• SE1 Stories visits Battersea

    For the month of April (2026) the ‘Blackfriars SE1 in the 1970s’ exhibition has moved west to Battersea Arts Centre. It is set up in the waiting room, just off the foyer and next to the cafe – please do use the tables and chairs to eat your lunch, sip your coffee etc!

    Wide angle view of the exhibition at BAC

  • George Nicholson, a major SE1 figure

    George Nicholson, a key member of the SE1 Stories group and an important figure in the battle for social housing in North Southwark, has died after a short illness. He played a vital role in obtaining funding to put together the SE1 Stories exhibition, and had previously served as both a Southwark and GLC councillor for the area. We have a fuller obituary piece here.

  • The SE1 story continues

    In three years since the public launch of ‘SE1 Stories’ in October 2021, the display has been at 18 different venues – visiting two twice – and includes two neighbourhood centres, two church halls, three colleges, two art galleries (including Tate Modern), five libraries/heritage centres, three leisure centres and Southwark Town Hall.

    A protest and occupation demanding homes at social rents not offices, for the Hays Wharf redevelopment in the early 1980s. (Photo by George Nicholson)

    Over that time the connections to current local campaigns have become ever more obvious and urgent. As a result the SE1 Stories group has put together a further two panels to reflect this, with input from people active now. These can be viewed with the original 12 exhibition panels, SE1 Community Newspaper samples and artefacts either at the current venue or see the pdfs on our web page.

    The two pictures here are examples of the campaigns across the decades calling for more low cost housing in north Southwark.

    The campaign today against the loss of social housing from the Elephant and Castle and the Heygate Estate. (Photo courtesy of Latin Elephant)

    For more, see websites from Latin Elephant, Aylesham Community Action, 35 per cent or others listed on our SE1 Today web page.

    Note: the original grant from Southwark Council has been fully spent on the original exhibition production and moving costs between venues (15 out of 20 showings have been in the borough). Further resources have been found for the additional material, while more funding is likely to be needed to complete the cataloguing and digitisation work which is just beginning on the photographic archive, and hopefully making the content more publicly accessible.

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SE1 Stories – a record of community struggles

Telling the story of an extraordinary period of community action in the 1970s and 1980s in Blackfriars, Waterloo and North Southwark, along London’s south bank.

For many it was a fight for survival as businesses moved out and developers eyed up land for office development, leaving isolated communities struggling to maintain their way of life, coping with run-down housing and threats to facilities such as chemists and laundrettes. Very much the same pressures are re-emerging now – and there is the same need for community action.

Photography

Intrepid photographers captured a lot of the activity, which was then published in SE1’s own community newspaper. Many of the photographs are now held in private and public collections, particularly council local history archives, perhaps you know of others hidden elsewhere.

The first project based on this material is the exhibition Blackfriars SE1 in the 1970s.

Please see the About Us page for more.