Golden Lane Gazette: July 2017

A breath of fresh air

The Corporation’s determination to combat bad air quality and help us breathe more easily has been hard to avoid, with electric cars here and pop-up gardens there. One weekend we were given lessons in bike repair and free maps showing the cleanest route from A to B. At Barbican station, they stuck plastic arrows on the pavement, indicating “cleaner air this way”. Then I read a Corporation factoid stating that the air inside a car in busy traffic is dirtier than it is outside on the street for pedestrians and cyclists. I nearly choked.

Golden Lane residents don’t need this kind of horror story to tell them the air we breathe in the City is poor. Sit in Sourced Market on Goswell Road and look across to the iconic sweep of Crescent House and it is pretty obvious that it really could do with a good wash.

Thankfully, the architects of both the Golden Lane Estate and the Barbican - Chamberlin, Powell & Bon - imagined a future where car was king and carbon dioxide the enemy, and took steps to separate people from pollution. The core of the Golden Lane estate is a green haven of lawns and trees, while the Barbican highwalks, as irritating to navigate as they can be, raise pedestrians above and away from CO2 black-spots.

The success of the architects’ vision, and the chance to breathe cleaner air on the south side of the estate especially, is seen in the in the four healthy London Plane trees - originals from the 1970s, I’m told - standing across Fann Street in the Barbican Wildlife Garden.

The London Plane is a miracle of botany. It is an accidental hybrid of Oriental and American planes. They are relatives of the Sycamore and most of the world’s great cities have their own variant, and for two good reasons.

First, it readily consumes nasty particulate pollution into its dappled camouflage-like bark, which then flakes, and renews itself with ease, trashing the toxins.

Second, those big, lobed leaves and short root system work together to suck up and pump out vast amounts of valuable oxygen and water into the atmosphere. No surprise, then, that the Plane is known as ‘London’s Lungs’. I stare at those Fann Street beauties often and give thanks.

Fiddler on the hoof
Open Garden Squares Weekend is always good fun at the Golden Baggers allotments. Baggers bake good cakes and this year more than 400 green-fingered types arrived to ask questions about our varied crops. They like the Baggers because our growing space is a secret idyll, because we have a community café staffed by volunteer residents and, importantly, a toilet. To add spice this year, we invited poet-gardener St John Stephen (@HangingBabylon). He mingled with visitors, offering sizzling stanzas from greatest hits such as Sylvie, Red Pelargoniums and VIII. Sadly, he was not able to perform the poem about the joys of sniffing bushes, because that one is part of his ‘Spring’ cycle, and we were already well into Summer. But there was plenty from his Shrub Fiddler’s Pocket Book to make an already hot weekend even hotter.

It’s a snip

Getting a haircut around here is always a dilemma. Should I stay loyal to Golden Lane and go  to Cliffords, or break for the Islington border and visit Best Gents in Banner Street, off Whitecross Street? Best Gents does the full grooming experience (ear singeing, hot towel, eyebrow trim, nose hair, cranial massage), but Cliffords, with their pot noodles, chipped coffee mugs and bulk-bought tea bags ‘hidden’ in the corner shelf in full view all Golden Lane residents, has the kind of no-nonsense feel I find comforting.

All together now

It was a new experience: a joint reckoning for Barbican and Golden Lane residents of our freshly elected Common Council after 100 days in the job. It started well, with Cripplegate Alderman, David Graves, urging residents to get more involved and hinting at his desire for a more inclusive type of regular meeting.

Fire safety was understandably top of the agenda and the whole meeting soon became a single-issue free-for-all. Touching stories and heartfelt concerns mixed uncomfortably with grandstanding bluster, at times it seemed to be spiralling into chaos and mumbo-jumbo. And hearing Corporation placemen talking about 'learning the lessons of Grenfell' left a hollow sound in the ear.

The mood was electric and fragile, but somehow the simple act of sitting together and struggling to find answers made a difference. I went away wanting more.

An edited version of this column appeared in the City Matters newspaper, edition 41, July 12-18 2017

Golden Lane Gazette: June 2017

Let there be light...

A decision to improve the lighting around the estate is welcome. Crime is not a big issue here, and the poor lighting is more to do with the safety of residents and how secure they feel walking the estate after dark.

At least that was my concern when I raised the matter with our Common Council team at a group meeting more than a year ago. None of them seemed to think there was a lighting problem. I was dismissed as a fantasist.

But now the Corporation has decided to act. A consultation was set up. We sat and listened, moaned about how frighteningly dark it gets between the Shakespeare pub and Great Arthur House. A man from the police, an ‘architectural liaison officer’, told us how 'smart' lighting can be used to 'design out' crime, if we had any. An official from the Corporation's Built Environment department told us how, miraculously, funding had been found to upgrade the lighting and then described the ways our lives might be transformed with sophisticated uplighting and LEDs. There were diagrams to look at. 

I looked down at my notebook. 'Is there a hidden agenda?’ it said on one page. The one that was screaming at me was that the Corporation anticipates increased footfall across the estate once Crossrail opens at Farringdon and the Bernard Morgan and Richard Cloudesley site developments are finished. And they want to make sure everyone knows which way to go. Oh, and Fusion gym wants it made easier for people to find their way to its front door.

The designation of 'private’ and 'common’ areas of the estate is a hot-potato issue and one the Corporation and the Golden Lane Residents Association have been wrestling with for what seems like forever. It is a fraught conversation and one I’m not sure any amount of 'smart' technology can bring to an early conclusion.

Centre of excellence

There are plans to redevelop our community centre, the flat-top building at the back of the yellow giant that is Great Arthur House. It has been a struggle for residents to get a say in the matter, but that has changed and a steering group of locals is now doing some proper steering. There has also been an effort to show that residents can - and will - organise and run successful events that benefit the whole estate: yoga, chess, knitting (see below).

Two in particular impressed me recently. In January a Hatfield House resident pulled some strings somewhere and a brass band took to the stage of the community hall one Saturday afternoon. Children wriggled and giggled around our feet as the band parped out old favourites such as the Floral Dance and The Typewriter, which featured a live typewriter: clickety-clack, ping, and all that. In the interval, the children got to blow a few horns. Top prize overall went to the band’s rendition of David Bowie’s Life on Mars. Some residents were visibly emotional. 

More recently the hall was transformed into a restaurant and we were treated to a three-course meal of Caribbean food as actors from Off The Wall Players performed structured scenes (soup, main, pudding) based on Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, the 1967 film starring Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy and Sidney Poitier.

Like the film, the performance tackled themes of race, class and gender roles, but its centrepiece, served to our tables by members of the cast, was food. It climaxed in a petty squabble in which an idiot boyfriend gets coleslaw dumped on his head by his date. He staggers, spits out a few swear words, then falls over humiliated and dies. Just desserts, I thought, as we finished our main course.

The community centre will close at the end of the summer for refurbishment, but let’s hope that when it reopens, such sparkling events as these get a fair shout. They more than deserve it.

Animal magic

We’ve had displaced ducks stranded on Basterfield lawn. We have a sparrowhawk who arrives with a bearded handler to put the frighteners on the pigeons. And foxes are regulars. Some years ago we had a three-legged fox which, in spite of being seriously disabled, hopped around eyeballing innocent passers-by.

Now we have another fox. It has been named ‘Mr Fox’, but that is a bit dull, so if you have any better ideas, please let us know.

Wool meet again

Every third Tuesday in the month is Knit & Natter at the community centre. No prior skills or fancy equipment is required, just turn up, cast on and chill out. Hats for the Premature Babies unit at UCLH is the good cause.

An edited version of this column appeared in the London newspaper City Matters, issue 37.

Golden Lane Gazette: May 2017

Soccer special
There is a feeling on Golden Lane that after years of frustration and failed dialogue between residents and the Corporation, something new is happening. 

Neighbours are talking to each other, swapping points of view in good spirit and looking to hold out the hand of friendship.

This might just be blind optimism on my part, but I hope not. I like the idea that people who live together closely can find common ground.

The Corporation's residents have for centuries been the poor relations of business, finance and the great god of Profit. The City has around 7,500 residents, but they are overshadowed by 450,000 workers who toil daily in offices across the Square Mile. 

Nevertheless, we residents are determined to be heard. A shake-up in the local elections in April was like an electric shock for the old guard of councillors as new faces marched through the ceremonial doors and into the seats of power.

Residents now expect change, but I warn them not to expect it instantly. This is just a window of opportunity. It is a chance to start a new relationship with City officials.

Here on Golden Lane, our new councillors made a good start by holding surgeries at which residents can share their concerns and ideas. 
It was at one of these sessions that I pitched my idea for an annual Barbican vs Golden Lane charity football match. 

The two estates have in the past been rivals. In architecture, one is brutalist, the other is modernist. In ownership, one is private, the other is public. But we also share a lot - a love of plants and gardening, conversations about concrete, and marathon moaning about the state of Waitrose's frozen food stock.

So a footie match is the obvious next step. I was even cheeky enough to suggest to Cllr William Pimlott the date (on or around the August anniversary of the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre) and the venue (Bunhill Artillery Ground). 

So let's see if anything kicks off. It will be a test of the trust that can be forged between voters and politicians, not to mention a fantastic day of fun for families, friends and footie fans… even if a handsome victory for Golden Lane is a betting cert.


Frankly, my dear
Frank Godsmark is a local character here on the Golden Lane Estate, and he is not yet seven years old. He can often be seen in his Hull City football shirt running rings round his dad, Tim.

I got to know Frank best when he became an Elf’s Assistant at our indoor Christmas market last year. I was his Elf, his boss, and we jointly handed out Christmas goody bags to local children. Frank was a dream to work with. Santa was very pleased with us both.

There is a picture of Frank in the shed at the Golden Baggers allotment. It was taken by his mum, Anna, and won a judges award at the Corporation’s 2015 Residents’ Celebration Day at the Guildhall. Whenever I see it I think Frank is hiding in the shed. It is a cracking picture, and perfectly sums up Frank’s sense of fun and joy.


A hardware act to follow
Just looking in the window of City Hardware is scary. What are all those tools and measuring instruments for? Peer through the always-open door and the full horror smacks you in the face...a sinister huddle of grown men muttering secretively about fixings and flanges. Stick around long enough and you will soon get to hear the City Hardware brand of earthy banter. It’s not for the faint hearted. Still, for Golden Lane residents, City Hardware is the shop that sells everything a well maintained home needs - a sort of Tiger for the DIY enthusiast. The staff are eternally helpful and masterminds in their chosen subject (grout and bathroom sealant). If they haven’t got what you want, they know a shop that does. Fifty-six different types of glue? No problem.

And before you go…
The first Sunday of every month is Social Sunday at the Golden Baggers allotment yard. Tea, cake and horticultural chat are always on the menu. All welcome. Squirrels were a topic at the last one, as one unhappy Hatfield House resident had seen his freshly planted courgettes decimated. Feel free to pass on any tips.

Billy Mann has lived in Basterfield House on the Golden Lane Estate for more than 20 years. He is Membership Secretary of the Golden Baggers allotment group and earlier this year was made a Housing Hero by the City of London Corporation. He writes a blog about neighbourhood happenings at basterfieldbilly.blogspot.com.

An edited version of this column appeared in the City Matters newspaper in May 2017.

Letter: Emily Thornberry MP

I sent a handwritten version of this sometime in March. I was bored and in a very cheeky mood. Thornberry did not reply but passed the letter to Mark Field, who sent me a creepy letter saying there was nothing he could do, etc, not my place to interfere, blah

Dear Ms Thornberry

Islington Council and the City of London Corporation are about to unknowingly gift up to 300 of your constituents to Mark Field MP (Con).

This is the outcome of a proposed plan to redevelop a piece of land on the edge of Islington South formerly occupied by the Richard Cloudesley School to create ‘much needed social housing' and a primary academy.

On paper, the proposals look innocent by modern standards: a two-form primary school and a 14-storey tower block of dual-aspect apartments fronted onto Golden Lane. In practice, the development is a backdoor extension of the Grade II listed Golden Lane Estate.

The Golden Lane Estate is, as you probably already know, a place of worship for architecture students worldwide and a historically important ‘living museum’. It was an attempt to regenerate a badly bomb-damaged area of London after World War II on principles of good functional design, and a socially progressive and humane demonstration of how high-density inner-city living can work and thrive. Key workers from the nearby St Bartholomew’s hospital were among its first residents.

Today it is a much-loved urban oasis of hard-faced concrete, steel framing, coloured wall panels and green spaces. There is a gym, tennis courts and a swimming pool. There is the multi award-winning Golden Baggers allotment project. And we have a soon-to-be updated community hall that recently hosted herds of excited children crawling around the floor while adults sat gently swaying to the sound of a brass band playing David Bowie’s Life on Mars.

Now it has become the plaything of political pygmies. Here we find two councils, City of London Corporation and Islington Council cosied up in a plot to plonk your constituents onto the doorstep of the Golden Lane Estate. Many of them, I am sure, would be very happy about that, but if the current plans go ahead their homes will be managed and controlled by the Corporation of London and, by extension, incorporated into Mark Field MP's constituency of City of London and Westminster. The details of this ugly manoeuvre, plus graphic illustrations of its hideous effects can be found at https://www.facebook.com/groups/GLERA/ Your local Labour colleagues Mary Durcan and William Pimlott can also brief you.

South Islington and Golden Lane residents have lived together happily for many years. We share a lot. We have welcomed our Islington neighbours to events here on Golden Lane and they welcome us to activities around Whitecross Street, King Square and St Luke’s. But now, the partnership of manipulation formed by the City of London and Islington Council in this proposed development is set to blur the borders so much that there is no way your constituents can be adequately represented. In this sense they become hostages to bad politics. I fear Islington has been duped by the dark forces of political chicanery and the desire for an instant solution to key social problems at any cost. The plans are being railroaded forward with unseemly speed and very little proper consultation.

This letter is starting to sound like a Nimby rant, so I will finish, but ask you please to check the details for yourself, for the sake of your displaced constituents and for the reputation of Islington South.

Golden Lane: Sue Pearson's rhubarb

The Councillor’s racy red past

Newly elected Cripplegate Councillor Sue Pearson is always happy to talk rhubarb, especially when the subject is her own contribution to that trusty filler of pies and crumbles.

Sue’s rhubarb has a life story. It sits today in a quiet corner of the Golden Baggers allotment, but the road it took to get here is a story in itself, a kind of rhubarb version of Who Do You Think You Are? It was born and raised in Wales by Sue’s Dad. Once it reached maturity, he outsourced cuttings to his children, who grew up and left home, but took a piece of Welsh rhubarb with them wherever they went. And from that day on, the hobo life of the plant began.

The muscular red beauty you see in the pot against the east wall of the allotment has journeyed with Cllr Pearson from Wales to Wilmslow and Derbyshire before it found its present home here on Golden Lane. It is clearly a survivor. The number of tarts it has parented is unknown, but please feel free to speculate. If​ you need any proof of its health and fertility, gently push back those big green leaves and check out the silky stems. Awesome.

Councillor's Choice: Look at those legs!

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. 

 Sign the petition.

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'.