If you know the Manor House Warehouses between Finsbury Park and South Tottenham then I hope you’ll recognise this view looking south from the warehouses at Cara House and across towards the Woodberry Down Estate.
If you don’t know Manor House Warehouses though, it might be harder to understand the significance of this cluster of old workshops, industrial units, and office buildings to London’s creative population, and what the redevelopment of the Woodberry Down estate from a run-down social housing development into the usual muddle of ‘luxury apartments’ means for London’s creative ability.
I wanted to capture this in an oil painting now, because a) I used to live in Cara House and it’s fun to paint my old place! and b) because it feels like a good visual explainer of the tension in London between the cost of land and property… and the needs of the people who’s life and work doesn’t fit well into a city where property has become a global commodity.
In my 20’s I was lucky enough to spend a couple of years living in the warehouses back in the 2010’s, drawn to this place through the reputation of these warehouses being one of the only ways to affordably live in London and have access to enough physical work space, noise tolerant neighbours, and the intentional community of artists, creatives, and makers who have made a home here since the 1990s. With studio space costing so much in the city, living communally with 10-20 people in a converted live/work warehouse is one of the few ways for normal people to afford it.
But as with everything in London the immense pressure for more housing, and the relentless creep of redevelopment has meant the Warehouse community is continually been under threat of their demolition in favour of modern apartment buildings. Although they’ve recently won a council battle to stop the current planning applications, I feel like the redevelopment of the Woodberry Down Estate in the last few years has lifted million pound apartments right the edges of this old industrial area… and there they now stand hovering ominously over the future of these creative spaces.
