Nine in a bed?
by Moyra Ashford
Alex Smith writes that nine of us slept in the same bed. Was it really that many? It wasn’t as cramped as he implies – the bed was several mattresses laid together in the top front room. Numbers varied nightly as people made the adjoining houses habitable.
Wait until the head teacher sees this
by Oscar Gregan
I skimmed though the paper looking for the photo. I could not find it! I was just about to return the paper when I noticed the front page.
Pathways to the future
by Joe Ravetz
Tolmers was a fantastic experimental zone - a unique vision and orientation, which helped me and many others to make sense and move forward;
Afterlife
by Alison Ravetz
It's wonderful to know that all that work and struggle are not relegated to a museum of good ideas, but are still being carried forward.
Squatting law expert
by David Watkinson
“My learned friend has a whole army of people to assist him, while I have only my solicitor and a clerk”.
Academic leg up
by Tim Wilson
I changed from being a straightforward academic and amateur lefty to being someone who believed that the skills I had could be put at the service of urban communities.
Turning point
by Suzy Nelson
It was a turning point in my life. I was wanting to find an alternative way of living and engaging in community politics.
Double first
by Dave Taylor
Tolmers was life changing in fundamental ways, it took me into a whole different cultural milieu which was exciting, challenging and fun.
Israeli outpost
by Atalia ten Brink
Barry rang and told me he was moving into a squat in Tolmers Square. In Euston, walking distance from the Central. Would I like to join him?
Traveller’s tale
by Rod Smith
Instead I went on a ‘teaching English as a foreign language ‘ course so I could travel the world.
Escape from America
by Meg Rosoff
I couldn’t believe my luck and spent the rest of that year in a kind of happy daze. All those amazing people.
Rebirth through fire
by Alex Smith
I liked the dynamics of Tolmers Square. I was now on the South side where we were eccentric and unconventional, a bit wacky.
Ahead of the game
by Orlando Gough
I am twenty-one and I’ve lived a privileged, you could say molly-coddled middle-class life. I have been to London before but I’ve never lived there. And here I am, right in the thick of it,...
Bourgeois squatting
by Corinne Pearlman
It seemed like the right way to live. It felt very comfortable for me, living with a lot of people. I’ve got various lives in different places, but that communal life is really important.
Tolmers picaresque
by Oli Arditi
Tolmers Village was a great place to be a kid—sometimes a dangerous place, for members of the small gang I ran with, and for the adults we occasionally terrorised.
From Lisbon to Tolmers
by Pedro George
Tolmers made me realise that people are important in planning, you have to involve communities in decisions. If you fight a good fight, collectively, people can change their environment.
The best thing I ever did
by Douglas Smith
Number 12 was damp and stank of cats, the ground floor window was bricked up and there was water but no plumbing.
Curating the archives
by Nick Wates
Its hard to throw stuff away and its never a priority to sort it out. So I carted it all around for decades.
Singsongs, meals and Marxism
by Jamie Gough
He said “those two houses are still empty, nobody has squatted them, why don’t you come and live there?” I can still remember that moment.
Tolmers united
by Sacha Craddock
The pleasure of living freely in a world within a world was palpable. The seventies seemed to be very much about differences, collecting together, allowing, encouraging, and tolerating.
No shame
by Tim Davies
A squat. I didn’t even know what that meant. I had to look it up – in the days before Google. Encyclopaedia Brittanica in those days.
Second-hand geyser does the job
by Colin Ferguson
I learned a lot of DIY skills. It was amazing to find out you could do it.
The Christmas banquet 1975
by Patrick Allen
The turkeys cooked all afternoon in the four separate houses and were then carried across to Drummond Street with potatoes and gravy.
The legal battle
by Patrick Allen
Outside the court there was relief and jubilation for the squatters but consternation for the property company and their lawyers.
Ringside seat
by Patrick Allen
The flat had a panoramic view over the square so you could see the comings and goings of everyone and the balcony was big enough to sit out on.
Those were the days
by Michael Fitzpatrick
We enjoyed the flourishing social scene centred in Tolmers Square, where a derelict bank was the scene of orgiastic gigs and periodic carnivalesque celebrations.
Georgian house in central London
by Patrick Allen
I had only been living in Tolmers for 9 months but in that short time had created a home, become part of a thriving community and found more than a dozen new friends.
Squatting under the bridge
by Andrew Milburn
I chose London because … well, London. I had grown up in a coal-mining town “up north” and wanted to go to the big smoke, where the ground-breaking stuff was happening.
Room at the top
by Paul Nicholson
All the lonely people Where do they all come from? All the lonely people Where do they all belong?