Last 22^nd May, Wednesday, an addition to the blue plaque map in London is unveiled on Polygon Road NW1, Somers Town. The blue plaque honours UK’s 1st female surveyor, Irene Barclay, who worked for 50 years in St Pancras Housing. It was her reports that led to slum clearance and decent homes for people living in squalor. She qualified in 2022 as the first woman to do so.

A crowd of residents and representatives of various local organisations gathered on the rainy morning to celebrate the momentous occasion. Members of Irene’s family were also present, including one of her grandsons, Ben Barclay, who officially welcomed everyone and unveiled the plaque.

Blog: Housing not enough

Article by Diana Foster

Founder – A Space for us People’s Museum Somers Town

2024 is an election year; and, for Somers Town, it also marks the centenary of a remarkable 20th century housing movement: a landmark of social housing: the St Pancras Housing Improvement Society, whose utopian humanist ethos and radical campaigning cleared slums and built modern homes for hundreds of families in one of London’s most deprived communities. 

This week St Pancras Housing pioneer Irene Barclay is commemorated by English Heritage Blue Plaque as the UK’s first female-chartered surveyor. Her reports paved the way for a housing programme at low rents, without breaking up communities. By the end of the 1930s, they had provided over 600 new homes. This innovative group believed ‘Housing is not enough’, and nurtured community; with a priest running a pub; and art in everyday life ceramic figures in courtyards for working class people to enjoy.

Today, Somers Town, bounded by railways and roads, clearly demarcated yet overlooked, is Camden’s most deprived ward. Amidst the wealth of the Knowledge Quarter and tech companies, it is prey to encroaching development, leaving local people feeling pushed out. There is a new 28-storey luxury tower block built on a public park. It is not social housing, nor even affordable, but contains luxury investment flats. The billboards pronounced it Made of King’s Cross, though it sits squarely in Somers Town. It is as if the name Somers Town will disappear. 

This place is at risk of its heritage being forgotten, that we felt an urgency to create A Space for us – a museum – to foster a renewed sense of place, and campaign for local voice and a more equitable, interesting city. For we should take pride in our social housing and communities, not the pseudo-narratives of regeneration. This is an area in which a short walk shows all eras of a social housing of the last 100 years: so extensive is the social housing stock, constructed relentlessly across the entire twentieth century, that the area virtually constitutes an open-air museum of progressive housing ideas. *

One of these: the listed Ossulston LCC estate took inspiration from a radical housing project, Karl Marx Hof, in Vienna.  A quarter of the people who live in Vienna are social tenants still; yet the UK’s urban social housing households have declined from the 1980s when it was 60% to only 17% today.

Camden Council employees walk out daily onto a small tent city of homeless: a stark reminder of a major national housing crisis. We live in an appalling new normality where we accept that people live on streets.

Despite this housing crisis, there’s a notable absence of policies to tackle the crisis from either side of the political spectrum, or to building more social housing: the housing pledges in our MP Keir Starmer’s ‘patriotic’ election missions rely on vagaries of private developers. 

In this election, and centenary year, we reflect on the progressive ideals of that housing movement and raised the housing issues today. Last 7^th of June we held a Panel Discussion, including John Boughton, (Municipal Dreams), and hosted estate walks. Our hope is to designate Somers Town as a conservation area based on its social housing heritage. 

Join us in doing so – commemorate the legacy of a utopian housing project, and a time when decent homes were being planned and built.  Please get in touch with us to find out how.

If it was possible then, why can’t it be possible now?

Last 22^nd May, Wednesday, an addition to the blue plaque map in London is unveiled on Polygon Road NW1, Somers Town. The blue plaque honours UK’s 1st female surveyor, Irene Barclay, who worked for 50 years in St Pancras Housing. It was her reports that led to slum clearance and decent homes for people living in squalor. She qualified in 2022 as the first woman to do so.

A crowd of residents and representatives of various local organisations gathered on the rainy morning to celebrate the momentous occasion. Members of Irene’s family were also present, including one of her grandsons, Ben Barclay, who officially welcomed everyone and unveiled the plaque.

Blog: Housing not enough

Article by Diana Foster

Founder – A Space for us People’s Museum Somers Town

2024 is an election year; and, for Somers Town, it also marks the centenary of a remarkable 20th century housing movement: a landmark of social housing: the St Pancras Housing Improvement Society, whose utopian humanist ethos and radical campaigning cleared slums and built modern homes for hundreds of families in one of London’s most deprived communities. 

This week St Pancras Housing pioneer Irene Barclay is commemorated by English Heritage Blue Plaque as the UK’s first female-chartered surveyor. Her reports paved the way for a housing programme at low rents, without breaking up communities. By the end of the 1930s, they had provided over 600 new homes. This innovative group believed ‘Housing is not enough’, and nurtured community; with a priest running a pub; and art in everyday life ceramic figures in courtyards for working class people to enjoy.

Today, Somers Town, bounded by railways and roads, clearly demarcated yet overlooked, is Camden’s most deprived ward. Amidst the wealth of the Knowledge Quarter and tech companies, it is prey to encroaching development, leaving local people feeling pushed out. There is a new 28-storey luxury tower block built on a public park. It is not social housing, nor even affordable, but contains luxury investment flats. The billboards pronounced it Made of King’s Cross, though it sits squarely in Somers Town. It is as if the name Somers Town will disappear. 

This place is at risk of its heritage being forgotten, that we felt an urgency to create A Space for us – a museum – to foster a renewed sense of place, and campaign for local voice and a more equitable, interesting city. For we should take pride in our social housing and communities, not the pseudo-narratives of regeneration. This is an area in which a short walk shows all eras of a social housing of the last 100 years: so extensive is the social housing stock, constructed relentlessly across the entire twentieth century, that the area virtually constitutes an open-air museum of progressive housing ideas. *

One of these: the listed Ossulston LCC estate took inspiration from a radical housing project, Karl Marx Hof, in Vienna.  A quarter of the people who live in Vienna are social tenants still; yet the UK’s urban social housing households have declined from the 1980s when it was 60% to only 17% today.

Camden Council employees walk out daily onto a small tent city of homeless: a stark reminder of a major national housing crisis. We live in an appalling new normality where we accept that people live on streets.

Despite this housing crisis, there’s a notable absence of policies to tackle the crisis from either side of the political spectrum, or to building more social housing: the housing pledges in our MP Keir Starmer’s ‘patriotic’ election missions rely on vagaries of private developers. 

In this election, and centenary year, we reflect on the progressive ideals of that housing movement and raised the housing issues today. Last 7^th of June we held a Panel Discussion, including John Boughton, (Municipal Dreams), and hosted estate walks. Our hope is to designate Somers Town as a conservation area based on its social housing heritage. 

Join us in doing so – commemorate the legacy of a utopian housing project, and a time when decent homes were being planned and built.  Please get in touch with us to find out how.

If it was possible then, why can’t it be possible now?