Dome on the community garden in Drummond Street

Continuing the dome heritage trail… here is the final resting place of Dome I; the community garden at 100 Drummond Street. And the story goes… this was put together by students for the University College London (UCL) Futures conference, with donated cardboard from Reed plc, which I cut into triangles in the UCL basement. UCL then decided it had to move ASAP !! – by chance the Tolmers Square carnival was the next day, so me and (very temporary) girlfriend Suzy Creamcheese could round up a team of trusty squatters to walk the dome in one piece across Euston Road. At the carnival it did good service for the hippies and was officially signed off by Professor Reyner Banham (see photo 5102 with daughter Debby). After that it needed a stable home so again a trusty team walked it down Drummond Street – there ensued a 3-day party with musicians, artists, poets, visionaries of all kinds finding new psychedelic dimensions in non-rectangular space (if anyone has photos of the inside would love to see them!) And then... word began to get around with the dossers, drifters, alcoholics, ex-cons, people on the run getting off at Euston… they began turning up in larger numbers demanding a place to stay. The door was only cardboard (covered with Om signs) so it was not easy to draw lines on squatters rights … some fisticuffs ensued in which I broke my arm (not like in the movies) … so later on I found myself down the road in A&E… The same night there was a massive thunderstorm – the wind completely blew off the polythene cover which I had carefully welded in a dome shape… and without that the cardboard panels rapidly turned into a huge soggy pile of compost covering my scattered belongings, ready for the morning. And the moral of the tale is...??? (but if i retired i could write all this down!!). Joe Ravetz, Facebook, 2024.

• Photographer
  Paul Nicholson
• Media
  Photograph
• Year
  1975
• Collection
  Community gardenCarnival 1975
• Address
  90-100 Drummond Street
• People
  Joe RavetzSuzy Creamcheese