• IN his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell famously invented three Party slogans: War is peace, Freedom is slavery, Ignorance is strength.

In two years of public consultation on redeveloping the 10-acre Holloway Prison for Women, Peabody Trust and its consultants have nearly equalled Orwell in linguistic inventiveness: A floor is a building, Exhibition is communication, Erasure is legacy.

Peabody’s consultation with community and women’s groups in Islington has been at best inept and at worst arrogant.

Its latest masterplan and questionnaire which went live on July 9, a generous 18 hours after local groups were invited to “comment” on them, continue in the same vein.

Peabody is still describing a single floor tucked away in a tower block as a “Women’s Building”.

Unless their architects AHMM have a Tardis technology they haven’t yet shared with us, Peabody expects people to accept that ‘A floor is a building’ (so long as it is dedicated to services for women).

In place of public discussions Peabody has offered “exhibitions” (their term).

In the pre-pandemic exhibition, yellow stickies and stubby pencils were helpfully provided for comments; the latest online version makes it even easier for us with questions like Number 12: “Islington would like to see housing – and affordable housing – as a priority for the site, do you agree with this?” (No I honestly think it should be rebuilt as an adventure theme park called Borisland…).

For Peabody then, ‘Exhibition is communication’ (so long as communication is one-way).

Finally the masterplan assumes the citizens of Islington, London, and the UK are desperate to forget the tens of thousands of women banged up in Holloway between 1852 (the year George Peabody first started building houses for London’s poor) and 2016: the suffragettes, the Greenham Common protesters, the mothers and sisters and children, those who worked there, those who died there.

Physical reminders of the past? Historical references in names? Virtually nothing.

For Peabody ‘Erasure is legacy’ (don’t mention the prison).

Fortunately the architectural profession seems to be waking up to the massive missed opportunity in front of us.

Take, for example, an online comment in the journal Building Design that appeared hours after the new masterplan was first reported: “It has all the aesthetics of a barracks.

“Sorry Peabody and AHMM you can do so much better.”

Let’s hope they do, and that despite its inadequacies Peabody’s consultation receives a huge response.

ANDREW WILSON
Tavistock Terrace, N19