The Battle Of Tolmers Square
On Monday 5th February at 7:30pm, veteran housing activist Nick Wates will be giving a talk at Leila’s Cafe introduced by Will Palin and hosted by the EAST END PRESERVATION SOCIETY, about his seminal experiences in Camden in the seventies, occupying Tolmers Sq after the council attempted to evict local residents and sell the land off to property developers. Nick will reflect upon the lessons of Tolmers Sq and their relevance for campaigns today.
Click here to book your free ticket
“The Tolmers Sq campaign dominated my life for six years. I was obsessed by it, I lived and breathed it. I spent hours in smoke-filled meetings. I paced the streets and talked to people. I wrote thousands of words and did frequent all-nighters preparing artwork for printers. Then I repeated the process in Limehouse before escaping Inner London to bring up my two children on the South Coast and experiment with community planning.
Yet neighbourhoods all over the country are still facing the destructive power of property speculators and mismanagement by local and central government. The housing crisis is worse than it was then. And community activists are still burning themselves out trying to make the world a better place and create sustainable urban neighbourhoods.
I am looking forward to sharing my memories of our campaign to save Tolmers Sq and revealing some of the tools of our trade as activists at the time, as evidence that it was not all merely a dream.” – Nick Wates
Tolmers Square campaign timeline
1957
Tolmers Sq Tenant Association (TSTA) formed.
1959
Developers submit planning application for a twenty-two-storey office tower on the south side of Tolmers Sq and TSTA launch anti-office campaign.
1960
London County Council (LCC) rejects planning application for office development and starts preparing plans for a comprehensive housing development.
1962
Stock Conversion, a property company headed by Joe Levy, starts buying land in the Tolmers area. TSTA campaign for tenants displaced by the nearby Euston Centre development.
1963
LCC starts trying to demolish ‘unfit’ houses in the area.
1965
Reorganisation of London government. LCC replaced by the Greater London Council (GLC), and the Borough of St Pancras amalgamated into Camden. Central Government refuses to give Camden permission to buy land or to build offices.
1966
Camden Council starts negotiations with Stock Conversion to purchase land in the area and provide support for office development.
1967
Camden Council continues to demolish ‘unfit’ housing.
1968
Camden Council submits Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) for a small area of housing.
1970
Central Government rejects CPO. Camden Council starts negotiations with Stock Conversion for the whole Tolmers area.
1971
The beginning of opposition from some Labour councillors to a deal involving office development.
1973
The issue starts receiving considerable publicity. Squatters start moving into empty property. Camden Council approves the ‘Levy Deal’. Students from University College London survey the area. Claudius Offer (masterminded by Christopher Booker & Bennie Gray) presented to Camden Council. It still involves building offices but the profits would go to the Council. Tolmers Village Association (TVA) formed. Stop the Levy Deal campaign launched.
Camden Council reject the Levy Deal. House collapses in Hampstead Rd.
1974
General Election. TVA holds exhibition to involve local people in the area’s future. Camden makes CPO on a few buildings. TVA publishes Tolmers Destroyed pamphlet, occupies derelict land and holds first summer carnival. Stock Conversion discloses new plans to develop without the Council. Camden submit a CPO for all of Stock Conversion’s property. General Election.
1975
Squatters summonsed by Stock Conversion. Squatters’ anti-eviction campaign. Locally made film Tolmers: Beginning or end? shown on BBC2. Camden Council buys all of Stock Conversion’s property in the area. Camden Council applies for an Office Development Permit for 300,000 square feet.
1976
Camden Council approves new scheme, a mix of rehabilitation and new build, housing and offices. Publication of The Battle for Tolmers Square by Routledge.
1977
Temporary landscaping of Tolmers Sq
1978
Last Tolmers carnival
1979
Squatters evicted by Camden.
1982
Camden organise ceremony to mark the ‘completion’ of the Tolmers Sq development.
2010
Tolmers photos and posters included in the Goodbye London exhibition in Berlin.
2011
Tolmers in Colour published.
2018
Plans for HS2 show Euston Station expanding into the Tolmers area.
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Photographs copyright © Nick Wates
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I remember the cinema in Tolmers Square, the cheapest in London, a proud flea pit. You could rely on the film jamming and burning in the projector.
A timely program given what’s happening to London. The story of Tolmers Sq. and its buildings and peoples’ resistance reminds me of the similar architecture of North Kensington’s estates/housing types by Portobello Road with its carnival (an area nearer to where I grew up). But Euston is dear to me too – I went looking round UCL and the top end of Gower St a year or so ago and felt completely dwarfed by a new layer of corporate development and infrastructure.
For more photos and words about the seminal Battle of Tolmers Square I can recommend ‘Goodbye to London’, edited by Astrid Proll and published by Hatje Cantz in 2010. Subtitled ‘Radical Art & Politics in the 70s’, this fascinating book also includes a chapter on the Grunwick dispute, with photos by Homer Sykes.
…and yet the redevelopment of Tolmers still swept away all the existing beautiful houses and replaced them with a depressing estate of brown brick boxes and a glass carbuncle.
This will repeat and repeat and repeat until governments and local councils – and especially the Mayor of London – work together to stop the rape of London by voracious developers, many of whom are overseas.
Interesting to see the name ‘SUGGS’ painted on the wall. Now i wonder…?
Tolmers Sq now:
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5259558,-0.1372118,3a,75y,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sOd19R1BNm9WGgJoQ_8rOTA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en
and
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5259921,-0.1376854,3a,75y,270h,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sW4d1XIHnFh-aMvc-7GHUuA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en
I hate to say it, but I’ve seen a lot worse.
( I thought the name was familiar – it’s right behind Drummond Street, of course )
I’m glad somebody else mentions the old cinema – yes it was affectionately referred to as a fleapit, but I know of nobody who was actually bitten, except by the low seat prices, ideal for the students of UCL across Euston Road. My college days ended before the real battle began, but all tribute to those who fought it, and to Nick Wates for not letting it be forgotten. Still many lessons to be learned
I was born and bred in Tolmers Square number 15. My Italian grandfather bought it as he had his antique restoring business in Seaton Market opposite. We lived there with my mum and Norwegian father and brother (who hung out at the 2 i’s in Soho and began playing guitar in bands – Lord Sutch and the Savages, Ritchie Blackmore and Jimmy Page and Keith Moon were among many that came and slept on our floors) my Italian grandparents, my mum’s sister and her Polish husband and my cousin. Also rooms were let out! It was cosmopolitan and I went to school at the convent behind Euston Station where my mum aunt and cousin had been too. This was our village. The house was compulsory purchased and the money went to my aunt leaving my mum and dad in the basement as council tenants. This private house then became cut up and rented out to strange characters it was the most horrid time of our lives. I had left my then and married with children. The squatters moved in and our life was even more turbulent…..it was terrible. We were one of the last properties left. My parent moved to Belsize Park and the day we helped them move my father was exceedingly ill having lived there for so many years and the workmen were coming in and smashing the house up so squatters could not take it over. So we fast forward now all these yeas and bland council properties were built in its place and now a lot of those have been bought by the tenants and are very expensive. So what was the point of it all. Those houses were characterful- the cinema once a church was a den of inequity – I only went once when I was 8 with a lady from the square who was terribly old and we called her the Belgian lady and unfortunately some horrid man sat next to me and acted inappropriately and I was too shy to do anything about it…so never went back again. The memories of the square are immense as a child I sat at the ground floor window of my Nonna’s lounge and watched the men betting (before betting shops) one rode around on a bike and yelled when a copper came and they dispersed immediately. The prostitutes loved the alcoves of the cinema and mum had to sweep up unsavoury items in the basement aerie. the horse and carts that delivered the coal down the coal shute to the bunker under the pavement, the rag and bone man, the knife sharpener man all with their horses in their nose bags. Then along came the victoria line and all the digging and inspections before they built it and you could hear the tube under the basement lounge floor. The square used to be cobbled – then it was tarred and parking meters put in much to the horror of my poor dad trying to park after work. I would have loved to have come to the meeting but did not know about it in time. Camden Council really messed up our lives and even though you were in a squat there the squatters scared us rigid.
Do you have and pictures of Tolmers Square and Seaton Market, what it would look like, when people lived there in the 1950 -1960
I lived at 9 Seaton Place (Seaton Market) we had an upper floor, that was above the Poultry Shop , run by The Nice’s, and on the otherwise of our front door was a grocery shop, tinned food and broken biscuits, infont on the street was a fresh fish monger, that sold live eels.
I was born in UCH, and from birth till 11years of age this was my home, I had the best child hood ever, Cypriot Mum and English Dad, Jacko skates, played in the bomb ruin and sneaked into the Zoo, I new all the back alleys, went to Netley Street School, and loved life as I still do.
1950-1961. I remember many times going to the Tolmer Square Cinema [Fleapit ]with my Mum and Dad !
My husband and I spent several months in London in the summer of 1971. One of our fondest memories is going to the Tolmer Cinema and watching a Sherlock Holmes movie called The Seven-Per-Solution”.
Does anyone remember the last night at Tolmers Square, the night before the bulldozers arrived? There was a Farewell Tolmers Square street party going on with one band playing, Silly Boy Lemon. I played guitar (rather awfully as I recall), with Silly Boy that night. I wonder if anyone took any photos. I remember seeing a photographer walking about and someone told me much later that there had been a book published with photos of that night including the band. My interest in the photographs is solely sentimental, and certainly not commercial. I have hunted high and low but no luck. Any leads or clues would be appreciated.
I am one of the original squatters of Tolmers Square. I lived with Jamie Gough, Corrine Pearlman, Sacha Craddock, and Patrick Allen – at number 12, I think. I now live in Canada, after leaving England in disgust during the Thatcher years. I recently made contact with my former housemates but would love to contact Nick Wates and Patrick again.
Viva la Revolucion!
Rod
Fantastic to see in these photos Alex & Chiara at their ‘free shop’ on No. Gower – and with a baby! When I left on the overland to India trip in 1978 with Bristol Dave the painter (and Al the flutist, who had to fly there to avoid Turkish conscription), I am pretty sure they didn’t have a baby yet but by then a full-blown bulk wholefoods shop had taken over a big space off the main Hampstead Rd entrance, complementing their stock of Covent Garden offloads.
And the Pakistani grocers on Euston St…. next door there were huge flaky samosas (spiked with green chilies), and a smokey No. Indian thali place across the street. OMG, the roots of my vindaloo inspiration!
Well, good on you for remembering. At least it is still housing, and still called Tolmers. Some stories I could share …. totally epic. Long live absence of rent and the joy of community, in every way shape and form!
What a beautifully, sad article. It reminds me of the closure of Covent Garden market. I think it closed in 1972. (I was 1). I live in Covent Garden & i’m so bloody glad the GLC didn’t win. They wanted to flatten the market & surrounding areas. I love Maiden Lane. They wanted to turn it into an awful, modern through rd. They wanted to build characterless 70’s office blocks onnthe market. I’m so grateful the Covent Garden Community Association was born! Loads of local residents got together & people power beat the greedy, tasteless GLC.
To Inger Morris,
I have been searching my family history and have a lot of family that were born and raised in Tolmer Sq and St Giles and St Pancras. I am reaching out to you, hopefully, as you may be able to clarify something for me. You mention some Norwegians in your family. My mother’s grandfather was from that country and was there at the time. Is there any way would could cross reference your family with mine?