I rented a one-bedroom flat in the Barbican between 1972 and 1977 (‘A brutalist hanging gardens of Babylon’ – the maddening, miraculous Barbican hits 40, 1 March). The rent was fixed for those five years at £1,000 per annum (I think I was earning £4,000 around then). I was the first person to live in the flat, and at the time the massive concrete support pillars were still being hand-hammered to give them their brutalist effect.
This was, of course, well before the arts complex was begun. I had a marketing brochure that, amazingly, suggested that the location was ideal for nurses at St Barts, postal workers at St Paul’s sorting office and porters at Smithfield. Yes, it would have been ideal – but I don’t remember meeting any of those folk.
William Edmead
Ashford, Kent
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