Letters to the Art System

Campaigners find a weapon in Tudor land grant

Residents 'go independent' to beat skyscraper

Campaigners find a weapon in Tudor land grant

Vanessa Thorpe, arts correspondent
Sunday May 11, 2008

Observer

Residents fighting plans for a new Norman Foster-designed skyscraper in central London intend to declare 'independence' to prevent it being built in their small parish of Norton Folgate.

Like the fictional residents of Pimlico in the Ealing comedy, Passport to Pimlico, opponents claim they could have an ancient right to self-determination which they will use to stop Bishop's Place, a £700m scheme by property developer Hammerson.

They say maps uncovered in the City of London's Guildhall Library show that Norton Folgate still has the status of a distinct district and that its historic boundary gives them the right to resist central planning law in the capital.

The scheme would create 645,000 sq ft of offices, 310 flats and a hotel. Standing next to Liverpool Street's new Broadgate Tower, it will be a similar height and has been approved by Hackney council. It is destined for a corner of the area Railtrack sold to Hammerson six years ago.

The area, which lies between Bishopsgate and Shoreditch, was originally the precinct of the Priory and Hospital of St Mary Spital. When the land reverted to the Crown during the Reformation, a small extra-parochial 'liberty' retained its separate status and came under the jurisdiction of the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's Cathedral. In Elizabethan times it was a popular haunt for artists and writers because it was outside the walls of the City and escaped its jurisdiction. Playwrights Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson lived in the parish.

It was thought the liberty had been abolished in 1900, but the newly uncovered documents cast doubt over whether it was ever properly abolished.

Support for the campaign to preserve the area from more skyscrapers comes from English Heritage, Cabe (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment), the Georgian Group, the Spitalfields Trust and, unexpectedly, from the singer Suggs, frontman of the band Madness, who is about to release an album and a song called 'The Liberty of Norton Folgate'. The skyscraper would mean the demolition of a Victorian electricity generation site known as The Light and run as a bar. Five thousand have signed a Save the Light petition.

Levellers, True Levellers, and The Diggers of 1649

Thinking about the "idea" of private property.

Levellers, True Levellers, and The Diggers of 1649 (1 of 3)

Levellers, True Levellers, and The Diggers of 1649 (2 of 3)

Levellers, True Levellers, and The Diggers of 1649 (3 of 3)

The Levellers were a relatively loose alliance of radicals and freethinkers who came to prominence during the period of instability that characterized the English Civil War of 1642 - 1649.

What bound these people together was the general belief that all men were equal; since this was the case, then a government could only have legitimacy if it was elected by the people. The Leveller demands were for a secular republic, abolition of the House of Lords, equality before the law, the right to vote for all, free trade, the abolition of censorship, freedom of speech, the abolition of tithes and tolls, and the absolute right for people to worship whatever religion they chose, or none at all. This program was published as "The Agreement of the People".