Jarlath O’Connell vividly remembers one particular night that was held at The Bell: Jo Purvis’ Sunday Tea Dances. Here he opens the doors and takes us inside. A cocktail bar? In King’s Cross? I mean, there were crack-whores giving blowjobs for a fiver in the stairwells and the doorways. The idea that people would come ...
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Emily Collins is a boat baby. She arrived on her parents’ narrowboat ‘freshly popped’ in June 1995. Jackie and John, Emily’s parents, bought a birth at Battlebridge Moorings in the early 1990s and lived there until Emily’s little sister came along, when they decided that living in such close quarters with two small children was ...
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Mark Cawson has lived in the King’s Cross area for over 30 years. Moving into a large squat on the Hillview estate in the early 1980s, he found himself living in a community of like minded people. ‘It was a huge mix. There were a lot of creative people, circus performers, writers, musicians. The Pogues ...
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Tolmers Square, an enclave of Victorian houses behind Euston Station, became home to a group of young, politically organised squatters in the 1970s. Patrick Allen was one of them: I was interested in [squatting], partly because I thought it was politically interesting, and partly because I needed to save money…for my law studies. The ...
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Cllr. Robinson was born in 1937 into a radical left-wing Jewish family in Glasgow. The famous Scottish socialist and trade unionist Keir Hardie was a family friend and Roger’s grandad taught him traditional socialist principles from an early age. His mother was an active campaigner within the Independent Labour Party, and led the Pensioners in ...
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Alex Smith was born on the 7th of November 1953, in the village of Butley, near Glastonbury. From the sacred landscape of Glastonbury, he has spiralled his way to King’s Cross, where, he told us, Blake took inspiration in the writing of Jerusalem. Alex’s is a life infused with the images and the shapes of myth. In ...
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When Bradley Roberts took over the Thornhill Arms, a 19th century pub on the corner of Caledonian Road and Wynford Road he didn’t quite know what he had signed up to. He had hardly any experience of pulling pints let alone managing the business side of the pub and so not surprisingly he found it ...
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Mahmud Hasan was a part time worker for the Bengali Workers Action Group in 1984. His role was to work with homeless people as well as run a luncheon club for elderly people. After a house fire took the lives of a young family in King’s Cross, the local community mobilised and occupied the Camden ...
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In 1984 Liz Smale, 24 was working for race equality organisation, Camden Committee for Community Relations (CCCR) as a Community adviser. Working closely with the Bengali Workers Action Group, Liz ran advise sessions with the local community, helping with accommodation, racism and work issues. Homelessness was a constant problem. At the time Camden Council was ...
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After the tragic death of a young Bangladeshi family in a house fire in 1984, an occupation of the Camden Town Hall was organised to draw attention to the poor housing conditions families were putting up with at the time. When news spread that a family had died in the fire, Jamila Hasan like so ...
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Sabes Sugunasabesan was working at Camden Committee for Community Relations as a Housing Officer at the time of Occupation ’84. After the tragic death of a young Bangladeshi family in a house fire in 1984, an occupation of the Camden Town Hall was organised to draw attention to the poor housing conditions families were ...
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Fred Garner, born 1963, is a chartered Civil Engineer, Fellow of the Institute of Engineers and Director for Rail at Taylor Woodrow. Fred talks of how the Harry Potter phenomenon has grown at King’s Cross, from the filming on the station to the building of the trolley into the wall. He goes on to tell ...
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Brian Hardy, born 1949, began his passion for Underground trains on weekend walks to the tracks with his grandfather and father. His career in the London Underground took him from Junior Trainee and Relief Clerk to Traffic Controller, Head Controller and finally Control Manager until his retirement in 2005. His enthusiasm for all things Underground ...
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Helal Abbas worked as a community worker at the Bengali Workers Action Group in 1984 during the homeless occupation of Camden Town Hall. The BWAG as it was known, was initially set up to support restaurant workers in the King’s Cross and Camden area. Very much like the ‘gig’ economy today, the workers at the ...
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Sarah Walker first came across the English Collective of Prostitutes at the North London Polytechnic, where she was studying English, in the early 1980s. In May 2018, Sarah and I sat down to record her memories of the ECP occupation of the Holy Cross Church in King’s Cross in 1982. Sarah talked about the political ...
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The Regent’s Canal was opened in 1820 after some years of hard work, interrupted by scandal and by money problems that would be familiar to those managing large-scale construction today. The Islington Tunnel, 960 yards long, was finished in 1818 but difficulties over land on the eastern side held up the completion of the canal. ...
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Lucy Neal has been ‘making art as if the world mattered’ ever since co-founding the London International Theatre Festival (LIFT) in 1981. LIFT brought participation, pyrotechnics and polyrhythms into the public realm, creating spaces for practitioners who were censored in their own countries. ‘Places remember events’ says Lucy, and Kings Cross was full of them. ...
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Ursula Troche is a writer, ‘train-informed psychogeographer’, performance poet and life model who has played an active role in the politics of women’s and race equality since moving to London in 1991 from her hometown of Löhne, Germany, in 1991. In a locational interview in the grounds of St. Pancras Old Church, Kings Cross she ...
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Errol Lawrence was the Public Engagement Officer at Camden Committee for Community Relations in 1984. He went on to head research at the Runnymead Trust and is now retired. Lainy Malkani spoke to Errol about his involvement in the Occupation ’84 campaign which you can listen to below. Occupation ’84 is the story of Camden’s homeless ...
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Professor Wendy Savage, member of the Medical Ethics Committee (BMA MEC, Tavistock Square), is an outspoken advocate for women’s choice and health care rights. We sit side by side in her Clerkenwell apartment, surrounded by blue-green prints of wild landscapes. Wendy looks out through the windows while talking, as if finding worrying statistics and complicated ...
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Cecilia Anim knew she wanted to be a ‘big wife’ (a midwife) after she heard babies crying in a maternity hospital in Kumasi. Her nursing story began there. She is now serving her second term as President of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) – the first person of BAME origin elected to the office. ...
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The second in a series of three exhibitions sharing the memories of local people, Living in King’s Cross looks at changes in social housing from the 1900s to the present day. It presents personal stories of the ups and downs of everyday life in the area, using recordings of local people, archive material and contemporary photographs. ...
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Prof. Joanna Zakrzewska confessed she hadn’t noticed the brass owls adorning the doors of the Eastman Dental Hospital (EDH), until one of her patients depicted heavy rocks tumbling through the doors as part of an art collaboration. Learning from patients, attention to detail and imagery are the big themes of my conversation with Joanna. We ...
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Amy Lamé (b. 1971), founder of legendary gay club Duckie, ended up as a resident of King’s Cross when she married a vicar, Jenny. The flat in Bloomsbury came with her wife’s job in the Anglican Church. Amy discovered it once housed orphaned girls from the Foundling Hospital, who were training as domestic servants. The ...
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