Transcript - Former residents of Robin Hood Gardens at Storehouse

 

Listen to former residents of Robin Hood Garden housing estate share memories of community, architecture and decline.  

With thanks to Bea, Jean, Julie, Ronnie, Ozzy, Paul, Asma, and Sister Christine

Bea: I'm Bea Gamblin. I'm 49. I lived there for seven years and I lived there with my mum, my stepdad and my brother. 

Jean: Jean Whitelock, 82. We lived on the second floor. Eight of us, six children and me and hubby. 

Julie: My name is Julie Brown. I'm 62 and I lived in Robin Hood Gardens, I think 1972 until November 1979. From the time they were built, we were the first people in there. I lived with my mum. There was just me and my mum. 

Ronnie: My name's Ronnie Norfolk and I moved into Robin Hood Gardens 1971 / 1972 up until the early 90s. 

[pause] 

Julie: Just that it was the place to be for us. It was the place to be. You know, it was community spirited. It was fun, you know, there was like a togetherness and it was great to be there. 

Ozzy: From the early part, you know you had your close knit of 2 or 3 close friends, and then they'd have 2 or 3 friends. And before you know it, you've got a community of 20 kids that meet up quite regularly. They go out on excursions together. Just the fact that we could meet up every day. We knew where we were. We knew we were safe. 

Ronnie: Everyone looked after everyone. There was always someone looking after someone else's kids, and you had somewhere to go if your parents weren't in either. So I never felt alone in there. 

Jean: We had a community club. I was in charge of the old age pensioners, so I would go every Sunday morning and collect their five pence. That was their charge for to join the club, and I'd ask them how they were every Sunday morning, and if I didn't see anybody, I had to tell somebody. They were all nice the old age pensioners. We had the club which was opposite mine, which is knocked down now, and that was for the old age pensioners, that was for the children and that was for the teenagers. And one year, or maybe more than one year, we cooked the old age pensioners a Christmas dinner and there must have been about, I don't know, 40 of them. And that was hard work. That was hard work cooking that dinner. 

Paul: It was a community house. And I remember I remember the kids got together and they held a show, and I remember my friends and me being involved. And at the time there was a popular show called "Some Mothers Do Ave 'Em". And we got together as kids, and I played the wife in the scene that we did, and the parents all came along and it was really good fun and I remember the parents clapping and I remember the community spirit. 

[pause] 

Jean: I think people were surprised when they walked in to see the amount of room and the space that we had. Yeah, people might look at them and turn up their nose and say it's a council flat. Yeah, it was a council flat, but it was home. 

Ozzy: The structure, the design was amazing. The hill was just [makes appreciative noise]. Looking back now, how many times you run up that hill and run down that hill. We biked out there, biked back down, sled, all sorts, you know, played games on that hill. I think that's what made it. Because I think it allowed parents to be able to look out of their flat and know where their kids are, because the way they designed both of them [the blocks], the playground was in between it. You know, if you were anywhere above the second floor, you could see your children. So I think that is unique. 

Julie: I think it was very well designed. I mean, the properties themselves, they were big and spacious, you know, like they were airy, they were bright. 

Ozzy: I think if you look back at the first programme that was made about Robin Hood Gardens in the 70s, [it] clearly demonstrates to me how the architecture and the environment was second to none. I don't think you'd ever be able to replicate the atmosphere, that feeling. 

Sister Christine: If you're an architect, you have to build with community in mind. But maybe that's not one of the stipulations. So if no one says to you, we want to build community, then you're not going to put that into the plan. For a lot of people, it's how much money they can raise. 

[pause] 

Bea: As I said, my mum and my stepdad actually met in Robin Hood Gardens. He lived up on the fifth floor and we lived on the second floor and our next door neighbours but one were best friends with Clive and they introduced my mum to him and then, well, it was like a whirlwind romance. Within six months he'd moved in with us, so. And I mean, they were together like until he died recently. So it was like, yeah, it was really happy for them. 

Ozzy: The house parties. From both sides of the buildings. And the music that came out of some of the windows as we were playing football, from our parents, from, you know, from friends. And we could hear it clearly. Vinyl records were the order of the day, with huge speakers sometimes put on balconies. 

Bea: Oh, yeah. It was proper adventurous place to live. Yeah. We used to make camps in the garages. We used to collect wood for the bonfire for like three months every year for Bonfire night, and then make a big fire up on the hill. 

Julie: We were always on the hills. Yeah. Children used to have fun and you would play cricket, like down below. They had them little pocket parks. They had the swing park where you could go on the swings and play football at the end. We used to play Run Outs and Knock Down Ginger. 

Paul: The best time was winter time when the snow formed on the hill and everybody would come out with sleighs. I mean, we couldn't afford sleighs. So you'd make something, you'd get a cardboard box or you'd do something and everyone would come out. Parents, kids, the people on the ground floor that weren't as active would stand there and make cups of coffee and tea for people. Yeah, I remember that being a really nice time. 

[pause] 

Bea: Before they started knocking it all down, it just looked dirty and run down and not a nice place. It had been neglected quite a lot. It didn't have the same vibe as when we were kids. 

Ronnie: In one aspect I thought, oh, yeah, it's nice that it's a listed building, it'll be there forever. But at the end of my stay there there was a lot of maintenance issues. The place wasn't kept as it should be. I remember as a teenager they had an infestation of cockroaches and because of the central heating system, which was a really good system for keeping the place warm, it couldn't get rid of the cockroaches and that was a horrible time. And then there was quite a few floods, people suffered with damp and mould. 

Ozzy: That was the main problem, the cockroach problem. No, I think honestly speaking, because of that infestation, because they couldn't contain it and control it, I think it was the right thing to do to put it [Robin Hood Gardens] to its death because of that. If they could fix that and sort that out, keep it. But I think it annoyed a lot of tenants. The infestation was long. It took longer for them to deal with. I think nobody wants cockroaches in their flats. 

Jean: But I think why it become, what's the word, a little bit down was because the council didn't keep up with the maintenance. They didn't want it anymore. They was going to let it go to sell off private. And that's what the land is for. 

Asma: In the meantime, a lot of organizations, a lot of film companies from the council, they managed to come within the area to film shooting for their advertisements. So at the beginning it was quite exciting to see such a big crew with so many people, you know, filming and everything. And what I witnessed was the film crew, because they didn't have the fob, whoever went out, they would just open the door, actually forcefully open the door and come into the building again and well, that's not acceptable. Yes, they are using the place, but they can't misuse it like this. And nobody's being held accountable for this. We're the ones losing out. We're not getting any money for it for hiring out this place. Who's making all the money? We don't know anything. 

[pause] 

Ozzy: My name is Osman Abdi. Everybody knows me as Ozzy. I'm now 60. I lived in Robin Hood Gardens from 1974 to around 84 when I left home. But my family continued living there until just before it was demolished. Five sisters, mum and dad and my younger brother. Yep, number 25. 

Paul: Well, my name is Paul Tandy. I'm 61 and I moved to Robin Hood's in 1972, so I was ten years of age. My immediate family that I moved there with was my mum, dad, brother and sister. 

Asma: So my name is Asma Begum and I'm 49 years old and I lived on the eighth floor with the best view. I lived there for 23 years. So I moved in here in Robin Hood Gardens in 1999 to see the millennium celebration from the eighth floor. So that was quite cool. 

[pause] 

Jean: Everybody come from different places. Yeah. They didn't know anybody before they got there, but everybody made friends. Yeah. I mean, obviously you had your arguments over children. Everybody argues over children. The children had a fight one day, but they made it up the next week. You know, it was like that. That's what life was about innit. 

Bea: Yeah, it was a nice place to live. I don't think there was any hostility around there. All the kids got on. All the parents seemed to have got on. No, everyone was really friendly. Everyone was "hello, how are you? What are you up to?". Everyone looked out for each other. 

Jean: Everybody knew everybody. 

 

Bea: And you could knock on your neighbour's door. I could get locked out because I've not listened to my mum. And then I'm stuck outside. I could knock on one of my neighbours doors and say, like, “can I just wait until mummy comes?” And they'd let you in and you'd sit and watch TV with their kids or, you know, they'd make you a drink of orange juice or you just wait. You didn't have phones and mobiles then you know what I mean? 

Ozzy: The community spirit and the number of people that lived there and the children made it just a bit more special. Pretty much everybody knew each other. So everybody of the same age group, sort of 12 to 15, they all knew each other. We all knew each other's flat numbers. We, more often than not, going in and out of each other's houses. So there was a lot of camaraderie, a lot of pride in in, you know, in being from the area. 

Paul: So what my dad did, and all the kids will remember this, he decided to put a football team together and join a local league. And I remember borrowing a kit, it was full of holes, so we had these blue and white stripes shirts, white shorts and these orange socks. So it really did gather momentum. Everyone got involved. The locals got involved. Yeah, and we were called 'Robin Hood Sports'. And we later changed their name to 'The Foresters'. And I'm so proud that my dad was the one that sort of stepped up and started that. We went to all the residents, knocked on the doors and we got, you know, we got enough to buy this trophy for my dad at the end of the season and to put his name on the trophy and to sort of say thank you for putting the team together. And he's still got that old trophy today. 

Asma: It's my home, my community, which I never want to let go of. The fear was when the regeneration came about is the community is going to be scattered. 

Sister Christine: I remember walking around this estate here and she's saying to me, "you know, Sister, we could knock this down and build new homes". And I said, "what will happen to the community?" And I remember her looking at me and saying, "what is community?" I thought that says it all. 

[pause] 

Jean: Robin Hood Gardens was not, although people going past would have said, oh, that looks like a prison, it wasn't because they had the open balconies which were the streets in the sky. It was never empty. There was never completely null and void empty. There was always somebody about doing either washing their windows or cleaning their steps. It was like walking along the street. Yeah, put it that way. Yeah, it was a street in the sky. So if you didn't want your children going down on the hill, they played outside. 

Paul: My memories are families coming out and socializing in these landings, these long, open landings. And that's, I guess, where the friendships and the bonding come from. 

Asma: It's quite safe as well. They would play around their neighbours, kids would come out, we can leave our doors open. And then that way we get to know more residents and everything. 

Ronnie: The landings did seem like, as kids, we'd be riding up and down on our bikes and it would upset adults. Like if we were playing football, we couldn't be bothered going downstairs. You'd kick a ball up the wall. 

Julie: And then New Year's Eve, all of the boats used to sound off and everyone would be on the balcony wishing everybody like a Happy New Year and things like that. It was nice. 

Bea: I always remember the elders having parties. They used to have blinding parties. You used to be able to hear the music everywhere and you used to sit up and listen. And Cathy, actually, Cathy used to have parties. Isobel and Gary. Yeah, they had parties for New Year's, birthdays, all sorts. Yeah. 

Ozzy: We just laid around on the hill with sax and just chill out in the evenings, in the summer evenings. And we'd play football at the bottom of the hills and we'd ride our bikes around the block. We played football together as a block, so we used to represent Robin Hood Gardens as a football team and then as an East London team, and go and play against other boroughs. 

Paul: I remember myself all these people that I'm still in contact with today playing on the lifts. We must have been 11 or 12, and I remember being curious as once on the lift there was a light switch which you could switch on and off. And you can control the lift. You can go up and down. And clearly we shouldn't be on there. But we were. And people getting in the lift and not letting them open the door and having, you know, a bit of fun in that area. And I remember seeing this fan belt thinking, I wonder what that is. And of course, I reached out to pull the fan belt and the lift door closed, and the fan belt that drove the lift door. My fingers sort of, it's fine now, but at the time it had sawn off, you know, the tip of my finger. So we were bunking off school and Kirk was with my friend. He said, "oh, you need to go to hospital" because it was bleeding really badly. So he decided to have the courage to knock on his door and got a rollicking from his mum for bunking off school. But she saw my finger after giving Kirk a clip round the ear. She bandaged up my finger and she took me to hospital and she got my finger sorted and she stayed with me at the hospital and she brought me back. And this was typical of the kind of people that lived on the estate. Nothing's too much trouble for you. 

[pause] 

Asma: Slowly, slowly, things started getting bad over there because there's no cameras. There's no, we had no security, no nothing. There were so many flats in that block, our block got burgled. We had some burglary, drug addicts there. So, you know, so many things happened there. The lift, broke down. Eventually people started complaining. And I sort of thought, okay, we need to do something. I want a meeting for the area. I want everybody to come sit around the table. All parties, sit around the table and find out exactly what's going on in Robin Hood Gardens. And everyone had their say and then take it from there. So we had a big meeting there with the three councillors, council, Regenerations, ASB, police, so much, so many different parties came. From there some improvements came about until again the neglect happened. So they just left us to ourselves again. And then Covid came in. So there was lockdowns and so much happened. Everything stopped, the work stopped, our lives stopped. And after the lockdown finished, companies went bust. So the building materials, so many different things happened so that there's so much delay. We had a really, really tough time in Robin Hood Gardens then. And then we decided we're going to have to make this a big deal now because they're just neglecting us. And then with that, we had everybody signing on a paper. And what we're going to do, we are together and we're going to act together. Then with this, I wrote to the mayor, I wrote to the MP and everything. And then it was like such a big thing. They had all these senior management and senior meetings and everything. I had the MP having a, you know, meeting with us online, seeing to everything you know. She assured us that everything was going to be okay. And she's talking to the mayor. And the regeneration was a good thing. But the management of the regeneration was really bad. 

Sister Christine: I think the sad thing with Robin Hood Gardens, you could see little bits of the cement, maybe the same cement they've used in the schools, crumbling on some of the balconies. And I remember going to the guy in charge of the Isle of Dogs neighbourhood and saying, you need some investment to be made in this, you know, because otherwise it'll crumble. And in retrospect, I realized, of course, that was the plan. Let it crumble so that people get on their knees and say, please, please get us out of here. You've got to do something. It needed investment. If they had invested in it, it would never have deteriorated, degenerated into what it was a hated place. But it wasn't that originally. You know, people loved it there. 

[pause] 

Ronnie: In its day, it was an icon. So for me, it's nice to know that there's going to be a part of Robin Hood Gardens saved because I've got so, so many fond memories. A great place to live. 

Julie: If I had a choice, I would move back into Robin Hood Gardens. 

Bea: If it was in the state that it was when I was growing up. I'd happily move there if the council offered me a place. 

Ozzy: Yeah, I'd like to be back. I'd like to be back there. I would. I would give my left arm and my right arm definitely to go back and re-experience a few years. And I'm sure most of the kids that grew up in Robin Gardens would say the same thing. 

Julie: I'm emotional, obviously. But, yeah, I'm glad. I'm glad it's ours. You know, somewhere where I can go as well and just sort of, like, relive all my childhood memories with my mum. 

Paul: When people look at the 93 and 94. Try and visualise the people that live there. Visualise the mums, the dads, the trials and tribulations of the kids. The worries of trying to put food on the table because that was real. Same as it is today, I’m sure, in a lot of families. Try and visualize how people lived and had to live in those days. Didn't have a lot, but what they had was real community spirit. And that exists in, you know, in those people that still remember that today. And that's all you can do is keep it inside you. Try and look past the concrete and look into the soul of the building.