When I left Tolmers Village in 1979 I took with me boxes and boxes of archives: files, photographs, colour slides, negatives, posters, diaries, newsletters. I started collecting when, at university on the other side of the Euston Road in 1973, five of us did a project on the Tolmers Square area (report; appendices). Then, between 1973 and 1979 I made my home in three different squatted houses in Tolmers Village: 12 Tolmers Square; a ground floor flat at 189 North Gower Street; 10 Tolmers Square. I continued to collect paper and take photos for most of that time and also borrowed material from others.

From the outset my interest in Tolmers was partly professional. As a trainee architect/planner/urbanist I was interested in how to make cities work better. Tolmers provided a perfect case study of both how to do it and how not to do it and I took it upon myself to chronicle the place, the people and the unfolding urban saga.

I used my Tolmers experience to write a book called ‘The Battle for Tolmers Square’ and, later, to compile a book with a team of squatters from other London squats called ’Squatting, the real story’. When, at the age of 67, I applied to do a PhD by Publication at Brighton University, the Head of the Doctoral College, Neil Ravenscroft, told me that ‘The Battle for Tolmers Square’ had been on his reading list when an undergraduate at Reading. He offered to be my mentor and it proved to be a fascinating exercise tracking the impact of the book and influence of the Tolmers experience.

In theory one collects paper archives, writes a book and then recycles the paper. But in reality its hard to throw stuff away and its never a priority to sort it out. So I carted it all around for decades. The archive moved from loft to loft of the various houses I lived in, got unpacked and packed up again in offices in Limehouse, St Leonards, Cumbria and Hastings. Posters and maps had to be stored in cumbersome plan chests and the colour slides in heavy metal filing cabinets. All this baggage led to relationship and work stresses as I always had to buy or rent oversized premises. It was only possible at all because I also carted around some of the wonderful wooden storage units acquired in Tolmers Square when a government office on the south side moved and dumped over 100 of them for squatters to help themselves to.

These storage units could be used for anything and were perfect for quickly creating order out of chaos in a new squat. They were a much prized feature in many Tolmers homes. They have served me well for over half a century and on one move, having by then amassed archives on other places as well, I commissioned a local carpenter to make some more of them to exactly the same design.

I digress. One day in 2009 out of the blue I had a phone call from Peter Cross, known to Tolmers Villagers as Petal who I had not seen or heard from for years. He was working on an exhibition for a Museum in Berlin and did I have any records from Tolmers Square? If so could he and co-curator, Astrid Proll, come and take a look at them?

Of course, but not quite so easy. I had to rent a transit van and transport the archive from a stone barn in Cumbria where it was stored to my community planning office in the Hastings’ Creative Media Centre where we could unpack and display things. I was not prepared to let any original material leave the office (and certainly not the country) without it being digitised first so after a stroll on the seafront (see photo) Astrid and Peter made a selection of the colour slides and posters and I arranged for them to be digitised and sent over to Berlin on a CD. They also selected some black and white photos from Patrick Allen. (You can see the selection that Peter and Astrid made here. It was the first attempt to use Tolmers photo archives and the selection made for a European audience has been inspirational).

From the outset digitising was done to a high resolution of 35MB per image so that the images can be used for book printing and exhibitions with low resolution versions created for the internet.

The exhibition and subsequent book called ‘Goodbye to London’ was not just about Tolmers but Tolmers featured prominently (more about Goodbye London).

Clearly the archive was of interest, international interest even, and my failure to throw it away was vindicated.

Partly as a way for our daughter Mae to learn graphic design, Caroline Lwin and I helped her produce a print on demand book of colour photos which a Time Out reviewer described as ‘a brilliant series of photos’ (more about books). Growing interest in the Tolmers experience resulted in Routledge deciding to reissue ‘The Battle for Tolmers Square’ in 2012; there was more interest in the book during that decade than in any previous one.

Further proof of ongoing interest in the Tolmers experience came in 2018 when the East End Preservation Society organised a conversation between local campaigners and Tolmers veterans in a packed cafe in Shoreditch:

Just before this, on 6 April 2017, an after dinner discussion with some Tolmers friends at Patrick Allen’s home in Camden Town resulted in Patrick deciding to pay for the digitisation of the rest of the archive. This was a breakthrough. With over 4,000 images alone it was essential to digitise the archive if it was to be of any future use whatsoever. Nobody was ever going to have the time or technology to pore through 35mm colour slides and negatives. Without Patrick’s patronage at this point it is almost certain that the whole archive would have ended up in a skip at my death if not before.

Patrick then decided in 2019 to sponsor a website to preserve the Tolmers story. This started with displaying my archive as well as his own extensive collection of photographs, but soon expanded to include material from others as well. This is proving to be a fascinating project. Putting up a load of photos on the internet is one thing. Enabling people to find anything useful or interesting is quite another. This website has been custom built to enable people to find photos of themselves, their friends, their homes and events they took part in as well as collections of images on a range of themes.

Using the archives we have recreated in digital form a stageset, a cast of actors and a drama which still has relevance today.

The great thing about photographs is that it is hard for them to lie. We have used Photoshop to tidy up a few scratches and dust specks but otherwise the images are just as taken. One can argue about interpretation, even a date, but what you see is what was. Press cuttings and newsletters are similar. What was written at the time may not have been accurate but that is exactly what was published.

Tolmers Square will never be as famous as the mythical East Enders’ Albert Square but there are some surprising similarities – and it was real. It actually happened.

Read more about the author Nick Wates