Amy Stevens was born on the 14th March 1987. When she lost both her job and her house within a week, Amy turned to The Big Issue. She started selling the magazine in Angel, then moved to Euston. At Euston she found herself struggling to walk past the vast numbers of beggers outside the station ...
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The second in our series of pop-up exhibitions, Living in King’s Cross, explores the experiences of people who have lived in the King’s Cross area over the past 100 years. It tells stories of daily life on some of the iconic housing estates in the area, as well as delving into the history of squatting, ...
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Follow Arthur, Debbie and Aron as they take us on a trip through their King’s Cross and see how the area has changed.
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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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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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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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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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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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With its patterned brickwork, wooden sash windows and wrought iron railings, the Hillview estate stands as a beautifully restored remnant of Victorian King’s Cross, an area that has been transformed beyond recognition in recent years. Arranged in its present incarnation around four courtyards, it was built at the turn of the century by charity the ...
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Photographer Mark Cawson moved to Cromer Street in the early 1980’s and began living in a row of four squatted blocks – Hillview Estate. It was an eclectic community of squatters including artists, musicians, circus performers, working girls and a small sub-set of people struggling with addiction. When short-life tenants – often ex-squatters themselves – ...
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Born in 1929, Arthur Mills moved to a block of flats on the corner of Wynford Road and Penton Street when he was five. His mother refused to evacuate the family during the war and because the schools closed, Arthur’s early childhood was spent playing in the streets and bombed out houses. Wartime austerity meant ...
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Steve Lake moved to Priory Green Estate in 1979. Tipped off about an empty flat in Grimaldi House, a Dickensian building out of keeping with the rest of the estate, Steve and a few friends decided to make it their home. They broke into the flat ‘in the normal fashion’, and changed the locks to ...
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She represented King’s Cross as a councillor for 22 years and went on to serve three terms as the mayor of Camden, but it could be said Barbara Hughes’ political roots lie in the Hillview Estate. It was here she brought up her three sons in the 1950s and ‘60s and where as a young ...
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When Shola Alli moved onto Hillview in 1999, it was with mixed feelings. On the one hand, the estate’s refurbishment had just been completed and everything looked shiny and new. On the other, it was still damned by association with King’s Cross, whose own regeneration had not yet begun. “The area was still very much linked ...
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It is a fine winter’s morning when I meet Hillview caretaker Khaled Ali, the sun beaming down from an impossibly blue sky. As we sit down to chat in the courtyard of Whidborne Buildings amid the luxuriant shrubbery it is hard to believe we are a stone’s throw from the Euston Road with its crowds ...
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When John Mason moved on to Hillview as one of the first shortlife tenants, he did not think he would still be there some 40 years later. After being burgled three times in one flat he ended up in another on the ground floor near one of the entrances. “It did not take long for ...
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Jane Penton was born a Kiwi, but having an English grandfather allowed her to move to the UK during the eighties. Over the ten years that Jane was in London, she spent time living and squatting around Somers Town, an area of King’s Cross behind The British Library. I spoke with Jane via e-mail last year, ...
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