Golden Lane: Rant No.2

The Orwellian Golden Lane development plan is a game about to enter its second half, reckons Billy Mann

Campaign poster

The proposed development projects around the estate have triggered in me a number of proverbial sayings and the like. First it was all about trying to fit a quart into a pint pot, now it's the one about doing one thing well rather than lots of things badly.

In the case of the Bernard Morgan House proposals, I am still stupidly baffled as to why the project was not conceived from the start under the title ‘heritage’, the existing building with all that lovely flint and retro tiling retained and its interior modified into contemporary living spaces. The determination to smash it up just seemed like destruction for destruction’s sake, the product of a hubristic mindset on acid that had cruelly infected the decision-making process. I am told the police needed to sell the land for a maximum return (to Taylor Wimpey) because funding from central government has been cut so deeply they could no longer do their jobs properly. All I know for sure is the more I look at that building, the more I will miss it when it's gone.

Over at the Richard Cloudesley site, I am haunted by the memory of an early meeting with the Hawkins\Brown architects in which we were told how the team had completed a ‘zonal analysis’ of the Golden Lane Estate (leisure zone, community zone, recreation zone, etc) and that the Richard Cloudesley project would become an ‘education zone’ extension of the estate. This sounded reasonable, sort of. Here was once the site of a school, so putting a new one in that spot wasn’t such a controversial step. 

Then an elephant walked into the room in the shape of a 14-storey apartment block and my already passionate dislike of that pretentious backslash in the title ‘Hawkins\Brown’ turned into something bordering on hysteria\psycopathy. A school on the Richard Cloudesley site and housing on the Bernard Morgan site would have been a fair, sympathetic and manageable solution – balanced, in keeping, and all that.

But what were are left with instead is a crazed seek-and-destroy masterplan of excess in which playmakers at both the City of London Corporation and Islington Council daily score points off one another in a display of tit-for-tat blundering. This sorry situation has left residents forced to take part in an Orwellian game that was both rigged from the start and is now being reframed at every turn to subdue any meaningful discussion. 

Whether there is a great deal of support outside of the Golden Lane Estate for the residents' campaign is hard to tell. Comments online and recent local election results suggest the game is not over yet. Yes, this estate is a temple of worship for architecture students the world over. Yes, it represents an enlightened vision of society from the past that says intelligent, creative planning and building can transform lives. Yes, it is a totally fab place to live. But does all that count for anything anymore? I would like to think so, but defending it is getting harder every day and requires a huge leap of faith.

My mind goes back to Istanbul, 2005. Liverpool are losing 3-0 at half time in the Champion's League final to a rampant AC Milan. I won’t tell you what happened next. 

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The Siege of Golden Lane

Two big development projects on the fringes of Golden Lane Estate have got residents pushing back the boundaries. Billy Mann reports

Down your street: the architect's view of life on the edge of Basterfield House

There is a feisty north-south alliance growing on the Golden Lane Estate. The north of the estate is in a frenzy of disgruntlement over the proposed development of the former site of Richard Cloudesley school. The south is similarly irked by what is happening on the site of Bernard Morgan House. This looks like a straight fight over which 'development' project can piss off residents the most, Bowater or Basterfield. But what in other circumstances might be a friendly fight (who has the best window boxes, for example) is actually a case of two teams on the same side. The opposition is somewhere else, somewhere remote.


The former police section house (decommissioned in 2013), Bernard Morgan House, on Golden Lane, is the proposed site of a City of London development to create 'much needed high quality new homes'. The project is to be handled by Taylor Wimpey. After a number of 'consultation’ sessions, activity seemed to stop. Then recently an email from a vigilant resident was circulated that purported to expose a crafty manouevre to get the building razed to the ground before the new one had even been approved. The document listed a host of Year 5 homework mistakes in the plan. Whoever penned it didn't know the difference between north, south, east and west, and couldn't spell Bernard ['Benard Morgan House']. The 3 March target date for demolition to start came and went and red faces were said to be seen rustling through the bushes of Fortune Street Park. I never got a reply to the email I sent asking whether the building's vintage decorative tiles might be saved and recycled.

Meanwhile, Up North on the estate, the City of London Corporation and Islington Council have got themselves into a bipolar 'partnership' to renew the area around the former Richard Cloudesley School. With indecent haste, plans emerged from architects Hawkins\Brown, and the blue touchpaper was lit. The proposals showed a primary school, plus separate school hall-cum-kitchen, and a 14-storey block of dual-aspect 'affordable' apartments. To the untrained eye, the plan also appeared to show the theft of part of the service road that runs alongside Basterfield House. That's where the ambulances and fire engines are meant to enter the estate in the event of an emergency. The drawings were very nice, and eventually a scale model appeared that looked like it was made from polystyrene offcuts and a matchbox. 

The revolution starts here: Campaigners' montage of the view from the heart of the estate

It's hard to argue against schools and houses, but the diagrams did look as if too much had been crammed into a fixed space; the proposed tower block was a scary monster that would loom over the entire estate (it didn't even have a funny hat on top, like Great Arthur does); the two-storey detached school hall would not only stare threateningly at the Golden Baggers allotmenteers but its proposed kitchen would drench Basterfield residents with the free perfume of cooking chips. I could carry on, but the rap sheet is far too long. A dedicated working group of People Pissed Off was started. They meet often in a revolutionary huddle and post damaging counter arguments and incriminating evidence on Facebook (see picture). With all this anger floating around, some previously unseen councillors eventually turned up to offer sympathy. The elections are on 23 March.

I wanted to find out who to blame. The architects and contractors are at the frontline of the projects and an easy target. The City of London Corporation has turned avoiding proper consultation into a dark art. Invisibility is the watchword. Transparency has too many syllables. But residents' fears might never have grown to fever pitch had housing and planning officials been more assertive in explaining that, despite what looks like two cans of worms half opened, the management talent is in place, ready to make it work out happily ever after. This, of course, is a fantasy, so what passes for reassurance instead are weak variations of "we hear what you're saying", "we're listening" and "we're taking this all on board". 

The feeling from the north and south sides of the estate is that the walls are closing in and Bowater and Basterfield residents especially are about to be squashed into submission by ignorance, stupidity and blindness. As a Basterfield resident and Golden Bagger I wanted to know on whose doorstep I should empty my sack of smelly compost. At one meeting I collared a man from the Corpy and gave him my very best psycho-killer gaze. He spluttered then told me plainly that the buck stopped with them, the City of London Corporation. Islington council, he told me, was merely providing the land and the tenants for the sky-scraping tower block. He forced out a laugh when I told him it would be his head Golden Lane residents would be throwing rotten tomatoes at. He must have thought I was joking.

*This article was ammended on 14 March to correct the original homophonic mis-spelling of 'duel-aspect' to 'dual-aspect'.

Conversation with Councillors 29.11.16

Somebody said something interesting, eventually

Subject Councillors answer residents' questions
Date Tuesday 29 November, 2016, 19.30h
Location Downstairs, beneath the chess players, Golden Lane Estate community centre

Stanley Cohen House with its Grade II-listed "plastic bags"

Alderman Graves (he is the Big Hat in the posse of our Elected Representatives) began by asking how news of this meeting got around the estate. Did we hear about it via email, paper mail or by some other route such as noticeboards? He soon got the message that things could be improved in that regard before Lee Millam (Great Arthur House) stepped in with an urgent moan about the workmen doing the windows at Great Arthur. 

What were they playing at? Nothing, seemed to be the answer. Drinking tea, rolling fags, discussing whether the universe was infinite or not. Anything but fixing the bloody windows. The Alderman started to take on the ruddy complexion of a man who'd just realised that leaving his new golf clubs in the E-type was probably not such a good idea. One of the other councillors (a lone woman among six men) said something along the lines of "we hear what you're saying", which I'm not sure was the answer Mr Millam was looking for.

The subject moved on in a roundabout way to social housing, right-to-buy, who pays for what, how the housing stock is protected from predatory speculators in the age of Materialism Gone Mad, and the thorny issue of numbers of properties built versus the location of said properties. 

Roughly speaking, at the core of this is whether, for the same money, to build 100 new residential properties in the centre of Cripplegate, or else to build 300 dwellings four miles outside of it. These are the Big Questions those at the Corpy agonise over every minute of their lives, and especially during toilet breaks. Add into this equation a heavy shot of central-government busy-bodying and it's headaches all round. 

Councillor Gareth Moore (he's our guy off the estate) raised some characteristically realist points and explained that it is in the DNA of the Corpy to skew all decision-making towards business and commerce (my words), and that the planning protocols that apply for commercial projects differ entirely from those that apply to residential stuff. My understanding from what he said was that the Planning Committee on the council was overegged with expertise in the commercial field, but very light on expertise in the residential area. This has resulted in no end of bureaucratic constipation for residential matters, but was now being corrected by someone new in charge of things.

Then came an interesting bit, and it came from Alderman Graves, who was by now warming to the occasion and looking a little less likely to burst a blood vessel. It was triggered by Paul Lincoln (Basterfield House), who said that Barbican residents have special status within the Corpy - their very own committee - whereas Golden Lane is some kind of poor relation, forever in receipt of second-hand clothes. Gravesie, as I was now calling him (to myself), put on his 'thinking-cap' face and said that the way forward might be to start up a Golden Lane Working Party. To my ears this sounded like progress, and even the other assembled councillors (who all sit in a row, looking as if they are waiting to be called into the head teacher's office) showed signs of resurrection.

The Alderman's suggestion was not an opportunity to be missed, and after a brief diversion into drains, insurance and a potent question from myself about the poor lighting around the estate, Sue Pearson (Hatfield House) whose middle name is Persistence, raised her hand. Were the assembled officers aware of the newfound love affair between Golden Lane residents and the Corpy, instigated by projects such as the redevelopment of the community centre, the Lord Mayor's float and an overall softening of behavioural tones. After a massive whinge about the "plastic bags" still stuck on the end of Stanley Cohen House, she spoke about evolving plans to find a robust yet sustainable management model for when the community centre is refurbed and reopened. Magically, she screwed a pledge of support from each of the honourable members of Death Row and everybody skipped off home to watch Jordan Banjo getting evicted from I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!

Happy days.

Encounter: Renal Outpatients

Conversations about kidneys are a speciality for Billy Mann

My face must look like it needs a good talking to. Every six months or so I attend a regular outpatients appointment at the Royal London hospital in Whitechapel to monitor the state of my kidneys. I suffer from a hereditary condition that, left unchecked, might result in kidney stones. Passing a kidney stone is not something I would wish on my worst enemy. 

In the waiting room at my most recent appointment a man sitting nearby started asking me questions about his kidney and fished for information about mine. Cheeky bastard, I thought. He wanted to know if I was in line for a transplant, because he was sure as hell he was. He started talking about the different signs of kidney damage and their intensity  I told him that right now I am able to manage my kidney difficulties by drinking lots of water. Two to three litres a day. He seemed unimpressed. "I don't like water," he said. I replied: "Any fluids will do. You can drink beer if you want." Then I realised that this man was almost certainly Muslim. Dohh!!!

'He was determined to believe his 

own kidney condition was serious'

Riven with guilt, I moved the conversation on quickly. I started to mutter something about the miracles of modern medication but he was determined to believe his own kidney condition was serious and that death was but one more visit to the urinal away. I struggled on, trying to convince him that the doctors knew what they were doing and things are rarely as bad as you think they are. But he had already sold himself the idea that his predicament was drastic and that he would require a transplant. I opened my mouth, took a breath and was about to tell him that it is quite feasible to live a full and meaningful life with just one kidney, when his consultant arrived and took him off for the designated appointment. My face must have looked like it had made a narrow escape.

A message from the departed

Bitching over a dead person's possessions is undignified. By chance, Billy Mann uncovered the perfect solution

The subject had turned to death. He wasn't sure how it happened, but there it was. And before he knew it A_ was telling him about one of the local guys who had recently met his maker, and the rumpus that followed his sad departure. His charred bones had barely cooled ready for the crusher before various junior members of his family were at each other's throats over who gets what. He said I could have his Mexico 70 World Cup stickers book. This was the commemorative pictorial album lovingly stocked and tended by children at the time. That one of Jairzinho was special. What a player!

The conversation continued precariously, and with detailed reminiscences of the 1970 World Cup, until a note of levity could be found. This arrived with a wistful smile and an explanation from A_ of how his own mother scotched the potential for such family strife. She had seen this kind of thing before and was buggered if she was going to see her children bitching over "a few knick-knacks". A_ raised his eyebrows at this point and described a gift he had bought for his mother while on holiday some years ago in Crete. It was a set of small vases or vessels finished with a rather expensive looking lustre glaze. They cost £500. He was quite flush at that time.

A_ began to wonder how much they might be worth today. "I had them valued about 10 years ago and he said one was worth £500". He had three. But the question was itching like mad. What was his mother's magic formula for stopping any arguments over the worldly goods of the deceased? The question continued to knaw, and as it did his thoughts drifted to other examples of this malaise he had known. A_ looked him in the eye as if the answer was too bloody obvious to state. It was. Each time one of her children had brought her a gift, once they had gone she place a small sticker on the item with the name of the gifted, so that when she passed on, whatever you bought her was returned in the spirit of 'What goes around comes around.

Hacked off by hackers

Having your Facebook account hacked is no laughing matter. Well, maybe, concludes Billy Mann

At a fireworks party in a friend's garden I was retelling the story (detailed elsewhere in this blog) in which a young girl, probably as a mischievous bet with friends, decided to tell me, a pitiful looking old codger tottering along the street, that the prime minister, David Cameron, had once inserted his penis into the mouth of a dead pig. 

   One of the group at the fireworks party took this as a signal to pitch in with another seemingly alarming story. She told us that her Facebook page had been taken over recently by people operating out of Beirut. 

    "They posted all kinds of things in Arabic. I had to send messages to everyone saying don't believe everything I was saying because it wasn't me. It was these people in Beirut, talking Arabic."

    "What did they say, these Beirut Facebook chancers?"

    "I don't fucking know. It was all this awful Arabic stuff."

    "How did you know it was awful if it was in Arabic?"

    "It just was."

    "So, you told everyone to ignore all the rubbish you had spoken in recent history because it wasn't you at all, it was these Lebanese Arabs impersonating a middle class, middle aged woman who lives somewhere in the southeast of Britain?"

    "Yes."

    "And what happened next?"

    "I told Facebook and they fixed it."

    "Just like that? Did they tell you what they did or what had happened? Did they contact anyone in authority?"

    "No."

   "Oh." 

Encounter: Dancing in the doorway

A brief conversation left Billy Mann lost for words

They bumped into one another in the doorway to the community centre. They were both visibly pleased by the accidental meeting. 

"I'm here for the folk dancing," one told the other. "Third floor." 

The other, from genuine interest rather than politeness, asked how he had been. 

"Not that good. I haven't been around much, to be honest." He stepped forward, drawing closer, and lowered his tone. "My mate Rita's got cancer." He stepped back and made a rapid swishing motion with the index finger of his right hand. "Had a mastectomy." 
The other felt inadequate, not knowing what the appropriate response was. The truth was he wasn't sure there even was one. They shook hands and went their separate ways.