Punk Spirits at Pullens Yards: Meet the artists of Elephant & Castle
‘I came here to volunteer for a food co-op that was set up when the estate was squatted in the 1980s,’ says Louisa, the plucky owner of The Elephant Electric Café at Pullens Yards, Walworth. ‘We’ve got a very interesting history.’
Come out of the Elephant & Castle tube, (one of the last truly grubby central London stations, it has retained its patina of pollution and resisted the modernising that has turned so many transport points into facsimiles of hotel lobbies) and follow the A3 until you hit St Mary’s Churchyard. Evocative though the name is – in a sort of Christian martyr way – this is really just a bit of green along a main road. The treasure can only be found if you take the sharp left that leads into Walworth.
Little known, even amongst Londoners, Walworth doesn’t have our attention as a recent up-and-comer like Peckham, or as a nightlife hotspot, like the self-conscious Hackney Wick. Perhaps it is this slightly anonymous identity that has protected it from the creep of Swedish bakery chains. Instead, Walworth is made up of towering estates and roads of chocolate-box Victorian houses. It is also home to Pullens Yards.
The Pullens Estate was built in 1886 by James Pullen and is a unique construction in that the blocks of flats had workshops attached via rear yards. This meant that tenants could live and work in close proximity; a configuration which might have played a part in how strong the community became.
Roughly a century later the flats were falling into disrepair and being abandoned. Some of the flats still lacked bathrooms, and residents would go down the road to a bath house on Manor Place. In 1977, Southwark Council bought Pullens and by 1983 had demolished three blocks as part of their plan to pull the whole place down and erect a vast council estate in its place…
What they hadn’t taken into account was the strength of the bond between the remaining tenants, who didn’t want to move to the new Heygate and Aylesbury developments. Instead, they contacted SNOW (Squatters Network of Walworth) to repopulate the empty flats with squatters, then informed the council they were doing this to prevent demolition. ‘It was a vibrant community, a free, artistic group of people,’ Louisa remembers wistfully. It was also a hotbed of counterculture. Even the workshops played host to radical projects, which in turn boosted the profile of Pullens amongst squatter networks. But all this grassroots activity was getting in the way of the council’s plans.
‘It was a vibrant community, a free, artistic group of people,’
In the mid-1980s, clearly fed-up and probably embarrassed, Southwark council embarked on a large-scale mass eviction (sources estimate more that 60% of empty council property was being squatted). ‘When the council came with bailiffs and the police to pull everyone out of the flats, they had planned a live eviction. The first and last time they ever did it,’ Louisa chuckles. ‘They had to take it off the air because it completely backfired… The residents knew in advance, and it was like a medieval siege.’
Despite police squads breaking down doors with sledgehammers and what one chronicler described as ‘wall to wall FILTH’ in the form of bailiffs, it was impossible to make progress at Pullens. The doors were barricaded with barbed wire and concrete blocks; flour, paint and water bombs were hurled down on the intruders; ‘Anarchy in the UK’ played from inside fortified flats; while outside, council van tyres were slashed. Before sundown the community had already regrouped and re-squatted. The council was forced to give up, and eventually, most of the squatters were given tenancies.
Despite police squads breaking down doors with sledgehammers and what one chronicler described as ‘wall to wall FILTH’ in the form of bailiffs, it was impossible to make progress at Pullens.
Louisa’s café, which backs onto Iliffe Yard and serves the community, including the other two remaining Pullens workshop yards (Clements and Peacock). On a quiet Saturday morning, you don’t exactly hear birdsong… but you feel like you should. The sun brightens the yellow brick and cobbled roads of what are some of the last Victorian tenements left in London. Amazingly, excitingly, unbelievably, the workshops have survived as functioning studios for artists and craftspeople, thanks to the squatters who annexed them. Today, they are much safer thanks to their new conservation status, which was applied for by the residents and awarded in 2006.
As Louisa – informal guide and font of local knowledge – shows off the yards, a woman spraying ceramic vases waves at her. Another workshop door stands open, and Louisa pokes her head round to make introductions. This is the studio of Max Denison-Pender, a classically trained artist who is also artist-in-residence for Britain’s Olympic team. He’s recently back from a trip in the Amazonian jungle and his studio is an odyssey of green vistas glistening on imposing canvases. ‘I’ve been here seven years. It’s private, it’s very friendly. I haven’t seen anything else like this,’ he says. The smell of turpentine, the friend of the artist posing to be painted, the streaks of oil paint everywhere that lead Max to laughingly warn, ‘Don’t touch anything if you want your clothes to stay clean!’ are like a portal into the messy real world of art that we forget exists when we’re in the well-lit and Apple-device-strewn offices of Shoreditch’s creative agencies. It makes you want to breathe it all in.
Across the way is the workshop shared by bespoke tailor, Joe Holsgrove, and his brother, a stylist. Here, tools passed down from master to apprentice for generations lie on his worktable. ‘They’re all antique, but then so’s our craft!’ He points out, gently lifting each item in reverence. ‘It’s a historic British craft, and it’s a completely unchanged method, but we still make it relevant’.
‘Savile Row is important as a base for the industry, but if you have the reputation and the clientele to be somewhere else, why not? You don’t have to be on a destination street to uphold your craft.’ For Joe and his brother, there is the added beauty of a family link. His grandparents and his father were born in Walworth. He even remembers visiting the Open
‘Our crafts are tangible, not computer-based. Being around other people who make stuff you can’t help but be inspired, there’s a certain feel about the place.’
Studios as a child; it was where his parents procured most of their homeware. ‘For us it’s gone full circle, to be able to come back here and re-establish our family heritage in this specific location adds an interesting depth to what we’re doing.’
Everyone at Pullens Yards, including Louisa, who prides herself on her homemade cakes and soups (which I can personally vouch for) is creating in the physical world. As Joe notes, ‘Our crafts are tangible, not computer-based. Being around other people who make stuff you can’t help but be inspired, there’s a certain feel about the place.’
In a world so obsessed with sucking us into simulations and conditioning us to be extremely online, deciding to be a maker instead of a content creator is a bold move. Choosing to produce by hand, and in fact the whole concept of handmade, becomes infused with a little bit of that ‘80s Pullens punk spirit. Little wonder then, that this artistic oasis continues to flourish here.
You can visit Pullens Yards yourself, meet the craftspeople and browse their wares when they open their doors for the summer Studio Open Day on June 9th – 11th. And when you go, don’t forget to stop at Louisa’s café for refreshments afterwards. You’ll always get the warmest of welcomes.