harleyford Gardens as well, were you a part of that?

James: Yeah, I wasn’t so much hands on, I was more in the actual street planting but the people on that side of Bonnington Square sort of took that on. That’s where most of Vine members are actually, Vine Housing Co-op. So our co-op ended up with about 22 houses which we bought with loans supplied by The Housing Corporation. And like I say, we were so lucky that the GLC were sympathetic, they sold us these houses so cheaply. But the one I ended up in, 19 Vauxhall Grove because I had moved from 76 Bonnington Square, Vauxhall Grove when we did up 76… we bought for 25 grand.

Mathilda: Oh wow! Because the person I was speaking to last week said 59

such a difference? Because his was for just one floor of one flat…

Lambeth. So we started taking members off the housing list from Lambeth, Afro-Caribbean people in and we took refugees…

James: Well depending on the year…

Mathilda: So you were bringing people in to make up numbers.

Mathilda: Wow, it’s mad that it increased so much.

James: What we did in Vine, a lot of people… anarchists for example, didn’t like the structure of the co-op and ‘taking coin from the enemy’ sort of thing. So they would go off and do their own thing, they refused to get involved with that structure. And then on the other end of the spectrum there was a group of people who just wanted to do their own thing because if you took, like we did at Vine… we borrowed the money from the government.

We had to do the properties up to a certain criteria, they had to be a certain amount of people per square metre sort of thing, you couldn’t just have one person to a whole house for example.

If you’re going to take their money you had to go to… there was an agency that was the intermediary between us and the government, in other words it was an agency that was paid to facilitate the whole thing and to make sure there was no corruption. So they would arrange architects for us, they would arrange the financing and we were going to turn these houses…

Anyway, so there was another co-op that set up and they just borrowed money from…building societies which hardly exist now. So they went out and took private loans, there was a group about ten houses that did that and of course by the time they organised they were paying a bit more, probably paying around 100 thousand per house because it was later because housing from about the mid-80s onwards… we had a housing boom.

About 1987 it got mad and then it crashed in 1989 I think.

Anyway they got organised, by the time they bought the houses they were paying a bit, at the time it was seen as top whack.

Borrowing at market rates and then there was a crash in 1989 and then they got a bit out there because of the interest rates, the interest rates went through the roof 15% and they were all of a sudden paying massive mortgage fees on what were just wrecks.

Biddy: Your co-op had already bought 20 houses by then.

James: Yeah by then, 22 I think we bought. I mean we were really lucky, like I say, our timing was fantastic. And that co-op, the private one, actually didn’t last because they started arguing with each other over what houses… how they were going to do them up and who had priority, whereas in our co-op it was run…

James: Like I say, we didn’t want to be seen to be taking public money.

It wasn’t a grant, it was a loan, we didn’t want to be seen as these middle class white kids basically taking all this housing, so we decided to bring in people off the local authority housing list which is fair! It was a good thing to do. We took some refugees, refugee families from conflict zones, we had a few other sort of charities… like some… a few vulnerable gay people at the time.

So we mixed up a bit, not just the squatters, we’ve got about 70/80 members now.

So it’s gone down the line, we virtually paid of all those loans, just ticks over nicely, it’s still run by its members, we have a part-time worker who does the hard admin. There’s a structure, run by sub-groups and there are meetings about 3 times a year which make decisions.

So we sort of guaranteed cheap rent basically. We sort of dug these flats up, we had some sort of flexibility about how we could be creative but not a lot, like I said, we had to play the game a bit. It’s a funny thing because as squats, we were just jumbled up, living on top of each other as squatters, all sort of maybe mates and some of these houses and maybe 8 squatters in them, so you know, chocca.

When the time came in Vine Housing Co-op, we had a common thing to do, save the houses, save the square, plant trees… it was a community thing and like I say, we are sort of away from… we’re like a little bubble there in Bonnington Square. It’s all those mad… you know what it’s like down there.

Mathilda: So I saw a picture of Vauxhall in 1980 and it was kind of pre the MI6 building and it looks like there’s lot of caravans… maybe there were a lot of gypsies living…? So I’m just putting two pieces together because I got an email from a woman who was saying there were a lot of gypsies who started up Vauxhall City Farm, who gave their horses to Vauxhall City Farm.

James: That’s one thing I never knew…

Mathilda: That Vauxhall City Farm was set up by squatters?

Biddy: …Protocol.

James: Yeah, I didn’t know that. Because we used to use that as a resource for getting horse poo, it was a great for doing these gardens… because you know the garden opposite Italo, that was a bomb site and that initial improvement grant we got in 1983 we tried to plant that up and it was just so hard because it was the foundation of housing. Us was just picks and shovels and we just couldn’t get enough… it was just too hard work to dig holes and plant trees although one tree, the walnut tree which is huge now, that managed to survive and thrive. A lot of the other planting was done in 1995, we got another huge grant and we raised money too to…

James: Yeah there was a structure for a housing co-op…

Mathilda: You were still living there in 1995?

Biddy: And a constitution really, it was properly set up.

James: Yeah, I mean I hadn’t really left completely, I hadn’t lived there for nearly two years… like I say we’d been coming and going from New Zealand. My business… I was renting land from the railways in Battersea… because when I got my business going I was running it from some land I squatted on Langley Lane.

Biddy: Very democratic…

James: Yeah, there was a...

James: Properly set up, democratically. We decided really early on to make our membership representative of the ethnic mix of beth. So we started taking members off the housing list from 60

ENDURING EPHEMERA

Mathilda: That’s right leading up to Bonnington Square.

James: When you walk down Langley Lane, say if you walking from South Lambeth Road, on the left there’s a strip of housing. That was given to a teachers housing association. Anyway that was only built in the 90s, it was a run down tennis court, so I started my plant nursery there at the back of 19 Vauxhall Grove. The time came when all the housing associations got their act together to actually build those houses, I had to go and find a business property. I started renting land from the railways down on Battersea high street. So I had to get my nursery going, I had my depot there, I was there for about 20 odd years. About 6 years ago I sort of closed it, shut it down, lost all the overhead so I don’t have to work so hard. Brought what was remaining here (gestures to garden). I don’t really design and build any more, I maintain older clients gardens and come and go from New Zealand. I’ve still got my foot in Vauxhall, I was there for a long time, and it was great for me in so many ways. Great opportunities. Its been and huge success story, when you stand back and look at it now. My part was in horticulture, I was able to do a lot of tree planting. It became a thing for me and I’m still very hands on as far as that goes. Our relationship with Lambeth has gone on, obviously all that empty housing is now valuable all over Lambeth. They either did them up or sold them.

They sold a lot. We have a good relationship with them in the environmental sense, they regard Bonnington Square, Vauxhall Grove and Langley Lane as a park. So its maintained not like a standard street where they have a one size fits all policy for tree maintenance. They go round and say what shall we do with this tree, we’ll do this, but this is something different so lets treat it differently. They have a criteria for tree maintenance, but luckily in Bonnington Square we were so hands on and there are a lot of gardeners in Bonnington Square.

Mathilda: Do you think that grew from the environment?

James: Oh definitely, absolutely. I was in horticulture already. I had trained in New Zealand in sub tropical fruit production because that’s what I thought we were gonna do in the 70s, feed the world kiwi fruit. But it was so boring. I spent 3 years in New Zealand working in subtropical fruit, but there was lots of chemicals, monoculture. I‘ve always wanted to travel, so I left and came to England. I wouldn’t have got into creative horticulture if it wasn’t for bonnington Square. And if it. Wasn’t for Bonnington Square I wouldn’t have been able to set up my business and become a landscape gardener. In London there were lots of gardens, and I found a niche in subtropical gardens. London has a relatively mild climate, you can grow a big range of sub tropical material. I didn’t have to have a massive overhead in the beginning. I arrived in London with about £200, probably about the equivalent of £600 now. London is a great hub for Europe and the world, from a horticultural point of view it doesn’t get too hot or cold. The one thing is that its quite dry, which is probably better than being very wet from a horticultural point of view. I didn’t jobs all over Europe and at the same time was a part of a community in which we have rebuilt a part of central London. Now its thriving. Its sort of too successful in a way. My one gripe with my co-op is that they are so content that they don’t take it to another level. I wanted to take it to another level and become a bit more international, a bit more engaging with other groups in other countries. We’ve saved the houses, we’ve done them up, we’ve set up a great constitution, we’ve addressed the ethnic diversity to be representative makeup of Lambeth. We’ve got that and we have guaranteed our co-op for ever, lets take it one step forward. We could maybe put some money into doing a sustainable house. There is a percentage of our co-op group that are vulnerable a bit, on housing benefits, so fair enough. Its now been over 30 years with vine housing co-op. Its nearly 40 years since we started squatting. When you look at it now, its a great little part of London. Now nine elms and Vauxhall are being developed.

Appendix 1

Mathilda: Its a completely opposing feel, nine elms and Vauxhall developments James: The funny thing is that when they tried to market some of those, they would come and take photographs of the nice trees to say “this is what its like” “ A little village, people sitting out drinking cups of tea”. And its nothing like that. I think its something we can be really proud of. I will certainly always be in the loop with how its going, stay a member.Its a great thing.

Mathilda: You say your relationship with Vauxhall city farm was purely source manure, was that the extent of the relationship?

James: The great thing in the 80s, the membership was so diverse.

There was a chap called Robert Todd, he was the original squatter.

He was the first squatter in Bonnington Square or Vauxhall grove. He squatted 81 Bonnington Square which is a house tucked away in the corner. . He must have had something to do with City Far because he wasn’t interested in doing the co-op thing. It wasn’t his nature. He just did his own thing. Anyway he squatted I think the allotment part. Are the allotments still there?

Mathilda: Yes they are that’s how it started with some allotment and a few animals James: Yes that’s right he might have kicked on and done that. Because he took on wrecked house in Tyer Street which he did up because he’s such a clever guy. He didn’t like co ops. He was a hands on, he was a maker, builder. He bought an whole wreck a complete shell on Tyer Street opposite the allotments, opposite the City Farm. The house is still there. Anyway he fixed it up.

The house had no roof it was a complete shell. He ended up buying it he didn’t squat it but I’m pretty sure he squatted the allotments. Anyway he did up this house purely or mostly with found materials, stuff from skips. Beautiful parquet flooring that someone had thrown out. He did this house up in Tyer street and then sold it on and gave the money to a Nicaraguan charity.

He was an amazing guy. He still lives around Brixton.

Mathilda: So not around Bonnington Square?

James: No because what he did was do that house up he moved out of 81 Bonnington square I think he and his partner went their separate ways, he did up that house in Tyer Street. If you ever go down there it is the house with the eagle on its parapet at the top.

James: Yes that’s the house that he did up. I don’t know where he is, living in Brixton you could probably find out. He’s an extraordinary guy. He squatted 81 Bonnington Square and then we came. Us 5 kiwis. Can you imagine 5 kiwis in 85 Bonnington Square.

Mathilda: So you were kind of the second lot?

James: Yeh, when we arrived there was no plumbing inside the house there was just a tap outside so I’d come from lush sub tropical part of New Zealand, the top bit which is like warm and fruits growing and freesias growing by the side of the road. You know kiwi fruits, vines, like nirvana. I come into November into bleak London into this house with no plumbing with a tap out the back.

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the back. And this was the middle of winter. I had a sleeping bag. That was about it. So anyway his place was like a haven.

We could go and have a bath or wash. Yes so he was a great supporter an amazing chap, really generous. Helped us get going. Then after the GLC became labour in May 1981 he was a big help in helping people open all the other houses. Obviously squatters would come a lot of kiwis as it was all word of mouth lot of creative people, film makers some professionals. Um and like I say they would use that opportunity to take on their careers, a lot of filmmakers as I said. There were bands, musical bands. We had outdoor concerts. This guy Robert Todd turned one house. I think it’s 37 Bonnington Square into a speakeasy.

They took out I think one whole floor chainsawed the floor.

As I say we were down there in Bonnington Square and could just do a lot of stuff. Yes we could do all this stuff. It was incredible..like I said dug up the road. I mean imagine trying to do that now. I’ll tell you what has happened recently. I mean we did guerrilla gardening in its purest form. You know just dig up a pavement. Now what’s happened because of the property boom I mean how many booms have we had since then. At least 3. Probably as you know so expensive around there. Those houses probably go for a million plus. So what’s happened as you know a few houses that are privately owned have been bought up by gentrification. The academy is the academy they don’t like scruffy weeds growing over the pavement so there’s now tension between these incomers who bought at top of housing market. They don’t want grubby squatting concepts around. Like for example, you know the Bonnington Cafe that’s still there…

the night club thing. Fire nightclub in the arches.

Mathilda: How can you have control over something that’s not in your vicinity James: He’s a retired guy and his whole life is harassing fire. The whole nightclub thing is a part of Vauxhall as well. The thing is, these guys come in to this kind of area and thrive and then the area gets gentrified and the incomers don’t like the night time economy and put pressure on the council to close it down.

There were so many clubs around there and they’ve virtually all gone. There’s definitely some tension there. We spent a long time setting up a residents association. The idea was to have a voice because as you know all of these developments started appearing in Vauxhall, the first one was the Jenga tower one.

Mathilda: Was that pre MI6 building?

James: I think MI6 was built in the 80s.

Mathilda: Here’s a picture that I was sent by another ex resident of Bonnington Square

Mathilda: The community one?

James: Is that the east side of Vauxhall Bridge. Yeh I recognise it… yeah it was like that (brownfield land) on the other side as well. So thats Mill bank tower. It became a BT building. God look at that.

That’s incredible. What year is that?

James: Yes that was bought with a lottery grant.

Mathilda: Mid 80s.

Mathilda: Ok but it’s still run by different people each night.

James: When the Terry Farrell building got finished at time of the first crash, 1989, they couldn’t sell them as apartments so they converted the interior into MI6 building. Then there’s that 90s block on other side which was empty for years. Anyway back in Bonnington Square and Vauxhall grove the GLC was abolished there was no London wide authority to represent all the boroughs, so labour set up the London assembly and brought in a mayor, and they had amazing powers. They set up Transport for London, and they had all of the authority over the main roads, public transport, they did a lot of good things.

Unfortunately, I think it was a bad thing, the mayor set out parts of London as suitable for high rise. Vauxhall was one, Waterloo another, elephant and castle. That was one thing about Ken I didn’t agree with. He liked high rise for some reason. So the mayor decided, who cares what Lambeth think or what the residents think. So that first proposed development was a really ugly plan. They put in planning permission for that and it was 50 storeys.

James: The Bonnington Centre is run by a committee that oversees the cafe users group. Different cooks cook every night. They pocket the money and pay a small fee to the Bonnington Centre.

Anyway, that was squatted way way back, and was our meeting place. There was another guy like Robert Todd, a New Zealand guy called Jen Newton. He was so motivated. Somehow found some industrial old gas cookers, put them in the cafe and like I say we’d have cook ups food was free because we got it from the market. It’s always been vegetarian from the get go. So we’d have concerts there, we’d have meetings there. Anyway what happened when we got last environmental improvement grant which was about 3 years ago when the piazza was done.

The last big grant we got.

Mathilda: What year was that in.

James: Must have been 2015. Again under one of those NEP grants. We wanted to build the pavement out around the cafe so you could bring chairs out there. Anyway the people who had bought the flat next to the cafe kicked up such a fuss about it, they didn’t want the noise. But hang on a minute. The cafe was there when you bought the flat and it’s part of the environment. So there’s a bit of tension there now and it never got done as these people made sure it didn’t happen.

James: I know. It’s just unfortunate that there’s one guy that I won’t name, an owner/occupier who has caused so much discord in Bonnington Square because he’s so OCD about what the square should look like. He’s on about the council spraying the weeds and the litter. He’s been quite positive about litter. He didn’t like 62

So we formed a group to fight that. It was going to be bad news for us, bad news for Vauxhall, just for greedy developers and these shell company’s that get set up in the Channel Islands with dodgy owners from wherever just to make a killing. We set up viva Vauxhall and this councillor who’s a Lib-Dem took us through the process which took ages. So we had a resident associations that had private owners, Vine housing co-op members, people from the academy, another housing coop, someone from the Bonnington Centre so we could join together with a unified voice. So this chap came and took control of it and got in a huff because of that first development which we successfully fought off. It was just rubbish.

Mathilda: In the last 5 Year’s there’s so much bad stuff going up that that I’ve given up on the face of Vauxhall.

James: ENDURING EPHEMERA

appealed. We successfully fought off the appeal so they gave up. Then the next one was Vauxhall tower, the cylindrical one.

Anyway we fought that. We just wanted the scale to come down we weren’t opposed to development, we just wanted the whole scale of it to be sympathetic to what was going on in the environment, with Vauxhall Park etc. So we won that one.

Lambeth supported us. They appealed, we won again. Then they can go to the minister for the environment and they can overrule the whole thing and it was John Prescott and the labour government, which is a disgrace, let it go. All that democratic process you know the whole democratic process. It wasn’t just us. It was people from Fentiman Road, because they’ve got quite a good association as well. it was centred around the park. Anyway the centralised nature of our system meant the whole process could be overruled and then Lambeth is broke under austerity. As since 2010 we’ve had austerity after the crash. That austerity to my mind has gone completely to the local authorities. Most of them are labour, so they’re broke and couldn’t afford to fight anymore. They’ve rolled over and now support all the developments and now we’ve got 20 in Vauxhall. Anyway going back to residents association. There’s one guy, the OCD guy, virtually made it his mission to wreck the residents association because they wouldn’t do what he wanted. He resigned and then made it his mission to harass people by email. It was horrible. People don’t want that in their lives, harassment.

garden and he was good. Having that link with Italo has been great because it has become almost pedestrianised. Its still got that feel that it did in the 80s, a bit grungy, artistic and a very multicultural. The Harleyford Road thing has been a success too. The Bonnington Centre. As far as it goes, when you think in 1980 they were going to demolish all of those houses and now we have a thriving community. A lot of people have come and gone over the years. I think its been quite unique because a lot of the other communities, like Landsdowne way, gradually the squatters were moved on. There must be one or two other housing co-ops around in London. There is a federation of housing cooperatives. Some self builds. In the 80s, they transcended politics, left and right, I remember even Prince Charles bigging up cooperatives. We weren’t just sort of left or right, we were A political. Some people were anarchists, didn’t like structure, like this guy Robert Todd.

When we got up and running as a permanent housing cooperative. We were squatters used to living very on top of each other, cooperatively. When we ended up with permanent housing cooperative and started doing the houses up we had to decide what do members want? Because we had been living cheek by jowel, most people wanted single flats. We have ended up with a lot of flats, not so many maisonettes and hardly any big houses which is kind of crazy. I ended up with a ground floor flat with a little garden.

Mathilda: It’s also bizarre that he spends all of his time in Bonnington Square that he wants to have these negative relations with his neighbours.

James: Off the record, he has to be pitied. He is isolated and a lot of people are hostile, he doesn’t go to the cafe or Italo. He has done so much damage. I deal with the council as the tree guy on my own, with a couple of other keen gardeners. We have a good relationship with them, but its nowhere near as good as it would have been if we had a residents association that was representing everybody, co-ops, privately owned. We cant fight any of these developments as a group because we don’t have a common voice. It took so long to set up.

Im now in my 60s, i’m 64, I arrived in Bonnington Square when I was 25, and there are still a few people there that go back to the early 80s. They have kids and the kids have grown up there, there is still a strong sense of community. Italo has been fantastic for bonnington Square. The corner store when we arrived was like out of coronation street, we would go and get our milk. A really nice guy, Tony, who ran it, we planted that walnut tree for him. When he left an Irish woman bought the shop and it became a knitting shop at one point. When the academy was being done up, the woman, Clare who owned the shop did a takeaway for all the builders. Then Charlie (Boxer) turned up and he’s been renting it and thank god, because he has been fantastic for Bonnington Square. Having him there, we were able to do that piazza. That was our last big environmental grant. We’ve had about 3 major groups of expenditure. That garden opposite, its called the pleasure garden, i’m hands on with that. I do that with the Bonnington Square Gardening Association.

Mathilda: Was that through one of the major grants that you were able to do the pleasure garden?

James: Yeah. In 1995. When we did it in 1994 we weren’t able to do that properly because it was bombed and had building foundations.

It involved too much grunt. In 1995 we raised money to do it properly. We got an architect to do a proper design and got diggers in and dug it all up, got a proper top soil in. There were so many people that, another guy, Evan English, lived in one of the houses that backed onto the pleasure garden. He saw the sad, unloved, space and took on the space. There was Appendix 1

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INTERVIEW WITH MARK PRIZEMAN 06|06|2019 Mark is an architect who began living in Bonnington Square in 1981. He drew up plans for renovating many of the houses in Bonnington Square whilst living there in the 1980s. He became part of a cooperative of 11 people in the square in 1987 and moved out in 1990 with his wife Susannah to start a family.

Mark: I have seen the dvd and they have Anna and she’s the German lady who’s done her house up. She was was in the cooperative when susannah turned up and she was pregnant and she asked can I do something to my house to make it safer and she said mine comes before you in the queue.

Mathilda: So you think relationships between people in the squat became tense over time?

Mark: Eliat evacuating all the families- no children coming to school.

Half empty half full. People like the Fatty’s the original residents are still there. And then the art students- Chantel and people.

Obviously the New Zealanders arrived and they were more gun ho. Slightly different flavour. It was very different from other squats because everyone had their own little house. Each house had its own little culture you might say. Previously I had been living in a co-op in North London and there was very much just one gate and there was a committee and somehow the whole thing was sort of lots of little flats.

When the residents realised people were squatting they started squatting as well. Quite early on London a quadrant got a group of houses. A housing association. So there were these groups that very quickly moved everything on. So 11 houses bought 11 houses together 80,000 each. Anna was saying how they’re bought them up- she’d been one little community down there and we’d been one community over here and never made contact and suddenly when you start this cooperative it starts to tie things together. But previous to that everyone had been behind their front door, sometimes they made friends with people across the road and there might have been connections but there wasn’t really a.

Mathilda: Do you think it becoming a co-operative had a positive impact on relationships between people in the squat?

Mark: Well it was only 11 houses dotted around the square. There were other houses which were quadrant ones. Suddenly there are all these tied up institutions. You buy the houses form a cooperative and spend a few weekends digging out someones drains and doing that and then going to the pub and getting drunk. Have you met Jake who lives down the road there, no I’ve never met Jake who lives down the road there. I go off and do that you go off and do this- somehow you only met through various parties and stuff.

Built as 3 separate flats but they have a common staircase.

They have a loo on each floor and a kitchen on each floor and a bathroom on each floor which is quite weird. They weren’t really separate houses they were separate bedsits I suppose.

Quite systematically, very tightly together and compact site surrounded by industry there would have been artisans. They weren’t just rooms they were studio flats really. It was quite convenient for people to squat for unrelated groups because they accompanied that quite well. There wasn’t a dominant room with a dominant staircase. The previous landlords and landowners had divided them up. Little bit of fudging about where boundaries were boundaries were. When people were evicted and people were able to occupy them. We were offered next door at one point but didn’t move fast enough, in a matter of hours it had gone. You would sort of put your hand on it and hold on as tight as you can. I’m not very good on the early history. The group I came in were a group of art students., there were a lot of New-Zealanders around so obviously one of them had got in and found out. Once you got in there you had all that stuff about how to squat and how to stay in there and keep the thing locked and things. Someone became head person of the house but then all the houses had got their water and electricity and telephones and things reconnected quite quickly.

There wasn’t the concrete down the loos and that sort of stuff.

The people leaving a lot of people being evicted just walked out the house and said do you want the keys? Obviously in its early days in squatting after the 2nd world war that was when it was made legal and people came back to find places bombed and empty houses and the government said yes sure if you can find somewhere take it. So a lot of the people still living on the square would have been of that mindset. When Illyad decided why they decided to extend the playground and when they did that what it was and where all their children came from its also quite. It all happened in 81/82. I moved in in 83 and it was 87/88 when we formed a cooperative.

Mathilda: When did you end up leaving the square?

Mark: 1990. We lived there, she moved in with me.

Susanna: Basically all the houses were so run down. They were in a terrible state. And I was expecting a baby and basically the coop said you can’t jump the queue, in terms of getting the house renovated, we’d have had to wait for another 2 or 3 years and meanwhile there were no bannisters on the stairs.

Mark: There’s the whole thing of why is there a queue, who’s formed the queue? There was no discussion of it.

Susanna: Meanwhile Mark was working pretty much every weekend on other people’s houses.

Mathilda: Did you not think that having a communally run cafe integrated people a bit more and allowed people to meet each other?

Mathilda: Was that a part of the deal of living in the squat that you had to help out?

Mark: It tied people together but then of course if you haven’t been involved in something then of course you think oh these people are all tied together and its like school politics, its like being in a very large boarding school. You know actually there are bullies and there are geeks. There were other things that happened like a band which tied together several houses.

Mark: From 83-87/88 it was run as being in a squat, you’ve got no sense of ownership or obligation or anything but you are sort of living in it. Its basically like if you hitched up in a cave and you’re like “its just a cave” and you go actually if the cave was a little comfier. So you go oh lets not do that or because I think theres a tendency to think people go oh lets smash all the walls down and build a large pod where we can do this and you say yeah ok thats great for a bit but then it suddenly feels like its quite easy to be that. I’d left college I’d got my degree or MA or qualification and by complete chance got a job. I though what do I do now, I’ve got quite a provocative portfolio and I didn’t know how you would go along and show it to someone and say can I have a job. The phone rang and it was a friend

Mathilda: Can you describe the history of Bonnington square and how it became and squatting community?

Mark: Im not sure who built the houses and what they’re built for.

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ENDURING EPHEMERA

he said do you want a job, and I said Ok. An ex girlfriend as she was then decided one way of getting rid of me or moving me on was to introduce me to Chantal and this squat. And Frank one of his art school friends who was going off to New York and he thought it would be rather nice to have Mark in the house rather than one of Chantal’s nasty friends so thats how I. So I was given the thing and I was working in Colfax and Fowler and moved into channels and she was running Rococo chocolate. She would ring me up at work and say I’ve made a really nice sorbet- invite some people round for dinner invite Carlos around. And it was all sort of like free and we made films and it has some quite nice stage shots of Bonnington square. It was that sort of thing where you could sort of do little projects and have dinners.

Mathilda: Do you think living in the squat gave you the freedom to do these kinds of projects?

Mark: Yes. The nice thing I was sort of living the NATO life. You could sort of do these things that were meant to be radical architectural experiments but thats just the way you lived or did things.So you could line your room with black plastic.

Susanna: His bedroom was really horrible. There was a motorbike in the bedroom Mark: In issue 2 of NATO theres an article called albionise your living room. A lot of the NATO ideas were sort of lived and played out in my bedroom being like a social experiment I was running on myself. There were people like Tom Dixon around because Chantal her boyfriends included Sebastian Conran and Tom Dixon. They were coming in and out. Everyone was just doing their sort of stuff.

Mathilda: Do you think the people living there made it what it is today?

Mark: Yes definitely. It is through the transformation of the squat into various cooperatives. People took ownership of the space more when they became cooperatives. Once they’re in effect given the rubber stamp you can do what you want with that. The gardeners were able to use the space as their pallette.

Mathilda: Was there any sort of connection with the squats in the surrounding area?

Susanna: There was a squat in Kennington, st Agnes, I remember going there. Chantal and her small business, thats fine, you still had to make a living and you know. Mark was designing offices for big city companies, and he’d come home to the squat It wasn’t great in the end I have to say, the way that we left. And actually it was weird because I wasn’t a member of the co-op. You get points in government systems, if you have kids you get more points, but there was nothing like that operating. It wasn’t about needs, obviously our needs to get the house were high at that time, it was actually a big deal. I wasn’t there at the meeting but I think it was a really unpleasant exchange. A facade of hippy oh isn’t this lovely, but actually no it wasn’t. There was a kind of people out for themselves. There was only one kitchen in our flat- none of the other kitchens worked.

Mathilda: Why did you want to go back?

Susanna: We left it open, we left temporarily. We had to move to Mark’s parents house and we were paying rent there and also had to pay rent a Bonnington Square.

Mathilda: Were you around when the gardening initiative started?

Mathilda: Did people help each other the build their houses?

Susanna: The garden was a sort of tarmac piece of land in the middle.

Horrible place. The only thing that they did have then was this sort of festival.

Susanna: Well thats the thing, Mark, being an architect was really involved. He did loads of stuff for other people.

Mathilda: Was Harleyford gardens developed when you were living there?

Susanna: It was really scummy Mark: It wasn’t nearly as open and you kept your head slightly low Mathilda: When you go there now there is a very strong sense of community with Italo and the cafe, do you think there was that same sense?

Mark: Yes exactly. The cafe was there and there was also a coronership where Charlie’s shop is now. Which was one of those really unsatisfying corner shops.

Susanna: I quite liked it, it had some quite nice bread and eggs Mark: Yeah there were yeah Susanna: I used to go in there all the time. And there was a sort of funny vegetable shop.Everything was so run down Appendix 2

Mathilda: Did you feel that was reciprocated?

Susanna: Funnily enough, not really, you will have to ask him how many drawings he did. He did a lot. I’m sounding really miserable but it was really good. It was probably better when it was an actual squat. But I do think you need to take that video with a pinch of salt. (directed towards Mark as he returns) I know you did a huge amount of work for the co-op was an architect, but how many of the houses did you draw up?

Mark: I probably measured them all up.

Mathilda: Were you asked to do that or did you offer your services?

Mark: If one took all of the houses in the co-operative and described who was in each one and what they did, if I could find my measured drawings from those houses .

Mathilda: So you kept all of the drawings?

Mark: Yeah. I will have all of that paperwork yeah. There was a builder 65

who was the drummer for the band The happy end. There was one girl who was also an architect, was still studying, a New Zealander. She thought we could do it in this really sloppy way and thats good enough. Actually probably thats right. The drawings give these snapshot images of time, this is what it was like. There were 11 houses and this is what it was like in each house.

From that photo you showed me of where the MI6 building is now, did you see the landscape of Vauxhall change quite significantly in the time that you were living there?

Mark: Yeah yeah yeah. There were things being demolished and changed. The cold store. The cold store was where the cylindrical tower is now. It was a huge concrete construction. It closed down quite quickly but remained. People would go and shoot videos there, art installations, and someone would die in there and the police thought it was all one thing. Some sort of satanic cult going on.

The gay thing in Vauxhall is very deeply embedded, from the pleasure gardens.

The square has always been a very comfy place, you never felt threatened by anybody.

Mathilda: Did you find it was insular?

Mark: It wasn’t that it was because it was such a cupboard, not insular because you went out a lot. As a community as a square, there weren’t any children, that came later. There were obviously people who were older, but there was no sense of making a nest.

No responsibility for the building. So when Susanna wanted to build our nest, well that seemed impossible.

Mathilda: So it was only when it became cooperatives that people began to “make nests”?

Mark: Yes, well people were then able to buy into the cooperatives.

Once you introduce children, intrusion of space happens.

Mathilda: Were you aware of any connections with Vauxhall city farm?

Mark: Well one is aware of all these things but there was so much going on that was interesting and accessible in London. Its funny when you look at the photographs and they are showing things you haven’t seen. You only really do this path and find out about these things outside the path later on.

Mathilda: Were there alliances between you and other squats?

Mark: There didn’t need to be, like I said there was no threat. We had no inkling of any outside groups. We were there, no one had said anything, carry on.

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ENDURING EPHEMERA

Appendix 2

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INTERVIEW WITH JULIA TREMAINO 14|06|2019 Julia Tremaino was the second squatter to move into a set of three terraced houses on St Oswald’s Place in 1975. She describes how Vauxhall City Farm was initiated in 1976, from the rubble of a fire damaged building opposite. Her role in the development began with the dissemination of grass seeds to create a verdant patch of land.

Mathilda: Could you describe how you got involved with initiating Vauxhall city farm and your ambitions for the development initially?

Julia: I was the second one there. There was another architecture student there who had been a builder and he had broken in and established a squat in St Oswald’s Place. There were three, well they’ve been demolished now, tiny little terraced houses on the road and initially we just lived in the middle one. Just one toilet and very basic facilities. It became quite popular there and more people wanted to move in, we had a lovely sort of freedom in the 70s. There were empty houses either side of us so more people wanted to come and a hole was just cut through the wall in the hall in the next house, so we suddenly had more space. We did it in the other direction as well. We had three houses all joined up together, which made a great community for us really. Most of us were architecture students. At the back there were originally some derelict houses where Vauxhall City Farm is now, similar terraced houses but they were empty and in a very bad condition. There were some kids from the GLC flats, which were across the road from St Oswald’s Place, we used to play there. One of the rooms in the house they made into a den, they used to light it at night with about 100 candles, it looked really pretty. But of course one night it all caught on fire and it was very dramatic. Lucky St Oswald’s Place didn’t catch on fire as well.

In the 1970s the area was so different, there were just 100s of empty houses everywhere. Incredible really. Quite a trendy place to live now isn’t it. It’s such a good location isn’t it, close to the city. Those houses all caught on fire and they came along and demolished them all because they were in a very dangerous condition after that. Most of the rubble was gone, it was just rough ground there. What I did was, I bought some grass seeds and started scattering seeds round. Every day I would go and pick up a bucket load of stones and scatter grass seeds there, so it started looking like a nice green space behind the houses there. Then we had a man called Chris Spicer, came knocking on the door one day and wanted to live with us and when he saw the green grass there, he knew about city farms so it was his idea to start the city farm. He had a friend who must have worked for the RSPCA or something, or an animal charity, he started bringing a band of animals there. He brought a fox called Basil, terribly friendly, a big turkey called Adolf came. A few of us dug a pond there and two goats were donated as well, Hazel and Poppy. We had the goats, chickens, ducks and a turkey.

There weren’t all the buildings that the farm has now in those days. There might have been a shed or something. Nowadays its become very built up, more like a zoo now really isn’t it if you ask me. The good thing about it was that it attracted a lot of people who were living in the GLC flats around. All sorts of people came and wanted to start their own gardens there and that’s how all of the allotments started. There was a great sense of community. People who you wouldn’t usually meet from all walks of life started turning up and making friends with each other. That was a good aspect of it. From starting the farm there it did sort of lead on to forming the pleasure gardens partly.

I don’t know if that would have happened anyway, because there were lots of derelict buildings on that land as well. Once something green is going there it gave the incentive to make that little park there.

every so often to have a look at it and see how its coming along.

But personally I was a bit upset about how the buildings had all been demolished and they had put that big new visitor centre there, to me it doesn’t really seem in keeping with, it doesn’t really look like a farm with that great big modern building there.

That was done by developers contributions, from one of the office blocks that was built by the river I think. They have to give so much money to the council and then they use that. Its probably practical, but…

Mathilda: So you didn’t receive any funding at the beginning to start the farm, it was just a very natural process?

Julia: There wasn’t any funding at all in the beginning. I met my husband there, he was working on a voluntary basis. The first farm worker, milking goats and so on and digging the pond and that. I think later on they did get funding but Im not sure where it came from. In terms of how its affected the community, I guess its a great resource, but to me its more of a zoo. It’s probably still a great community centre really isn’t it. A lot of volunteers go there. It just seems to have gotten so built up now, so many buildings on the site. It’s almost spoilt the atmosphere having so many buildings there because it used to feel more like a little farm, although it was in the city, because there weren’t buildings on the site itself. I wonder what it would have been like if we hadn’t squatted there, that’s interesting to think about really isn’t it. Certainly the farm wouldn’t have been there, and maybe not even the pleasure gardens because it’s so highly developed in the surrounding area. I always wondered whether they were on the same position as the historical pleasure gardens.

I’ve often thought the road names around there are very evocative, the Black Prince Road, Lambeth Walk. You know that song “Doing the Lambeth Walk”. Rather fascinating area really.

Mathilda: How long did you live there, for what period of time?

Julia: 3 years I think, coming and going, I left there in 1978. I go back 68

Appendix 3

INTERVIEW WITH TISH FRANCIS 15|06|2019 Tish Francis was also one of the first squatters at St Oswald’s Place and involved in the initiation of Vauxhall City Farm. She was involved in theatre and made shows on issues such as homelessness and unemployment. She continues to work in theatre and currently works as a director at the Story Museum.

Mathilda: Can you describe how you got involved with initiating Vauxhall City Farm?

Tish: I had moved from York to London 1977 and joined the residential co-op at st Oswaldo place as well as Chris Spicer’s community theatre group. One of the earliest things I recall is getting the license to live there. The farm idea came shortly after that.

Mathilda: What were the initial ambitions for the development and who was involved?

Tish: Not sure whether you mean the collective in the house or the farm. Not everyone in the house was involved with the running of the farm though there were obvious links. There was Chris and me in the company and the other occupants of the house ( which included the members who had initially opened up the houses). In terms of the farm we wanted to engage members of the local community, secure funding and follow in the footsteps of Kentish Town and other funded farms with strong community engagement.

Mathilda: How did the farm develop over time and did it ever receive any resistance?

Tish: Later workers can tell you of developments in the 80’s. In the early days it was voluntary and grants funding associated with the name change to jubilee city farm.

We were an oddity in the neighbourhood and the occasional brick came flying through the window but I do remember someone deciding that it might be an idea to look after homing pigeons on the site as that might be popular with local pigeon racers. I think that worked!

Mathilda: What was Vauxhall like at the time that you were developing the farm?

Pretty run down. A lot of empty buildings. Depressing.

Unemployment. The impact of Thatcherism being felt. The vauxhall tavern was the colourful place it still is today and oval house was the nearest community arts venue.

continually! They were Ok though and I think got involved when the farm got going.

Mathilda: How did you see the landscape of Vauxhall change in the duration of time that you were living there?

Tish: I didn’t live there long enough to witness the huge changes that followed later in the 80’s.

Certainly it’s hugely changed now and that marmite factory where we rehearsed became a massive new development.

My memories of the founding of the farm. Contrary to the notice on the site, the drive and idea to create it was Chris ( Spicer) and the Communty Arts Company that I joined when I moved to the house. We managed to get permission to use the site ( which should have been a school extension or sport field as I recall) and then did some Clowning and performance at the first dig in to rally interest and support and had meetings with Ed Berman at the Kentish Town farm and with their advice formally joined the city farm movement. We started with two animals an old turkey and the fox. What I can’t remember is who got them! We got funding for one – or was it two – farm workers – Andy was an early worker on the farm and also Anne and Peter when it got properly off the ground and we turned the end house into a “stable” and store for the farm.

I also remember we changed the name to jubilee city farm and successfully applying to get some funding during that Queen’s Jubilee year celebrating the fact that Vauxhall had once had a great pleasure garden from 17C to mid 19c there was a desire to rekindle some of that heritage.

The name was later changed back again to vauxhall city farm. Our community arts company which Chris directed was initially called The Super Performing and Recording Company SPARC which later we changed to Vauxhall Community Theatre Company. We had no funds ( shared our social security payments!) and as well as campaigning for the farm we devised earnest shows about the then current issues of homelessness and unemployment. The pinnacle of our achievements was appearing on nationwide the TV news programme! We did also devise a musical show about the windsdale nuclear plant leak and We rehearsed in the old derelict marmite factory at considerable risk to life and limb This was a time when some squats including ours became licensed as the authorities woke up to the fact that people were capable of using and looking after abandoned housing stock.I do have a copy of my first share certificate somewhere - when we became licensed and formed the coop.

Mathilda: Do you remember if there were strong links between Vauxhall city farm and Bonnington square (or any other squats in the area)?

Tish: Definitely a link across to other farms, squats and movements.

The Kentish Town farm and their support I remember and I later went on to Covent Garden where there were large licensed squats taking over buildings for what turned out to be quite extended periods.

Mathilda: Can you describe where you were squatting and the environment you were living in?

Tish: We were in those houses in St Oswalds place - they had been original boarded up and were opened up before my time by John and other founder occupants. There were council flats all around us and the local kids used to enjoy sitting on the low wall Appendix 4

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