Upcoming Events

The Golden Age of Camden Housing

This illustrated talk looks at council housing designed in the 1960s and 70s by an exceptionally talented group of young architects recruited by Camden’s first Borough Architect, Sydney Cook. Foremost was Neave Brown, but the others included here are Ken Adie, Gordon Benson and Alan Forsyth, Bill Forrest and Oscar Palacio, Peter Tábori, and Dan Usiskin. They resisted the enormous pressure to build tower blocks and use industrialised building techniques. Instead, they created modern versions of the traditional street, not estates cut off from the world around. With their light-filled and exciting interiors these belong to a brief golden age when Camden’s architects believed that nothing was too good for council housing.

Fabian Watkinson has lived on the Whittington Estate for over twenty-five years. He regularly welcomes visitors for London Open House and has led walks on Camden’s housing for architectural students and the Twentieth Century Society. A musician by profession, he studied composition with Alexander Goehr at Leeds University and with Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire.

Illustrated Talk on The Huntingfield Paintress

Pamela Holmes will talk about the research she did before writing the novel, The Huntingfield Paintress. Her illustrated talk will consider the life of Mildred Holland. Every day for six years, this Victorian vicar’s wife climbed up rickety ladders to lie on her back painting angels and saints in gold leaf and bright colours on the ceiling of her husband’s church. A Michelangelo in skirts. But what drove her up the ladder?