I’m standing on the balcony on the top floor of Ladlands, one of the two blocks that make up the Dawson's Heights estate in East Dulwich, Southwark.
It’s a warm summer’s afternoon and the view over London is spectacular, stretching from Battersea to the left, all the way to O2 arena and the docklands to the right. Behind me is a row of royal-blue front doors, running along the open balcony like a street. At this height, the fresh air whipping around my face is a world away from the stuffy congestion at ground level. I’m accompanied by my friend Pablo and three 11 year old boys who we’ve just met, Orien, Neo and Joe Joe, who all live on the estate. Pablo remarks that from this vantage point it feels as if you’re looking down at the rest of the city. “Sometimes I feel like I should be wearing a crown when I’m up here!” declares Orien proudly, clutching his favourite ‘unbreakable’ stick as if it’s a scepter.
Officially ‘Dawson’ Heights but known as Dawson’s Heights by virtually everyone, the building of the estate was completed in 1972 at the tail end of the social housing construction boom which revolutionised London’s skyline.
As a child, my family lived on Hillcourt Road in East Dulwich, just at the foot of Donkey Alley, a muddy track that leads up to the estate. As a teenager, me and my friends would walk up to Dawson’s Hill on bonfire night to watch the fireworks - occasionally sneaking into the building to take in the view from the top floor. After my parents got divorced they moved into two separate houses - my dad to Peckham Rye and my mum to different house in East Dulwich. Now, from outside both of my parent’s front doors you can see the highest point of the estate peeping out above the tree line. I guess you could say I’ve lived in the shadow of Dawson's Heights all my life. This is not unusual, though, pretty much every neighbourhood in London has a high-rise estate built by the council somewhere close by, so the chances of living in, or near one are high. Although Britain had been providing council housing since the 1920s, these postwar ‘streets in the sky’ were seen to be ushering in a brave new world, one where working-class families would no longer live in squalid, privately rented accommodation but would instead rent contemporary flats with indoor plumbing from the council.
Tim first moved to the estate in 1971, aged six. His family of five were the fifth to move onto the estate, having previously lived in a house in Nunhead where they had all shared one room. Even though it was some 25 years since the end of World War II, Tim remembers empty spaces between houses on the street where the bombs had hit. “We had no inside bathroom, just a tin bath and a toilet outside,” he says. When the terraced houses they lived in were scheduled for demolition, Tim and his family were relocated to a brand new three bedroom flat in Dawson's Heights. “Suddenly we had all this space, me and my brother could just open the front door and run onto the grass. It was amazing.” Although he was quite young at the time, Tim has strong memories of the how the block felt while they were waiting for the new tenants to move in. “There was no one to play with yet, the play area was still a muddy building site.” Like many other estates at the time, Dawson's Heights was constructed out of concrete, and Tim still vividly remembers the smell of the new building. “To this day when I go up a new concrete staircase, that smell takes me straight back to my childhood."
“back then council housing was just part of working class culture."
Despite the idealistic beginnings of the social housing project, throughout the 20th century, housing estates became stereotyped as areas where poverty and crime flourished. At my girls’ comprehensive school, ‘chav’ was the term used by everyone to describe white girls with tight ponytails and hard attitudes who dropped out of school at 16 to have babies. In my school it wasn’t as much a pejorative term as a descriptive one, but in the adult media ‘chavs’ were mocked mercilessly. “Chav-bashing draws on a long, ignoble tradition of class hatred,” says Owen Jones in his book Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class. “Above all, it is the bastard child of a very British class war.” The fact that the epithet is said to stand for ‘council house and violent’ demonstrates just how embedded prejudices against council house living were in the 21st century.
“Council housing has a reputation these day,” says Tim. “But back then it was just part of working class culture. My parents both worked, they had good jobs, but they still just wouldn't dream about being able to buy a property.” When Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister in 1979, a third of the population lived in council housing. Two years after Thatcher was elected, and just eight years after Dawson's Heights was completed, a landmark policy called Right to Buy was introduced. Considered to be one of the most popular Conservative party policies of all time, it’s estimated that one in three tenants purchased their homes using the policy. The Conservative party were ideologically against any reliance on the state, and the then environment secretary, Michael Heseltine argued that allowing council tenants to buy their homes would enable “parents to accrue wealth for their children” and encourage “the attitudes of independence and self-reliance that are the bedrock of a free society." One of the results of this policy is that today most council-built blocks are made up of a mixture of privately owned flats and those rented out by the council or a housing association. “This means that you get the situation where the exact same flats are next door to each other, but one will be rented out for three times the price of the other” says Anna Minton, a lecturer in architecture at the University of East London. Last year, one of the first ever Right to Buy houses was sold at 34 times its original value after being purchased in 1980 for the grand sum of £8,315 and a £5 deposit.
In her book Estates, journalist Lynsey Hanley draws on her own experience growing up on an estate in Birmingham to argue that rather than improving the life of working class people, the Right to Buy intensified social divide and created ‘slums in the sky’. “[The policy] had a political motivation: to sever the poorest from society,” writes Hanley. “Privatisation would benefit millions of council tenants, but at the time-honoured expense of those who were left behind.” Hence the birth of the chav, and a return to conditions not much better than those seen in postwar slums. Research on housing estates has found that as well as having higher levels of poverty, living on an estate increases your chance of poor health - even premature death. In 1998, Tony Blair described estate residents as the ‘forgotten people’ of society, as his new-Labour government set out plans to demolish and regenerate many run-down blocks.
David moved into his flat in Ladlands, the north facing building of Dawson's Heights, 15 years ago. “I’d never lived on an estate before in my life,” he says. “Before this I was renting a council flat in Waterloo.” When David split from the mother of his children, they decided it would be best if she live in central London with their kids, whilst he moved into her flat in Dawson's Heights. “I thought it was best if the children were brought up on Stamford Street rather than an estate,” he says. “Not that there’s anything wrong with growing up on an estate, but if you have the chance not to, then you choose that.” A few years after exercising his Right to Buy, David knocked down the wall between the kitchen and the living room without planning permission. He was forced to pay a penalty fee by Southern Housing. “But it was worth it,” he says. “I have the best flat in the building. It’s spectacular.”
Leaseholders are the minority at Dawson’s Heights, with only 49 out of 298 flats privately owned. For David, this has created an ‘us and them’ attitude, as he sees tenants to blame for the vandalism the estate experiences. “At the end of the day, there’s some people that are in social housing but they say you know what, I’ve got the opportunity to own a property and I’m going to take it,” he says. “Then, if you look after it and have the mortgage for long enough the price of your property will go up. Other people don’t think like that, they don’t care about where they live - they disrespect the place. Some people even pee in the hallways and I just think why don’t you pee in your own house?”
Mainly as a result of this same policy which has given so many people security, getting a decent place to live either through a housing association or the council today can be an arduous and hopeless process, with some London boroughs having a 50 year waiting list for a council home. “Back in the day you could just go to the council on a Monday get a flat on a Friday,” says David. “But there’s no social housing any more.”
Today, Britain’s lack of affordable housing is never far from the political agenda. In her book Big Capital, Anna Minton argues that the housing crisis is not an issue of supply and demand, rather that it is linked to global capital flows. “In the UK housing is now, first and foremost, a financial asset, a safety deposit box for the super-rich and a cash cow for growing numbers of Russian, Middle Eastern, Asian, Chinese and some British investors,” she says. In April 2017, Vice reported that a new development of flats on the site of the now-demolished Aylesbury estate in Elephant and Castle had all been sold to overseas investors looking to cash in on London’s property market, before the flats had even been available on the UK market. “[The developers] don't even seek to hide the fact they are selling investment opportunities, not homes” says the article. “They list exactly how much rental income – around £25,000 a year for the cheapest – foreign investors can cream off without ever touching the front door.”
"The Right to Buy is one of the single biggest factors behind the housing crisis."
With home ownership a distant dream for many working class and, increasingly, squeezed middle class first time buyers in London, the alternative is renting from a private landlord. According to Shelter, one third of these privately rented homes fail to meet the Decent Homes Standard. In the introduction to Big Capital, Minton references a post on social media by a woman named Jan. Aged forty-six, married and with two children, Jan earns nearly £40,000 a year. Her husband also works full time, yet the family have no security. “About to move knowing that we will be moving again in the new year,” the post says. “I have cleaned and painted the new flat and it’s still a dump with damp patches and a moth eaten carpet throughout.”
The role that the Right to Buy has had in this is, according to Anna Minton, is not to be underplayed. “It is the single biggest issue in regard to housing policy” she explains. One of the reasons for this, she says, is not because council tenants were allowed to buy their homes per se, but that councils were banned from using the money to build more. "It took out more than two million houses from the social housing stock and they’ve never been put back. That’s one of the single biggest factors behind the housing crisis.” The unacknowledged link between the denigration of council housing and the housing crisis, she says, is that this shift doesn’t just affect those in difficult financial circumstances; it affects everyone. “Housing, and the different layers of society it affects, is seen as a set of different issues, when it is in fact one issue” she writes in Big Capital. “What happens at the top affects the middle and the bottom, and vice versa, with the influx of wealth from the top displacing communities all across the city.”
As far as council estates go, I guess you could say that Dawson's Heights is atypical.
Clad in warm sand coloured brick, the two buildings that make up the estate avoided the monolithic impression of other housing estates from the same era made from prefabricated concrete. Split over two or three levels, a jigsaw style pattern of interlocking maisonettes means that one, two and three bedroom dwellings neighbour each other. The ziggurat-style shape and sheer size of the blocks make them a stark contrast to the Victorian and Georgian houses on the streets nearby. But what makes this estate unusual goes beyond aesthetic. In 1968, recently qualified and with a few year’s experience under her belt, a 26 year old borough architect called Kate Macintosh won an in-house competition to design a housing scheme to sit on the remarkable site. Even today only 25% of registered architects are female, so in the 1960s for a female architect to design such a large-scale project so early on in her career would have been very unusual indeed. Whereas today many of Dawson's Heights contemporaries have been pulled down, notably the Aylesbury and Heygate estates in nearby Elephant and Castle, Ladlands and Bredinghurst seem to have stood the test of time. Every flat has a private balcony, most have two, a feature which Macintosh fought for at a time when the council considered them an extravagance. She ingeniously designed them to serve as fire escapes via a removable glass panel to the neighbouring balcony, therefore justifying their inclusion on safety grounds.
When we meet at her house in Winchester she explains her belief that to create a successful community in the sky, having a balcony is key. "It enables an external expression of 'this is my home, this is where I live',” she says. Another crucial element of a building for a healthy community is play spaces for children. Looking at the plans for the Heygate estate in the Southwark History Archive in Borough, you can see that the playground is located outside the boundaries of the main estate, but all the flats in Dawson's Heights have a view of the playground so that parents can keep an eye on children. “I wanted any child in the playground to be able to point at their home and say ‘that’s where I live’” she says.
“I wanted any child in the playground to be able to point at their home and say ‘that’s where I live’”
In 2015 a Guardian article hailed Kate Macintosh as “one of Britain’s great unsung architects of social housing” and estates like Dawson's Heights, architecturally revered, well designed and moderately affordable, are increasingly becoming trendy places to live for middle-class and creative urbanites. The blog Modernist Estates lists homes for sale in modernist blocks, as well as documenting the people who live in them. Flick through the blog and you'll find beautiful photographs and interviews with young, often white couples or families in their stylishly decorated homes. In 2015, the blog was collated into a book. Dawson's Heights is not featured in the book (although it is on the blog) but similarly revered estates such as a Park Hill in Sheffield and Balfron Tower in Poplar are. “Some council estates are where the ideal of mixed communities finds its most clearly positive examples, with vulnerable tenants, working families and the more affluent design-hungry residents all living side by side” says architecture writer Douglas Murphy, in the book’s introduction. A review of Modernist Estates on Google questions whether the book is representative of the demographic of the estates it claims to represent, “there is a lack of 'real' people and a disproportionate number of architects, designers, art school lecturers and actors in the book” says the reviewer, “it would have been more interesting to have seen a room with a family in it rather than an Eames chair.”
As a inner-city almost consistently Labour-led council, Southwark was one of the largest developers of council housing in the twentieth century. By the late 1990s it was the largest landlord in London, and despite the Right to Buy 60% of homes in the borough were still managed by the council. A 1999 New Statesman article on New Labour regeneration in Southwark describes the view from the multi-story car park in nearby Peckham as being one of “mile after mile of depressing public housing”. The article outlines the challenges faced by Tony Blair’s government to reshape the borough according to its neoliberal agenda. "Blairite Southwark aims to achieve this," says the article, "by bringing in more of the well-to-do." Today, many would argue that the new-Labour mission has been accomplished as the car park is in the process of being turned into a multi-use arts venue and people travel from all corners of London to enjoy the view from Frank’s Campari Bar. Like the housing schemes featured on the Modernist Estates blog, the car park is now regularly praised for it’s bold, brutalist architecture and many of the ‘depressing’ buildings referenced in the article now provide affordable and even fashionable accommodation for average earners in London.
A couple of miles up the road in affluent East Dulwich, Dawson’s Heights - with views that far outshine those at Frank's - is experiencing the same shift. I first met Raf, a musician, at a Dawson's Heights Open House event. He and his wife Rosie, who runs a small independant coffee shop in Peckham, first moved to the estate six years ago. “We bought the flat because we’d both had a bit of money come our way - a bit of inheritance and a bit of help from my folks. It seemed affordable even though house prices in London were starting to go a bit mad,” he says. Having grown up in reasonably middle class circumstances himself, Raf had never lived on an estate before. “Rosie wasn’t sure about it at first,” he says. “But where else can you get three bedrooms for this cheap? I obviously don’t have a problem with it, but I do think there’s still some snootiness about ex-local authority housing.”
"Where else can you get three bedrooms for this cheap?"
Like David, Raf and Rosie are part of the minority group of leaseholders that live on the estate. Management of the estate was transferred from the council to Southern Housing Association in 1999, and having housing association tenants mixed in with more middle-class leaseholders is fairly typical across London, where up to a third of residents in tower blocks own their own flats or are privately renting from someone who does. As mentioned in the intro to Modernist Estates, these mixed-tenure living arrangements almost recall some of the earliest hopes for the social housing project. In the 1950s, Labour politician Aneurin Bevan, founder of the NHS and advocate of social housing, spoke of "the living tapestry of a mixed community", where "the doctor, the grocer, the butcher and the farm labourer all lived in the same street”.
"A rich tapestry" of community might sound idyllic, but describe to any Londoner today a situation whereby a graphic designer is living next door to a manual labourer and they will probably identify it as a product of gentrification. Gentrification, the process by which more affluent or middle-class residents move into previously ‘run down’ and urban neighbourhoods, causing property values to rise, is a phenomenon that is happening all over London. Typically, this happens in waves, as artists and creative people are attracted to an area for its cheap living and studio spaces, and developers and property investors are attracted to the culture that is created as a result. In Big Capital, Minton argues that ‘gentrification’ is one of those terms, “rather like ‘affordable housing’, that lost its real meaning long ago”. What we have now, she says, is more like ‘super-gentrification’. First coined by Dr Loretta Lees, a researcher in urban geography at the University of Leicester, to describe the intensity of gentrification in Notting Hill Gate and parts of New York City, ‘super-gentrification’ is a term to describe the second-wave of gentrification, when large developers and property investors begin to take an interest in an area. According to Lees, super-gentrifiers’ are different to the ‘pioneer gentrifiers’, in that they don’t have the same sense of community identity. "Many of the early gentrifiers believed very strongly in comprehensive schools. They believed that their children should be mixing with poorer children and that their aspirations etc. would rub off on those children, but also that their children would learn from these other children," she says, speaking to the BBC. "Now the whole discourse has changed as gentrification has become more hegemonic.”
"‘gentrification’ is one of those terms, “rather like ‘affordable housing’, that lost its real meaning long ago”
In 2014, despite the success of Frank’s bar, Peckham car park was scheduled for demolition. What ensued was a lengthy campaign by business owners and residents of the area as well as anti-gentrification protesters from elsewhere to ‘save Peckham carpark’. Eventually, the council caved in and, in a press release, announced that their new plan was to instead convert the car park into an arts venue “[ensuring that] the former multi-storey car park remains a bustling, busy and sustainable part of the town centre and a London-wide cultural venue.” For many, this victory is a triumph of community over commercial interest, but Southwark council’s eventual decision to approve a redevelopment plan by east London based Carl Turner Architects over a local not-for-profit arts organisation called Bold Tendencies left a sour taste in many people’s mouths. Affordable studio spaces for artists are becoming rarer in London, and the plans set forward by Bold Tendencies had proposed using the space to create 800 studios that could be rented by artists for £100 per month, turning the carpark into a "colourful artists' favela" according to the proposal.
Peckham Levels is set to open in 2018, with a more moderate 50 art studios, as well as co-working spaces and several floors of cafes, bars and food stalls. The development will, according to the website, turn the car park into “a new cultural destination”. Carl Turner Architects are the group behind Pop Brixton, a temporary space made from shipping containers housing bars and restaurants. Pop Brixton emphasises the community focus of its project, advertising itself as “a community of independent retailers, restaurants, street food startups and social enterprises.” The catch is that once Pop Brixton's lease is up in 2018, the area will most likely be redeveloped into flats. In a blog post, journalist Athlyn Cathcart-Keays says that although these projects and the people behind them may have their heart in the right place, the designed temporality of these spaces means that they are nevertheless a "spectre looming over this well-established, convivial community... fertilising the soil and sowing the seeds for the inevitable ‘regeneration’ – or ‘social cleansing’, as many would call it – that is soon to hit Brixton.” Jimmy Carr, sales manager in Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward’s Clapham and Brixton office, told The Guardian that Brixton has seen some of the biggest growth in house prices in the whole of London, particularly in the past few years. Earlier this year, data collected by house price monitor Hometrack revealed that house prices in Peckham had risen by 130% in eight years. This connection between culture and a rise in living expenses in an area is a process that some anti-gentrification protesters are calling ‘artwashing’. First coined in LA after residents of previously ‘run down’ areas noticed that prices in the neighbourhood tended to rise if an art gallery opened nearby, artwashing is what happens when art, culture and businesses like Pop or Peckham Levels become intermingled.
For young, creative middle-class people with a family like Raf and Rosie, the option to buy a flat in a development like Dawson's Heights can be a great opportunity. Not only are the flats affordable compared to period properties nearby, but living in East Dulwich gives you the best of both worlds; you’re close to some good state schools and in a comfortable middle-class neighbourhood, but you’re also a stone's throw away from rapidly gentrifying and culturally ‘vibrant’ areas like Peckham and Brixton. Although East Dulwich has always been quite a middle-class neighbourhood, proximity to Peckham has gone from being an inconvenience to an asset. In 1994 my parents sold their one bedroom flat in Peckham and, with some financial help from their parents, bought the house on Hillcourt Road. “At that time we needed more space and wanted to be closer to better primary schools” recalls my mum, who at the time worked as a press officer for a charity. “It's not that we didn't like living in Peckham, but the flat we were living in was too small for a family. We had to move and had the choice to move out of Peckham so we took it.” Ironically, a similar one bedroom flat that my parents sold in Peckham is now selling for £475,000, whereas, partly as a result of Peckham’s new trendy status and an overground line, one of a comparable size in East Dulwich is marginally cheaper. “Nobody could have predicted what was going to happen to that area,” says my mum.
Ginny, an art teacher, moved to Dawson's Heights five years ago, and now lives there with her grown-up daughter. Before moving into her flat her estate agent told her that 91% of the flats were occupied by leaseholders. “That was a lie,” she says. “I don’t mind at all - it’s just that as leaseholders I think we are more invested in caring for the building. We have had some trouble with graffiti and vandalism.” After repeatedly bringing up the problems to Southern Housing, the housing association suggested that she get her own CCTV cameras installed. “It’s ridiculous, we’re paying a service charge for them to take care of these things!” she says. Ginny had heard negative stories about the estate before moving here, “but I bought it because it was the only place I could get a decent flat for a price I could afford.” House prices in Peckham may have risen by up to 130% since 2009, but most Londoners haven’t seen their wages rise since 2008. In July, The Guardian reported that ‘key workers’ such as nurses, social workers and teachers like Ginny, were being priced out of the city. Flats like those in Dawson's Heights which were bought through the Right to Buy are fast becoming an attractive housing option for people on average incomes and first time buyers. “We never bought it to make money on it, we just wanted an affordable place to live and raise a family” says Raf.
House prices in Peckham may have risen by up to 130% since 2009, but most Londoners haven’t seen their wages rise since 2008.
Barry moved into his flat in 1981 along with his partner and their baby. They were offered the Right to Buy in the 90s, but at the time it seemed like a lot of money. “They asked for 13k, I thought they was off their head, but I was off mine cause I should have bought it!” he says. Now 70, Barry would like to be able to move closer to his grandchildren but knows that organising a swap is unlikely. “The only chance I have of getting out of here is if I win the lottery,” he says. “I’d like to live in Tenterden, in Kent. It’s nice there, but you need money and I’m too old to work now.” Intentional or not, there’s no getting away from the benefits of owning a house that has risen in value exponentially in the years since it was bought. “We got this flat for 187k, just in the nick of time. It was valued last year at 400k” says Raf. Having bought his flat 15 years ago, David’s flat can now offer him a rental income of around 1,800 per month. David’s parents were Jamaican, and although he grew up in London he also lived in Trinidad for ten years. Now in his 50s David would also like to move out of London. “I don’t like city life, it’s not for me,” he says. “I’m going to Africa, that’s my destination now. I’m a man who likes flip flops and a vest, that’s my life.”
Although the prices of the flats in Dawson's Heights have been subject to the same inflation as everywhere in London, they’re still up to 300k cheaper than elsewhere in the area. This difference in price suggests a stigma still attached to ex-local authority housing. “At the end of the day would you pay more for an ex-local authority or would you pay more for a period property?” Says Nick Marriott, an estate agent at Haart. “Everyone wants to live in a Victorian house with a white picket fence.” Nevertheless, Nick says that when they come up for sale, flats in the building are very desireable. Size-wise, they’re built to Parker Morris minimum space standards (scrapped by Margaret Thatcher in 1980) but they’re also much cheaper than anywhere else in Dulwich. “If you’re a young family with a few kids, for affordability you couldn’t ask for anything better than to live in the heart of East Dulwich with a good few rooms at a reasonable price.” Negative attitudes towards mixed tenure or ex-local authority housing is undeniable, but this is an attitude that Raf thinks is becoming outdated. “I think one of the reasons that there’s this been renewed interest in the architecture of estates, socialist modernism or whatever you want to call it, is because middle class people are having to come to terms with the fact that they’re going to have to live in a council flat because it’s the only place they’ll be able to afford to live in London,” he says. “Obviously I’d love to have a massive house with a huge garden but that’s just not on the cards if we want to stay in this area.”
Stretching around Dawson’s Heights is a six acre hilltop nature reserve made up of trees and grassland.
It’s the summer holidays, and back at ground level Orien, Neo and Joe Joe show us the den that they’ve constructed in the woodland area and their favourite tree, which has a makeshift rope swing hanging from it. As well as being surrounded by grassland, all the roofs in the building are flat and the boys show me how it’s possible to jump between them. It seems to me that to have free rein to explore the roofs and hiding places in the building, as well as the grass and woodland down below, must be ideal. “It was a great place to grow up,” confirms Tim. “Even though it was a block, it felt really safe and you weren’t scared. When I was seven or eight we’d stay out ‘til at least 9 o’clock in the summer and then your mum would shout for you and wherever you were on the estate you’d hear her and come home.” Being one of the first families on the block, Tim’s family got to know everyone as the flats filled up over the period of a year. His parents became fast friends with the caretaker, John Shaw, and his family. “My mum’s still in touch with their kids,” he says. “John would be out with his broom everyday, picking up litter and doing all the little things to make sure the place looked good.”
Raf and Rosie’s son Billy is just about getting old enough to play in the estate playground. “He’s new on the scene, and not quite big enough to be left down there on his own,” says Raf. “It’s great for him though, most of the kids here go to the same local school and he loves it because he knows some of the older kids.” Where there was once four, there are now two caretakers. There’s a community flat on the estate and for their son’s second birthday Raf and Rosie wanted to hire it out for a birthday party, but it didn't quite go to plan. “We paid the money, made all the sandwiches and everything, but on the day the caretaker was nowhere to be seen with the keys," says Raf. "It was chaos, so stressful."
“I wanted it to feel like a castle, imposing on the outside, protective on the inside.”
The aim to house working-class people in homes where children would have access to greenery was a founding principle of the early movement towards social housing. Idealised, so-called ‘garden cities’ such as Letchworth in Hertfordshire, were the vision of a man named Ebenezer Howard. Howard was, according to Peter Hall author of Cities of Tomorrow, “the most important single character” in the story of progressive housing for the working classes. His vision was of a clean and green city in which small townships of 10,000 people or so would flourish in clean air, privacy and space. This, he hoped, would free working classes from exploitation by landlords and eventually grow into a network of self-sufficient communities. The garden city principle became a kind of town planning manual during the late twentieth century and were an influence on council architects looking to rehouse the urban working class within the city. Before moving to Dawson's Heights, Tim remembers his family going to look around the now-demolished North Peckham estate when it was opening. “My mum took one look at it and said there’s no way we’re moving here,” he says. “The way the council pitched it was that it had shops, a nursery, a laundry - all in the estate.” The North Peckham estate became infamous in 2000 as the estate where schoolboy Damilola Taylor was murdered, and later as a hotbed of crime as teenagers and children were recruited by gangs. “It seemed great when we looked around it, but my mum somehow foresaw what was going to happen to it,” says Tim. “It was a labyrinth of corridors and when you were in the middle it almost felt like there was no way out.” This feeling of entrapment was something that Kate Macintosh sought to avoid when designing Dawson's Heights. The result is that from standing in the central area of the estate, the building feels simultaneously enclosed, but open, “I wanted it to feel like a castle, imposing on the outside, protective on the inside,” she says.
The hill that the estate stands on is known as Dawson’s Hill. The geological composition of the land is of London Clay, a notoriously tricky material to build on.
Right up until 1968 when building work began locals were reporting landslides and mini avalanches and this tendency to slide around earned the hill the nickname ‘the slippery hill’. Engineers involved with the building of the estate used special methods to get around this - Ladlands and Bredinghurst are as deep as they are tall, and these iceberg proportions ensure the stability of the development. At already 255 ft high at ground level and visible from all over London, it’s easy to see why Dawson’s Hill might once have been of strategic importance for early settlers. Growing up I’d heard rumours about an ancient castle having stood on the hill, stories which, as Dulwich historian Brian Green explains, are not totally unfounded. “When the construction of Dawson’s Heights began builders found several artefacts which pointed to the probability that a Roman fortress had once existed there,” he says. Back in the late 60s there was no requirement to stop the construction of the building and conduct an archaeological dig, although clearly this didn’t prevent the news weaving its way into playground myths and legends.
"Builders found several artefacts which pointed to the probability that a Roman fortress had once existed on the hill"
Enshrined in the old expression ‘an Englishman’s home is his castle’ is the cultural belief that one should have ownership over their personal space, and it is a recurring motif in my conversations with residents of Dawson's Heights. “It’s not that I think that this is actually a castle,” says David. “but it's my shelter, my sanctuary.” This expression might begin to explain the British obsession with homeownership. Whereas our neighbours in continental Europe are much more likely to be lifelong renters, 60% of British people today own their homes. “Aspiring to own is as much a part of our national DNA as tea, obsessing about the weather or losing on penalties,” said the director of renting site spareroom.com Matt Hutchinson in a blog for the Huff Post. “We invest in bricks and mortar as our future.”
In line with their vision of a nation of homeowners, the Conservatives proposed extending Right to Buy to Britain’s 1.2m housing association homes in their latest election manifesto. In theory, this means that housing association tenants could be given a discount of up to 70% off the market value of their home, but there is still a lack of clarity about who is eligible and how housing associations will be compensated and the scheme is yet to be rolled out nationwide. Last month, Sky News reported that Right to Buy was flailing. “Ministers are uncertain how they intend to pay for it despite the policy being announced nearly three years ago,” says the report, quoting a couple from Essex who say they voted Conservative twice on the promise that they would be given the opportunity to buy their housing association home. “To be honest, I feel like I've let my children down by relying on what they said in their manifesto” says housing association tenant Rae Barrow, quoted in the article. “We want to provide security for them, they need their home and yet we can't give it to them at the moment." The issue of who will pay for these subsidies is a complicated one, but according to Shelter, it's likely the discounts will be paid for by the sale of some council houses - potentially increasing housing need rather than decreasing it. “Social housing is the only housing that remains genuinely affordable, so attempts to continue this failed policy are just ludicrous” says Anna Minton. Although many housing associations have criticised the proposal that Right to Buy be extended to housing association properties, Southern Housing have not. “Southern Housing Group has signed up to a voluntary agreement which will extend the right to buy offer to many more of our tenants,” said a spokesperson from the association. “Not all homes will be available for purchase, but we’re just in the process of developing our policy for which properties will be available.”
Some Dawson's Heights residents that already own their flats believe that having more leaseholders will be a good thing for the estate. “An estate agent told me that people will start to buy in here more and more, and eventually they’ll get rid of the housing association,” says David. “Then we’ll get a Costa, and a jacuzzi and a gym and we’ll maintain the building privately.” In 2012 an application to make Dawson's Heights a listed building was rejected by the secretary of state. Whether they’ll ever get a Costa or not remains to be seen, but what is almost certain is that, with the change in the right to buy laws and the seismic changes already happening in the areas around it, over the next ten years the demographic at Dawson's Heights will surely be changing.
Rosie has been running the cafe in Peckham for a few years, but before that she ran a similar establishment in Brixton.
“When she set it up her main business was all the freelancers - musicians, artists, writers - who lived in the streets nearby, “ says Raf. “None of them can afford to live in Brixton anymore. Everyone that lives there now leaves in the morning to go and work in the city and comes back in the evening for a cocktail in a jam jar or whatever.” When the site in Peckham near the top end of Rye Lane came up, Rosie decided to move to the new site. “She ran them both for a bit, but then packed the one in Brixton up. She just got fed up with it, the area just wasn’t the same anymore.”
"Everyone that lives there now leaves in the morning and comes back in the evening for a cocktail in a jam jar.”
Rosie’s, as the cafe is called, sits between an Acorn estate agent and a chicken shop. Nearby are middle-class establishments such as Pedler (a ‘stylish neighbourhood eatery’) and Blue Tit (an expensive hair dressing chain which started in Shoreditch). Sitting in the kitchen of his flat in Bredinghurst, Raf and I talk about how the area is changing, and how although we’re not on the side of the bankers and millionaires that are supposedly making it happen, as middle class, white Londoners who will probably benefit from gentrification we still don’t feel totally comfortable about our role in it. Since I was a teenager I’ve worked in various coffee shops around south London as a barista. “I guess we’re part of the problem” he says, “but if it wasn’t us serving a flat white down there it would be someone else so we might as well be the ones doing it, and doing it well without the intention of fucking up the area.”
I’m at a flat viewing for a three bedroom flat that’s currently for sale in Ladlands when I spot Neo and Joe Joe in the estate shop.
“Hi!” I say, then remembering how long a few months can be in child-time, “remember me? You showed me and my friend Pablo around the estate a while back.” “Oh yeah” says Neo, seeming uninterested. I ask what they’re up to now and they say that they’ve just started at the same boys' secondary school as Tim attended in the 70s. This new maturity explains the teenage-y reluctance to chat to an adult, and as soon as I say goodbye they scuttle away.
The flat I’m viewing is on the first floor, just a few doors down from the flat that Tim and his family moved into in 1971. There’s graffiti in the hallway and it’s hard to gloss over the fact that the corridor smells a bit like pee, but inside everything is newly painted and shiny. The estate agent tells me that the owner had been renting it out for some years before deciding to sell, estimating that the rental value of the flat would be around £1,800 per month if we wanted to buy-to-let. I’ve dragged my mum along with me for company and we pretend that she is browsing with the intention of downsizing. I recently went to meet an old friend from school who is living with her boyfriend in her parents' house while they save up for a deposit. She’d been complaining that the only places remotely within their budget that they can find are way out near Croydon, where you can get three bedrooms for £400,000. All things considered, at £399,000 the flat in Dawson's Heights is a steal, and I can't help thinking that if I was looking to pursue the great British dream of a foot on the housing ladder it would be perfect.
I don’t know who will buy that flat, but chances are, according to the estate agent, that it will be a ‘cash-buyer’ - someone who can afford to pay upfront - as first time buyers can struggle to get a mortgage for ex-local authority flats in blocks like this. One article on thisismoney.com calls it “savagely difficult”. The estate agent takes us in the lift up to the top of the building to take in the view. “Wow” says my mum, because even on a slightly foggy October day the view is amazing. “Imagine what your gran would say if I moved in here,” she jokes. My gran lived in council housing herself during the 60s and 70s but always aspired to be, and eventually succeeded, in becoming middle class. “Almost worth doing it just for that really,” says my mum, cheerily.
A few days after our first phone conversation I get a text from Tim telling me he’d had a dream about Dawson's Heights. He moved away when he was 16, but ever since has had a reoccurring dream of being stuck in the lift there. He sends me a link to a vlog he recorded in the wake of the disaster at Grenfell Tower, when he felt that the media was misrepresenting council tenants. He still lives in council housing but has moved north of the river, to Brent. “Times have changed,” he says. “Everyone shuts their doors here now, it’s difficult to get to know each other properly like we did at Dawson's Heights.” Tim was the chairman of the tenant’s association of his estate in Brent for five years before it was disbanded, and repeatedly complained to the council on their choice of tenants. “As soon as the place becomes vacant the person that comes in has no respect for where they’re living, they'll be involved with drugs or other antisocial behaviours. I understand that council housing should be for everyone, but when people are doing illegal things there should be some intervention. It's like they're saying 'this is the dustbin and we're going to put you in it.'” Tim admits that there is an element of nostalgia when he thinks about his childhood, but he doesn’t think he’s ever lived anywhere as good as Dawson's Heights was in the 70s. “I swear to you, everywhere I’ve lived since then I’ve wished it was like Dawson's Heights,” he says. “I’ve never had that sense of community again anywhere.”
A few days after our first phone conversation I get a text from Tim telling me he’d had a dream about Dawson's Heights.
Tim was against the Right to Buy when it was introduced, “I had arguments with my parents about it, when they decided to buy the house that they moved into after Dawson's Heights,” he says. “My mum lives in Crete now - and it all led to that really, to my mum living on the continent and having a good life in her old age.”
Until she died in 2005, Tim’s great aunt lived in the flat above where the rest of the family had lived, and as the flat Tim and his family lived in was on the first floor he remembers envying the view she had from her second floor window even as a boy. “From her bedroom you could look out the curtains and just see that view - it was amazing.” Tim's aunt was offered the flat for 17k in the ‘90s, “she had a fantastic job at the Ministry of Defence and could have bought it four times over but she refused,” he says. “I offered to buy it for her, do the paperwork and everything, but we didn’t go through with it in the end.” Tim's aunt lived in her flat until she died, after which the home she had lived in for 30 years was allocated to a new tenant by Southern Housing.
“I’m not bitter about it, not buying it was the right thing to do, but there’s a little chunk of me that still belongs there somewhere,” he says, wistfully. “The design of those flats… I still think, after all these years, it was as near to utopia as you could get.”