York Rise History

The Beginning:

:: York Rise, front entrance, circa 1940 ::

Our little community of flats in York Rise is a bit of an anomaly within the Dartmouth Park area.  Mostly this area leans towards being 'a bit posh', with the leader of the Labour party living round the corner and property prices spiralling upwards towards the silly money mark. In the 1930s, the small triangle of land where the flats now stand was leased to the St Pancras Housing Improvement Society for the purpose of building social housing flats.  Previously this had been a field and, long before that, an orchard, if ancient maps are true. This has been a bonus for our current gardening as the land has never been poisoned by industrial use, a rare thing in London today. In a bygone age, the River Fleet (from which Fleet Street gets its name) pooled at what is now the entrance to the flats, having started its journey towards the Thames from the nearby Heath. At the time the flats were built, there was a road and a small parade of shops opposite which included a garage, a hardware shop and a grocers with a side window that sold Italian ice-cream to the children. (These have now all gone, replaced by flats and houses.)

The first tenants at York Rise, in 1938, were families who had previously been housed at the rear of Euston station. The land was needed to extend the station and the railway company was obliged, by law, to rehouse their workers. The company owned land in Dartmouth Park which they leased to the Housing Association and paid for the flats to be designed and built.  Families who moved here couldn't believe their luck, moving from overcrowded unsanitary tenements to new, clean flats near to Hampstead Heath, with gardens and space for their children to safely play outdoors. The flats had other amenities: a built in kitchen with larder, a range (fire/stove) in the living room, a balcony to sit out in the sunshine, a wooden airer over the bath, a copper in the kitchen for heating water - even the drying lines outside, innovative in itself, were topped with ceramic finials created by Gilbert Bayes, Royal Doulton's ceramic genius, some of whose work is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. 

The granddaughter of one of the original families has contacted me through this blog and wrote, "I'm sure uncle Fred was proud of his little patch and wanted other people to like it too, I think that was the prevailing attitude of the place. I know they all thought they'd won the lottery when they moved there, a long way to move in London terms but at least all your neighbours came too and you got your own front door and indoor loos and proper bathrooms for the first time. I can imagine them all arriving en masse raised some eyebrows among the locals too."  Just think, a journey that now takes 10 minutes by car was considered in 1938 to be moving a long way off your patch - in fact, people used to come up here from 'London' for their holidays a hundred years ago!

1939 Balcony garden

The flats were gated at both entrances creating a little community enclave.  An on-site caretaker kept an eye on everything (and everyone) and every flat had a balcony window box for growing flowers. In between the blocks, gardens were built and the railwaymen's families quickly developed a love of gardening in their spare time. I've been told that during and after the war, when rationing was in force, gardening skills were put to good use growing vegetables. The first ever female chartered surveyor, Irene Barclay, was involved with the housing association and York Rise flats from the start; it was her influence that safeguarded these outside spaces during the build.

Years later, she wrote about her work with the St Pancras Housing Improvement Society (as our landlords were then known) in her book ‘People Need Roots’ (1976):  'the finest achievements are at York Rise, where we had much more space for both communal and private gardens, and for children’s gardens, where the kiddies learnt not to kill worms, and how to wait for seeds to germinate.'

One of our neighbours who has lived here all his life, remembers winning the annual gardening competition aged 8 in 1954 - although he confesses it was with the slight help of an older boy!

:: The children's garden in the early 1960s  :: 

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The Middle:

Between 1960 and 1980 there was a children's gardening club run by a lovely Irish lady, Dolly Slee, a tenant whose children had grown up and left home. What happened to the gardens after that, I don't know. By 1990, however, the fence had been removed from the children's garden and a low wall built around it, the annual gardening competition had been abandoned and the garden was filled with small shrub roses. A decade later, cotoneaster sprawled across the garden, ivy choked the walled borders, and shrubs went unpruned.  Honeysuckle grew unchecked over everything.  The old paving was removed as part of the maintenance programme in 2003 and, in laying new slabs, large chunks of the grassed areas were lost.  Trees growing at an angle were deemed unsafe, removed and not replaced.  Gradually, the lost gardens of York Rise settled into a state of neglect.

:: Before we started: Ivy, cotoneaster, shrub roses ::

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Recent Past and Present:

In 2009, a small group of us were asked whether we'd like to apply for Capital Growth funding in order to grow vegetables. Yes, we'd be up for that. We were given permission to use the borders and central bed of the neglected gardens, with all the work that entailed, and were awarded half the grant we'd applied for - just enough to get started.

:: April 2009, Time Bankers dig out the old shrubs ::

As with all community ventures, the numbers involved fluctuate. About 8 of us attended the initial meeting; then we had help from the Time Bank for clearing the central bed, and our numbers doubled when the first garden had to be dug over and the raised beds built. As the compost filled the beds, it was hot, it was the summer holidays; numbers dwindled. A few first seeds were sewn, even though it was August. Help needed for watering in the evenings caused numbers to dwindle further.  By the time we had to clear ivy and shrubs out of the long walled border, we were down to 2: me and Leigh. On an exceptionally cold day in November 2009, a neighbour turned out to help us plant the fruit trees.  The following Spring, as the garden came to life again, more people stopped to ask what we were growing and why. Children came out to question and taste. They wanted to help, especially if it involved watering! In the summer of our second year (2010), people stopped to say how wonderful it looked now that the gardens were being used again.  There was lots of support, usually emotional rather than physical but, sometimes, that's a start.

Clearing radishes!

This year, different neighbours have helped: slowly the numbers are rising again and the children have proudly told me of the veg they're growing on their family balconies. More funds have been found to create a children's garden (next year) where they can learn to grow food and we have been promised an outside tap which is due in the Autumn (2011). (In the meantime, Leigh still lowers a hosepipe out of her third floor flat which I connect up to another pair of hoses at ground level.) The central bed is stuffed full of produce and the borders are beginning to fill up with winter veg. More fruit trees are planned to replace the lost trees of the original garden layout and there's still another long border to clear ...

The project has not been without its difficulties and set backs;  we're right next to a railway line which means visits from fox cubs who want to play, usually with the worms in my newly planted beds!  A thief arrived in the night to steal off with our chicken wire that was being used around the beds to protect the veg; in the first year, many non-growers helped themselves, completing denuding the beds of growing veg; loitering night people leave rubbish strewn among the veg and wind funnelling between the blocks blew down my beans last year.  Despite all this, I persevere and perhaps next year more people will be encouraged to use the window boxes on their balconies;  we may just have started something!

:: June 2009, community digging day ::

:: July 2009, first raised beds are built ::

:: Showing the children how to sow seeds ::

:: "Hmm, what's this then?" ::

:: August 2009, the last root comes out (reluctantly) ::

:: October 2009 - first produce growing ::

:: Clearing ivy in walled border, November 2009 ::

:: Veg Patch, June 2010 ::

:: Veg Patch, July 2011. Northern end ::

:: Veg Patch July 2011. South view, fruit trees ::

For those who have made it through to the end of our story, I hope you've found this interesting!  The lessons learned are that gardening is a great way of getting a group of people together, chatting and sharing interests and knowledge; and, secondly, that perseverance will eventually pay off.  There have been days when it's been a struggle to keep going, especially with so many calls on my time, but if just one person says what a joy it is to look out onto the results of our hard work, or how delicious the harvest is, then it's worth it.

Any questions? I'm happy to help if I can.
Caro x