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Piers Plowright |
30 years on, magnificent Burgh House rescue
BURGH House celebrated its 30th birthday on Saturday with Shakespearian flourishes and stirring tributes to “The Magnificent Seven” community activists whose heroic efforts saved the splendid Grade I listed building from oblivion in 1979.
The birthday party also marked the opening of an exhibition about the struggle to save Burgh House, which includes some fascinating oral history recordings available to visitors, funded by the Heritage Lottery Board.
Back in 1978, Camden Council was all set to sell the house, in New End Square, Hampstead, on the commercial market as offices, but the Hampstead community thought otherwise.
Led by David Sullivan QC, Peggy Jay, lawyer Kit Ikin, local historian Christopher Wade, Gerry Isaaman, Peter Wallis and Dr Michael Black, they formed a community trust and embarked on a major fundraising campaign to pay for the works required to the house.
“These are tales of forgotten things and battles long ago,” Mr Sullivan, the first chairman of the Burgh House Trust, told a packed music room at the house on Saturday. “There was an amazing buzz in Hampstead at the time, and I remember thinking, ‘Now all the youth of Hampstead are afire!’”
He recounted how he and Kit Ikin had gone to see the Charity Commission and had the Trust registered as a charity in 24 hours. Eventually, the house opened as a community arts centre and museum on St Crispin’s Day, October 25, in 1979.
The story was then taken up by Christopher Wade, the only other member of the Magnificent Seven able to be present – three have since died. Mr Wade and his late wife, Diana, became honorary curators of the Hampstead Museum.
“We were faced with this big 300-year-old building that was completely empty,” said Mr Wade. “We didn’t have any furniture at all, so we borrowed some from the restorers George Amos and Sons in New End Square, and everything had discreet price tags on them.”
The party then listened to a poem about Burgh House written and read by former BBC radio producer Piers Plowright, originally written in 1997 and recently updated for this occasion.
‘The brave!’ Plowright’s tribute
That was the last time shaded lamps would shine
For forty years.
Two bombs went wide,
Few tears
Were shed for the old place,
Advice and shiny chairs
For functions filled its echoing rooms,
Till silence settled on an empty space…
From which we all stand rescued
By the brave,
A home for music, colour, words.
Like Plato’s cave,
We sense the brightness of the things
We crave,
Cast on these walls as shadows:
Gospels, diets, kings. |
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