David Hoffman at Fieldgate Mansions
Children playing at Fieldgate Mansions, April 1981
This series of photographs by David Hoffman, taken while he was squatting in Fieldgate Mansions off Fieldgate St in Whitechapel from 1973 until 1984, record a vital community of artists, homeless people and Bengali families who inhabited these streets at the time they were scheduled for demolition. Thanks to the tenacity and courage of these people, the dignified buildings survive today, restored and still in use for housing.
David Hoffman’s photographs record the drama of the life of his fellow squatters, subject to violent harassment and the constant threat of eviction, yet these images are counterpointed by his tender and intimate observation of children at play. After dropping out of university, David Hoffman found a haven in Fieldgate Mansion where he could develop his photography, which became his life’s work.
Characterised by an unflinching political insight, this photography is equally distinguished by a generous human sympathy and both these qualities are present in his Fieldgate Mansions pictures, manifesting the emergence of one photographer’s vision – as David Hoffman explained to me recently.
“It was the need for a place to live that brought me here. I’d come down from university without a degree in 1970. I’d dossed in Black Lion Yard and rented a squalid slum room in Chicksand St, before a permanent room came up for very little money in Black Lion Yard in 1971 above Solly Granatt’s jewellery shop. But the whole street was due for demolition, and when he died we squatted in it until they knocked it down in November 1973.
Then I found a place in Fieldgate Mansions which was being squatted by half a dozen people from the London College of Furniture. Bengali families were having a hard time and we were opening up flats in the Mansions for them to live there. We were really active, taking over other empty buildings that were being kept vacant in Myrdle St and Parfett St, because the owners found it was cheaper to keep them empty. We also squatted many empty houses further east in Stepney preventing the council from demolishing them. We took over and got evicted, and came back the next day and, when they put them up for auction, we used to bid and our bid won but, of course, we had no money so we couldn’t pay – it was a delaying tactic. It was a war of attrition to keep the buildings for people rather than for profit.
The bailiffs and police came at four in the morning and got everyone out and boarded up the property and put dogs in. Then we got dog handlers who removed the dogs and took them to Leman St Police Station as strays, and then we moved back in again.
When I moved into Fieldgate Manions it was late November and there was no hot water and the council had poured concrete down the toilet and ripped out the wiring. There was no insulation in the roof, it was just open to the slates and the temperature inside was as freezing as it was outside. I found a gas water heater in a skip and got it working on New Year’s Eve, so I counted in the New Year 1974 with hot water as the horns of the boats sounded on the river.
I decided to do Communication Design at the North East London Polytechnic, because I’d been taking photographs since I was a child and I’d helped set up a darkroom at university. At Fieldgate Mansions, I had a two room flat, one was my bedroom and office and other I made into a darkroom and I did quite a bit of photography. When I left college in 1976, I took up photography full time and began to make a slim living at it and I have done so ever since. While I was a student, I had a grant but I didn’t have to pay rent and it was the first time in my life I had enough money to feed and clothe myself. I stayed in Fieldgate Mansions until 1984 when I moved into a derelict house in Bow which I bought with some money I’d saved and what my mother left me, and where I still live today.”
Waiting to resist eviction in front of the barricaded front door of a squat in Myrdle St, Whitechapel, in February 1973. Ann Pettitt and Anne Zell are standing, with Duncan, Tony Mahoney and Phineas sitting in front.
Doris Lerner, activist and squatter, climbs through a first floor window of a squat in Myrdle St
Max Levitas, Tower Hamlets Communist Councillor, tried unsuccessfully to convince the squatters that resistance to eviction should be taken over by the Communist Party
March on Tower Hamlets Council in protest against the eviction of squatters
Doris Lerner in an argument with a neighbour during the evictions from Myrdle St and Parfett St
Lavatory in squatted house in Myrdle St, Whitechapel, 1973
Police arrive to evict squatters in Myrdle St
Eviction in progress
Out on the street
Sleeping on the street after eviction
Liz and Sue in my flat in Fieldgate Mansions, September 1975
Coral Prior, silversmith, working in her studio at Fieldgate Mansions, 1977
Fieldgate Scratch Band
A boy dances in the courtyard of Fieldgate Mansions. Scheduled for demolition in 1972, it was squatted to prevent destruction until taken over by a community housing trust and modernised in the eighties.
Photographs copyright © David Hoffman
OH! pleasant exercise of hope and joy!
For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood
Upon our side, we who were strong in love!
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!
http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww285.html
You Heros . I recently saw a documentary about saving Arnold Circus . So inspirational . Was that happening at the same time and didi you all know each other ?
A battle well won. But what a fight.
What a wonderful record. Never seen anything like it.
What a brilliant thing you and your group achieved. Respect.
What a fantastic piece of history, brilliant photos!
Those people had courage and vision and did a great job! Valerie
I remember David from the old days when i first moved into Fieldgate Mansions and here I am still. Started off living in a gloomy basement flat, now i’ve come up in the world and my flat is in the roof! Great photos from bygone days.
amazing photographs. thank you. s
One of the things I always liked about you and your photographs has been your refusal to set things up, make them pretty and commercial and behave like your average photographer who wants to be running a State of the Art car and a Trophy Wife. These are great pictures. How I do love black and white. Think how trite these would be in Glorious Velvia.
I’m still here and await your annual Christmas Card with keen expectation.
I came across Mount Terrace near Whitechapel tube station, which also looks like a survival from mass demolition, and most surreal by contrast with the surrounding area (mainly the hospital). Since the map of WW2 bombed areas does not show that Mount Terrace was bombed, I don’t know why demolition occurred.
Thank you for sharing these beautiful images, and thank you David Hoffman for being there and recording such interesting times.
All of your blogs fascinate me, some of course more then others as I am not a resident. Would it be out of line to suggest that you have a like button for Facebook as I would really like to be able to share some of your blogs with my contacts?
Gorgeous… my kind of article! Visited once, and was most impressed by the ethos. Lovely to see these Hoffman photos.
Dear David Hoffman, I could not believe my eyes when I saw this email with all the pictures…for years now I’ve been trying to find out about Fieldgate mansions and I have the number of the mansikons as this was where my grandparents and my father was born. I do have a picture that someone kindly took for me – but when I tried to find out from census details who lived in Fieldgate Mansions in 1905 (the year my father was born) – I couldn’t get anywhere and seemed to be turning round in circles. I would love to send you a direct email if you would allow this and maybe could could direct me to somewhere where I could find out possible records of my grandparents living there. They were in a basement room/flat?? and their name was Fanny (Dresden) and Louis/Lewis Levy – and they had 6 children (my father was the youngest). If you are able to tell me the jewish school that they would have been zoned for I would really appreciate it. best regards Miriam [mdelorie40@gmail.com]
Great photos. A wonderful record of the squatters movement.
Another time, well recorded. Nice photos, David.
Wonderful photographs thank you so much for sharing David.
Fascinating copy and tremendous images. Thanks
Wonderful evocative photographs – beautifully capture the time, the people and the place.
Wonderfully spirited photographs; full of action that speak, no shout about the times those people are living in. Thank you.
I remember Fieldgate street mansions there were continuous housing problems there I think the architects should have been designated to live in their creations before asking others to,opposite these flats there was a Rowton House for the homeless which was closed in the 60ths.
Avery uplifting story of what people can acheive when they show determination and will.Good luck for the future.
These are are wonderful, amazing and full of so much vitality a great inspiration, and children living and playing their lives. Hope there are more to come as I love them sarah
Nan and Grandfather lived in Fieldgate Mansions 50s and 60s. Remember well, even now. Especially Christmas tree that filled the whole room 🙂 I had a Jewish ‘Aunt Julie’ even though we were all ‘Catholics’. Matzos, Fishballs, Biegles, pronounced bIgals’ 🙂
Thanks dear Gentle Author, and dear David Hoffman:
I am from India and I do my research on migration, especially British Asian literature. We read, write and hear of all kinds of negative and politicised ideas on current and past theoretical discourse. But my British Asian women writers, dear David and TGA, have always kept alive the stories of love and bonding in those early years,without which so many Asians would never have survived.
I would suggest particularly the novels of Ravinder Randhawa, and one by Preeti Nair, “One hundred shades of white ” which tell you about all kinds of British women who stood by semi-articulate Indian and Bangladeshi women who could thereby withstand eviction, abandonment, bereavement and a hundred other challenges around the time-frame you have captured. And like your photo essay, they too end in an overwhelming sense of JOY, JOY, JOY! Thanks to all the people who stood by each other, women like Lerner, and to David who thought it important to record the various shades of this experience.
I went to see David Hoffman speak about his work recently – amazing stuff, especially his shots of the Wet Crypt at St Botolph’s, Aldgate (not shown here). Hard to believe that the shots shown here were only taken in the 70’s and 80’s – they seem a world away.
Interesting that “Landlords found it cheaper to keep them empty”.
The pernicious effects of rent controls no doubt.
Re; ‘Liz and Sue in my flat in Fieldgate Mansions, September 1975’. Sue? looks like Jayne to me
Thanks for these pictures and for your activism, of which I was an unknowing beneficiary, having lived in Fieldgate Mansions from 1981 to 1985. It was such a great place to live, with every flat occupied by either young students from various London colleges, or immigrant Bengali families making a hard living in dubious conditions. If the music didn’t keep you awake at night, the sewing machines from the Bengali rag trade would.
That looks like my old Fiat Dave !!
Just got jolted back to BLY times and found this wonderful saga.
You always could spin a yarn ………
just wish the pix from the Sweetie Show at Whitechapel gallery survived..
These pictures bring back so many memories. Grew up in fieldgate mansions and lived there for thirty years. Still have family there. Remember when southern housing took over in the eighties. I was only a kid and all these other things at the time were of no interest to me. I have some of my happiest memories and these pictures made them flood back! In fact I didn’t even realise we were squatters until only a few years ago after talking about these pictures to my elder brothers.
Many of the people still living in the area are in the pics and I have been in touch with many others because of them. Thanks David for the memories.
P.S I’m the kid in the cap with the dimple and potatoe gun.
These are lovely mementos David. Good photos too! I was there (on and off) in number 60 Myrdle Street from September 73 to June 85. Joe Heard always reckoned that these few streets were ‘sprinkled with stardust’. He was referring to the people and the spirit. You caught it well and thanks for sharing them.
I was born in Parfett Street in ’88 but my parents, grandparents loved there since 70’s and the stories i hear are amazing. The struggle, the fights, but what’s more is the sense of community even in those hard times. I still work in the area at the little centre on Myrdle St and it’s a wonder how things change.
These photos by Mr Hoffman are amazing and send an insight to the world of the times in which people lived. For that I am grateful
Thank you David for sharing these photographs with us all. I spent my childhood in this lovely area. Even though I have moved out from this area, I still go there every now and then. It has transformed a lot over the past decade, with the the long standing ‘Tower House,’ which was abandoned for many years, renovated for the purpose of renting out to professionals. The area is slowly (and sadly for those of us who hold this area so close to our hearts) losing it’s community now and being replaced by professionals and students, which is great for businesses, but not so great for the character and the togetherness that the area has always had. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that the beautiful smiles and joy you have captured in your photographs can ever be found again in the next ten to twenty years. Money doesn’t buy you happiness and your photographs beautifully portray this.
I lived in commercial mansions with my family in the 60’s we played on the roof had an outside toilet which we shared with the next door neighbour there was a deli on the corner which sold the biggest juiciest gherkins ever and on the other corner was a sweet/ grocer shop which had a milk machine outside and chocolate milks called mickies
I worked in Fieldgate Street in 1970/71, thanks for this article, brought back to me how the people had to live from day to day.
Thank you so much for the opportunity to see Mr Hoffman’s photographs of Fieldgate Mansions. They give such an honest account of how life was then and the difficulties encountered.
Dear David Parham,
If you lived in the basement of Fieldgate Mansions and so did my grandparents..would it be difficult for you t0 find out who lived there in1910? or 1901 where my father was born? or let me know to whom I should write to get info. Thank you.
Amazing photos. thank you.
In response to one or two enquiries above, records of all residents at Fieldgate Mansions since they were constructed are listed in polling registers, which can all be seen at Tower Hamlets Local history library at Bancroft Road.
The evictions in the photos look as though they are taking place in the terraced housing on the west side of Myrdle Street and on the adjoining street, Parfett Street, rather than Fieldgate Mansions itself. This is unsurprising as these terraced houses were privately owned, whereas ownership of Fieldgate Mansions had been passed to the Greater London Council.
I moved into Fieldgate Mansions in May 1974 and had no idea demolition of these buildings was on the cards. From this time some of the buildings began to be used as official student housing (for the London Hospital, City of London Polytechnic etc).
Then, in 1977, the newly Conservative GLC declared an amnesty for squatters in GLC properties which stabilised their position.
Thank you for displaying this beautiful photography by David Hoffmann.
I was squatting in Barnes Street at this time. We had a food co-op. I didn’t realise it at the time but it was a hugely significant period in my life.
Hello
I am Bernard Turle and writing a book in French on squatting in London in the mid-70’s. Although it is centred on Vauxhall where i used to squat in Rosetta St/Radnor Terrace, I of course give a more general picture and my publisher is considering adding pictures from our area in Lambeth but also from other districts in London. Could you please tell us what would be implied if we wanted to use one of David Hoffman’s fantastic photographs ? All my very best, Bernard Turle
I was at London College of Furniture in the late 70’s and squatted in four different flats up until about 1980. I started in a basement flat (now called block 34) in Fieldgate Street (no electric or water) before moving upstairs to a ‘double’ flat (No.137 I think) – which was extended with the help of a sledgehammer, knocking two flats into one. I moved when the water pipes upstairs got stolen. Then onto a Romford Street basement flat, this one actually had a bath! Finally moved in on my own when a friend vacated No.151. A couple of years later we sold the keys to the highest bidder for £300 – I do wonder if that was the biggest mistake of my life? Does anyone know what happened to the residents when the flats got renovated?
This is a reply to “John”, Jan. 13, 2020… When the flats were progressively renovated residents were decanted into others that had already been upgraded, and eventually folks were moved back as close as possible to their original flat. I lived in 3-4 FM on Myrdle Street (1st block diagonally across from George the Pole’s delightful hostelry). One original flatmate of mine from the 70s still rents a flat in the same block over 40 years later. Back in the day we paid 50p a fortnight in rent when it was taken over from City of London Poly (CLP) by the GLC. The electric supply was via meters in each flat, but in ours the coin collecting boxes had long since disappeared so we just used to put the same coin through over and over. The day I took over my flat, as a bona fide student, c.1975, Charlie Whelan (later advisor to Gordon Brown) stood guard to prevent squatters getting in while I was off getting my belongings. He was then Social Sec. at CLP and already very much a political activist. He’s in the 4th photo above, left of Max Levitas. Many happy years spent there… so many stories… so many good friends… so much fun… and all a very, very long time ago!
My father, Prid D’italia award winning playwright George Byatt (the Clyde is Red, Brus, Gracie Field betrayed the Working Class, – renamed after her lawyers got in touch to; Why doesn’t the Pope come to Glasgow, etc) squatted in Fieldgate Mansions, Romford Street in the early 1970’s – probably 1972 or 1973.
Greg Byatt, (working as an electrician at the Opera House) George’s son, and my brother, moved into another squat around the same time. I, Andrew Byatt (an actor) moved into another squat in 1974, followed by my brother Martin Byatt (a classical guitarist) and finally my artist sister Lucy Byatt moved into another squat a little later. We were all in the same block in the middle of the street – though I can’t remember the number of the block . This was around the time George Tremlet from the council was talking about a squatters amnesty but George was really suspicious of Tremlet and the council.
We had one small bedroom and a sitting room and tiny kitchen (with a toilet in it!) Nobody had a bath so we had to fill a tin bath with water from the small dangerous gas water heater. It took hours to fill and was lukewarm when finished! You had to then empty it with the basin into the sink. Another fifteen minutes! We lived there a couple of years and I used to cycle to the National Theatre where I was working at the time. I had an old Austin A35 but Lucy dropped a sugar bowl on it by accident from her upstairs balcony and the windscreen was smashed into bits! There were many shady characters around and one evening I heard a huge racket from the flat above. I was watching Viva Zapata on TV as someone in the movie says ” A weak people need a leader, a strong people are their own leader”. With the din outside I ran up the stairs to get a full wine bottle smashed over my head. The hardest I’d been hit in my life. It didn’t break so the wee shite hit me with it again! It smashed this time! This was 5 guys breaking into the flat above and stealing LP’s and money. The girl who lived there was into drugs and knew these punks so they knew what she had. My dad, knife in hand, Martin and Greg ran from their flats and we chased them up the street but they escaped. I had to go to the hospital which was just around the corner in Whitechapel High Street to get stitches. Being Glaswegian they though I had been in a drunken fight rather than helping a neighbour! We heard later that the local criminals (who we’d disturbed) called us the Glasgow Five (even though there were only 4 of us!) and we never had any trouble again.
Indeed, I met the wee shite in the street one day after and cornered him threatening him with GBH. I told him to bring her LP’s and stuff back or he was getting it. The next day he brought them back!
It was a strange time to live there as the National Front was just emerging and skinheads were around. I’ll never forget chatting to a blind NF supporter who was slagging off the “Paki’s” who were moving into the East End. For all he knew I could have been Pakistani myself! We often went to Brick Lane to buy furniture and bikes etc at low prices and frequented the local kebab shops. We liked the “donkey turds” as we called them with meat in a wrap. you could hear the rats scurry up and down the walls in the take away as you waited. Once the cops arrested me in a local pub and it turned out I was a double of a murderer they were after! I’m sure I saw Ayatollah Khomeini once in a mosque near our street. Don’t know if he did come to London then! I was 20 and met my future wife via my dad’s girlfriend.
We were at a Billy Connolly concert in London and, as I’d just been in The Great Northern Welly Boot show with Connolly at the 1972 Edinburgh Festival (George was the press officer for the production), we called backstage to see him. It was this night when I met Veronica -looking stunning in her Kaftan and shock of red hair! She moved in with me in Fieldgate Mansions not long after. It got a bit heavy I remember in Whitechapel and I went to a concert in Hyde Park when John Peel was doing a set. A huge skin head started hitting everyone around him and challenging all these hippies to fight. Nobody would and he was left shamefaced and embarrassed and slunk away. I’m afraid if I’d been closer to him my instincts wouldn’t have been so hippie-ish!
Veronica and I moved to Brighton and left my family still squatting for a while though they all moved on to other parts of London or the UK.
I once saw a documentary on TV saying Romford Street was the poorest street in Britain at that time and was shocked it could have been. Indeed, nobody had money really, there were many hippies and young drifters then. It was almost like being in a Donovan video!
The kids often tormented the stray cats in the street and I rescued a kitten they were attacking and we called him Charlie. He often had epileptic fits due to the brain damaged he’d received. I vividly remember kids chasing huge rats around and kicking them to death.
So, there were good times and bad. Same as everywhere I guess, but Romford Street and Fieldgate Mansions will always be in my mind. My kids wouldn’t believe that we lived there in such a condition, but c’est la vie!
Hi Dave not sure if you remember me, but it’s great that you kept these photos. I used to live at 94 Romford St, I was at City Poly when we were allocated flats by the student Union as the old, mainly Jewish tennants either passed away or moved on to better things. I used to install electricity for people and help where I could.
I remember trying to save flats from being taken by people and being passed on for ‘Key Money’ by gangs. One night we had blocked ourselves into a flat in Romford St when we were attacked by a group of guys after closing at ‘George the Pole’s who had been paid to get us out, one of us received a broken shoulder from a car jack, but luckily some Rugby club friends returning from the Three Feathers, [student bar in London Hospital] waded in. The police arrived with dogs and guns!
I met lifelong friends in Fieldgate who I am still on contact with. Maybe more people could add personal reminiscences to this valuable social record of the period? The NF marches, police raids, rubbish strike, drug dealers, fights etc, but more than anything the wonderful humanity of the diverse people sharing this experience.
Along with Kirk Green and a few others, I was one of the first in to Fieldgate Mansions blocks. At that time the windows were tinned up and the toilets had concrete poured in them, and no electricity. So the first thing was put the windows back, new toilet and jump the gap left by missing fuses and meters with meter tail wire. Bingo, free electricity fo the duration. No further need to go to George’s pub for a crap, just the beer, and no more pissing against the back wall of the yard. Then moved onto rewiring and doing up, was shown the basics of electrics by a geeky Yorkshireman called Dave and took it from there.
First flat was No 14 on Myrdle St opposite a lovely local family who blared out 70s hits all days, nice associations. Old Jewish couple next door were lovely too, the day after her husband died the old lady knocked on my door and gave me all his excellent wool socks – ‘ I don’t need these no more’. We had the motorbikes outside on the street ready to go, with many scenes of spannering under plastic sheets with an angle poise before a long trip.
Helped others to set up, then when some flats were handed over by GLC to my old Poly student union, (sense at last), I got the job laughingly called Housing Manager, responsible for maintenance and repair and rent collections. Needless to say the first two were the main things, endless leaks from roofs and knackered plumbing plus blocked drains from damage in the war and vast amounts of rubbish being thrown out of back windows. Rubbis was the bane of our lives, the council refused to cooperated with us telling us to fuck off when we asked for something to be done. They thought we were a load of drugged up hippies ( only partly true).
The back yard would often be flooded with six inches of water and shit, you can imagine how that smelt in the hot summer of ‘76. I would get me wellies on and the drain rods out and grope around for the drain covers to have a go.
I may have been the one in the photo on the ridge of the roof, always patching leaks and few others would go up there.
Other busy agenda was endless repairs and strengthening doors from the constant breaking by the local villains nicking stuff from the students, scared them to death poor things.
Craziest thing was when someone came by complaining about water flooding through his .ceiling. I thought hang on this is a first floor flat, what’s this about? No answer at the door so I shinned up the back drainpipe and got in, to find a tap left on, four inches of water all over and an electric fire on in the room. Just as well I wore me wellies.
I was probably in Fieldgate about eight years. Later I moved to number 85 on the same street at the end, a luxury penthouse flat(!) with scenic views towards the City, watching the first tower, the NatWest one, going up. Took ages then. Was with my girl Yvonne then and leaving the anarchic bachelor lifestyle of the earlier years behind we moved to edge of Bristol, wanting more peaceful rural scenes than were available in Whitechapel.
Wonderful days, all those. Taught me everything, self reliance, problem solving having a laugh doing it, wonderful mix of people, sometimes I wish I’d stayed around. Stuns me now looking at the opulence and money round there. Scandal of losing the Bell foundry still hurts.
Steve Raggett.
I lived in Fieldgate Mansions for a while around 1970, unbelievable for me to look at these pics today. My life seems so middle class now by these standards.
Many fond memories of living there as a student and a few tears after. Think that’s me in the picture with Max Levias.