History of building

The People's Museum is located in the Grade 2 listed Ossulston Estate, a unique LCC social housing project built between 1927 and 1931. The estate, inspired partly by Viennese social housing still catches the eye with its archways, courtyards and white facades; its steel-frame construction, not visible to the eye, was equally innovative. Cecil Levita, the chair of the London County Council’s Housing Committee, believed it ‘a noteworthy scheme which would mark a new departure in the construction of buildings’.

In other respects, it is a more conventional estate of its time – essentially a walk-up, balcony-access tenement block of a type very common in central London. Low-rise cottage estates remained the ideal for most but the need to clear inner-city slums and rehouse locally and at density those in Somers Town who lived in some of the worst housing in the capital compelled a multi-storey solution. It might uniquely have been a nine-storey scheme with lifts, unheard of in working-class dwellings of the era, had the original proposals of the London County Council to build a nine-storey, mixed-use, public-private scheme (featuring shops and offices, middle-class apartments as well as working-class tenements) proved viable.

http://lostfound.aspaceforus.club/sample-page/reformers/south-court-ossulston-estate/

The Museum is at 52 Phoenix Road, NW1 1ES, within the Ossulston Estate, and is open Wednesdays to Saturdays throughout the Festival.
www.aspaceforus.club

Museum Narratives

Community-led People’s Museum is 'A Space for Us' in Somers Town, an area facing huge development pressures - set up to preserve a sense of place and preserve working class memory and restitute stolen art. The result of 7 years work by a passionate group, the museum aims to record the change now, as well as to campaign and preserve local working class and social housing heritage - fascinating stories of ‘Radicals, Reformers and Un-Common People‘.

View our social housing 'living room', films of slum clearance and the St Pancras Housing Improvement Society's unique 'Housing is not enough' - not only high quality housing, but art, culture and education. Old photo albums, a pram, and a Pearly Queen suit celebrate Somers Town's community spirit. a Radical Wall shows the breadth of radicalism and com - feminist Wollstonecraft to PadAfricanist Padmore, to an anarchist press and communist Unity Theatre to local protests. Explore pamphlets, films posters in a small library specialising in this changing area of Somers Town/ Euston King's Cross.

This community museum has been set up by local residents with the aim of sustainable development of cities and civic society, and reducing inequality.

Books and T shirts available on donation.
Have a coffee and enjoy!

Save our art! work - Public realm designs Exhibition

This year you have a chance to view our designs to create an artwork in the public realm.
The trail designed with all female architecture group, editcollective, will be a contemporary reimagining of the lost 1930s working class heritage on social housing.
Sculptor Gilbert Bayes’ work was truly ‘art in everyday life’ – figures on posts for washing lines – making St Pancras Housing ‘fairytale estates’.
Tragically over 150 of these beautiful 1930s ceramics have disappeared – selling at auctions.

And you can help – we’ve already raised funds to buy back two from auction so please help us restore these artworks to the area they were intended for.
Please support us when you visit.