St Agnes Place Squat

Between 2003 and 2007, photographer Janine Wiedel documented the final years of London’s longest running squat. St Agnes Place—a quiet South London back street—was occupied for over 35-years by range of people and groups who established a semi-autonomous community. In Wiedel’s new book her photographs are combined with the stories of those who inhabited one of Britain’s most distinctive communities.

‘…it provided a refuge and home to thousands of people. Some were born there, some arrived thirty odd years ago and stayed, others passed through often returning many years later. This multicultural street stood like few others as a living monument to the lives and histories that formed it: reflecting the hopes, dreams and difficulties of its inhabitants and their often-fraught relationships to society at large.’

Originally built for the servants of Buckingham Palace, St Agnes Place was made up of two rows of Victorian terraced houses. Lambeth Council purchased the buildings in the 1960s as part of an unrealised plan and they were left derelict. From 1969 the buildings were occupied and fixed up by two groups of people: activists seeking a solution to the housing crisis; and Rastafarians using the properties to provide social and cultural support to the community. Over more than three decades, the residents resisted successive attempts to displace them but in November 2005, two hundred riot police and bailiffs entered the street. They evicted twenty-one of the houses and one hundred and fifty people were left homeless. Demolition of the site began immediately and only the Rastafarian houses were left standing. A few months later, after a court battle and a mysterious overnight arson attack, the Rastafarian Community Centre was also demolished.

 ‘I hope that my photographs and interviews can stand, as the street once did, as a testament to the lives and ideals of the one-time residents of St Agnes Place. Such histories often go undocumented yet are very much part of the fabric of our inner cities. In seeking a collective solution, outside the norms of mainstream society, the residents of St Agnes Place created a distinctive community and mutually supportive environment that in some cases saved lives. The final brutal destruction of this community haunts not only those who lived there, but all of us who knew it’s story.’

St Agnes Place Squat: Off The Grid will launch in Leeds at Photo North Festival 13th-15th March and in London at The Photographers Gallery 16th April

Documentary photographer and visual anthropologist Janine Wiedel was born in New York and has been based in London since 1970. From the late 1960s her work has focused on issues of social concern ranging from the Black Panther and Berkeley Riots (1968-9), to Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp (1983-4), the Calais Jungle and Grande-Synthe Refugee Camps (2016). Wiedel’s work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions including at The Photographers’ Gallery, London; Stoke-on-Trent City Museum & Art Gallery, Ikon Gallery and included in group exhibitions at  Whitechapel Gallery, Belfast Museum, The ICA, Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Martin Parr Foundation, Turner Contemporary and National Galleries of Scotland amongst others. Wiedel’s work is held by collections including Arts Council of Great Britian, MoMA, New York; V&A National Art Library, and Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol.