The Cloudesley Square Residents Association, a forerunner of our own association, was active during the first half of the 1980s and deserves to be celebrated for its many positive achievements which those of us living in the Square today may take for granted.
The Association had its own rather attractive logo (see above) and was set up by a group of stalwart residents, pioneers of the gentrification process which turned the Square from its derelict state at that time into its present-day splendour. The first page of the 1984 Annual General Meeting, which is reproduced here, serves both to identify many Association members of that time and also to give a flavour of some of their major preoccupations. One such was a five-year battle over noise, particularly, but also other unneighbourly activities associated with the Celestial Church of Christ which leased Holy Trinity Church from the London Diocese. This culminated in a high court writ in 1985, financed by the residents themselves, after which there appears to have been some improvement and an uneasy truce until the Celestials finally moved on in 2018.
Other major achievements of the Association included:
- Planting trees in the Square, largely paid for by the residents themselves!
- Reinstating the railings around the church and in front of many of the houses.
- Replacing the rather ugly concrete street lamps of the time with the much more attractive traditional ones we enjoy today.
- Persuading the Council and others to do something about derelict housing, rubbish, squatters and the feral children of Stonefield Street!
- Policing the traffic management scheme and introducing residents parking. Interestingly, residents were initially split over this but parking in the Square by, for example, Post Office workers, lorries on their way to Smithfield, visitors to the Crown pub and market traders became such a problem that the present residents parking scheme won the day.
The "before and after" images below illustrate why we owe a debt of gratitude to the Association and its doughty members!
