The Pack*Art team dressed for the 1970s

JUST eight years after it was built, the Pack, as the 1970s Brutalist estate was known by locals, was already being described by an Old Bailey judge as “a notorious running point for delinquent activities”.

And for many the Packington estate, set back from Essex Road near the Angel, had already become a place synonymous with crime and anti-social behaviour.

But for the families who lived there it was home, until its demolition started in 2008.

And last Friday a love letter to the old estate was published: a book filled with the memories gathered from locals about their lives there before a wrecking ball brought the “concrete jungle” down.

Jean Smith with her daughter Tracey and the book

Yasemin Der, 30, who grew up there, is one of five women behind the book, called That’s Not How I Remember It, produced by community art programme Pack*Art.

Describing how it felt to watch the blocks knocked to the ground, she said: “It’s a little bit heartbreaking, because you grew up in this house, your whole life and all these memories that you have growing up and like some ­people in your ­family are passed on, so it’s like you’re leaving a part of them behind kind of thing.”

She said “100 per cent” of people would have chosen to stay in the old building if they could have.

Yasemin Der

In 2003, a structural survey found that the buildings were unsafe and could “fall like dominoes” if there was a gas explosion in one of them.

Explaining how the project got started, Pack*Art member Charise Johnson said: “Basically, it literally came from we went to the library, we read, we did some looking through old newspapers about this place. One of us, I think it was Yas, was like – because it was all negative, very negative, it was just like ‘This place is a dump, lots of violence, racism’ – and Yas was like ‘Yeah, but that’s not how I remember it.’”

Islington’s mayor, Councillor Marian Spall, was joined by a lot of the Pack’s original faces at the Packington estate community hall, the Arc, on Friday to launch the book with some classic 70s hors d’oeuvres – including pineapple and cheese sticks – pink bubbles and paisley prints.

The Packington estate

Jean Smith, 85, who was the first tenant on the old estate with her late husband George, said: “I loved the building. I wish I was back in there. I think the book’s lovely, it’s a part of us.”

Built in 1970 after a series of Victorian terraced houses were pulled down, the area was first known as the Clothworkers’ Packington estate after Dame Anne Pakington bequeathed her Islington land to the Clothworkers’ Company in 1560.

Tracey Smith, Jean’s daughter, who recalled playing out on the estate with friends, said: “It was such a sad day when they did pull it down.

“Because it’s like, you know, your whole life has been on Pack so you know, we’re all Pack Girls. You can take the girl out of the Pack but you’re going to be Pack and Islington all your life. I think it gave you a lot of confidence.

“It kind of built who I am today.”