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Chapter 5 Conceptions and Representations of Home   
 
This chapter focuses on residents? attitudes to the interior space of the home itself, 
and, through a process of intimate domestic ethnography, explores the extent to which 
its boundaries are experienced as both secure and permeable.  While the home 
constitutes the first and most personal point of engagement with the wider physical 
environment, it also represents through its material culture a microcosm of an 
individual or household?s relationships with the world beyond its walls, which may 
only be truly experienced through a contrasting state of mobility.  The following 
material shows how residents? conceptualisation of an idea of home within the 
Brunswick is elaborated through the construction of narratives of self-identity 
focussed on work, family, friends, status and ethnicity, which may be seen as 
independent of any particular conception of ?community? at the Brunswick itself, but 
at the same time fundamentally shape and are shaped by a sense of emplacement at 
the Brunswick as a physical and social setting, and as experienced in contrast to 
?other? places. 
 
5.1. The idea of home and ?elsewhere? 
June says: ?Making a home, or creating a home, sounds as if you have a conscious 
concept before you started?.  She is adamant that the concept of ?making a home?, as 
such, in her flat at the Brunswick is one which ?to me does not apply? I don?t 
consciously create a home, the home happens around me.?   She regards her flat less 
as a space to be worked on and shaped in the image of the inhabitant, than as a given 
container for personal belongings, where the latter are intrinsically more important 
than the space itself.  ?I think that where you live and where your familiar objects are, 
your lares and penates, is where home is?, June says.  However, it cannot truly be 
experienced as home except in relation to other places which are ?not home? ? 
because one?s ?familiar objects? are absent from them.  Hence the idea of home as a 
permanent focus of belonging and self-identity is realised less through longevity of 
residence than an experience of mobility.  June makes many journeys away from 
home, visiting friends in other parts of the country and abroad, because, ?to come back 
home is my main thing in life really -  that?s why I go away.?   
 June cannot relate to her neighbour downstairs, who has realised her idea of 
home through a process of expensive structural alterations to her flat, which she has 
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comprehensively reshaped.  It is now a cohesive and integrated space which 
specifically accommodates her personal living requirements, conceived as a detailed 
programme rather than simply a collection of things.  It is the flat itself which 
represents ?home? as much, if not more so, than the ?familiar things? inside it.  June 
has not adjusted the basic shape and form of her flat in any way, largely because, as 
she points out, she herself is not an expert in wielding a Black and Decker drill, and 
she would not consider getting in any outside help or expertise.  Home-making in her 
case is a question of arranging her personal things around her, within the given 
constraints of the flat.  As the space itself is limited, she limits her belongings quite 
strictly, and excludes everything that is not there ?for some reason?, in the sense of 
representing some aspect of her life. 
 Home is conceived by June as fundamentally an interior experience of things, 
which is relatively disconnected from an awareness of the external environs of the 
flat.  Although she enjoys the view from the windows towards the hotel on 
Southampton Row and the trees on Bernard Street, she does not use her balcony very 
much except as a place for her plants, and resolutely avoids any explicit identification 
of her ?home? with an idea of the Brunswick itself ? rather, it is a home which 
transcends immediate locality, connected by June?s material things to aspects of her 
life which relate to cultural and social activities in ?central London? and further afield.  
It is a highly personalised zone, the contents of which all represent different, carefully 
edited, aspects of June?s own life over the course of time.  
 Home is a fixed point, an enduring constellation of embodied memories and 
associations, which is always there to come back to.   June suggests that she goes 
away not so much to see her friends but in order to reproduce the experience of 
coming back home each time.  Home can only be truly experienced in relationship to 
other far-away places, and when June travels abroad she will bring back artefacts 
from those ?other? places, embodiments of ?non-home?, and recontextualise them 
within her own space to become integral elements of her domestic environment as a 
representation of herself in the wider world.  As things, her ?lares and penates?, they 
in turn become signifiers of the idea of  home itself.  
 Mobility away from and outside the home is important in defining an idea of 
home, as a fixed point of return, for most residents.  Mobility delineates the 
relationship between interior and exterior, continuity and transience.   Journeys may 
be local, or more far-flung, but they serve the same purpose of reinforcing a sense, 
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albeit in varying degrees, of geographical and social emplacement. Even though Bob 
has been retired for nearly 20 years now, he still makes a point of leaving the house 
each morning, and returning around 6 o?clock at night, having spent the day in 
libraries, his clubs, doing a course, or working voluntarily as a city guide at local sites 
of historic interest such as Lincoln?s Inn Fields or St Paul?s Cathedral.  He will also 
take early morning and evening walks in the local squares with his dog.  By contrast, 
his sister doesn?t go anywhere, except when she has hospital appointments ? partly 
because of her physical ailments, which make mobility difficult for her, but also 
because she has always been based at home, looking after their elderly mother when 
she was alive, and working on piecework as an embroideress in the lounge.  For Bob, 
Jean is an integral part of the home-world which he experiences as a place to leave 
and come back to each day. 
 Ruth and Lynn, like June, have travelled far afield, bringing back mementoes 
from their trips to incorporate within their homes.  One of Ruth?s favourite artefacts is 
a coffee sack from Costa Rica, given to her by her best friend to fill up her otherwise 
empty suitcase on her return home.  She also has various dusty items on a high shelf, 
so dusty that she can hardly tell what they are.  But the important thing is that they are 
there, regardless of whether they are visible or readable as a display as such.  They 
serve a personal narrational purpose, rather than a desire to make a public statement.  
For Ruth, the idea of home is one of a launching point from which to go out into the 
world and engage in the various activities and campaigns which she is dedicated to, 
and which are represented by various artefacts inside her flat, rather than a focus in 
itself for intellectual and social investment.   
 Lynn has a hubble-bubble pipe from Palestine prominently displayed next to 
her sofa, but she says she has been taken aback by the fact that she hasn?t used it once 
since she got home from her last trip there.  She had imagined she would spend 
sociable evenings at home with friends, smoking on the hubble-bubble and chatting.  
But although it is not used, the pipe serves an important symbolic purpose, as an 
embodiment of her passionate involvement with a world away from her home at the 
Brunswick, which she has embraced within her interior space.  
 Lynn is in the process of completely rethinking the idea of home.  Now that 
her son has left, and her disillusion with the changes at the Brunswick has grown, she 
is contemplating the idea of living in a completely different way: ?I do want to live 
differently?I?ve really rethought, what do I need to do with my life right now.?  She 
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has considered options such as a communal life at a place like the Findhorn 
Community in Scotland, though she thinks this would not be right for her.  But her 
problem is that she is very attached to the idea of her home, as a place ?That I come to 
for my peace and my getting away from things.?  She is frustrated by her emotional 
attachment to it: ?I?ve fallen in love with my flat - that?s so sad!?  But she also values 
it highly as an interior, personal world to which she can escape from the busy, and 
potentially invasive, social world outside.  She underlines the difference between her 
experience of her flat as a true ?home?, and the experience of somebody like David 
Levitt, the architect for the refurbishment, who has bought a flat at the Brunswick to 
use as a pied-a-terre, while maintaining another home in Oxford.   As Lynn says, 
?that?s very different?, implying that he simply would not be able to understand the 
depth of her attachment to her flat at the Brunswick as a home, and the profound 
impact on her relationship with her home of the refurbishment work. 
 Conal is another resident who has strong links with ?elsewhere? ? in his case 
Greece, which is represented in numerous pictures and artefacts in his flat.  The front 
door is painted blue, because ?it?s meant to be slightly Greek?.  Again, his sense of 
home at the Brunswick seems to be largely defined by his journeys away from it and 
its significance as a point of return from elsewhere.  For Gloria, by contrast, the flat 
she has occupied at the Brunswick since it opened is inextricably tied up with an idea 
of her ?roots? in the area, and is notably devoid of any references to travels abroad. 
?Mobility? as a concept doesn?t seem to surface in conversation.  Although she 
mentions that as a young woman she lived in America for a while, she has scarcely 
travelled since, and firmly states: ?the more I?m here, the more I?ll stay.? 
 Gloria?s sense of home is intensely localised ? to the extent that Putney, in 
south-west London, where her daughter lives is seen as alien territory, and she always 
speaks of ?Holborn? rather than the more abstract ?central London?, or West End, 
referred to by other residents.   She describes her future life at the Brunswick as ?the 
oldest lady in the village?.?, evoking a tightly-knit community in a traditional 
landscape.   Yet she too, it transpires, has her ?elsewhere? ? a mobile home in Kent 
which she disappears to when she gets the opportunity, sometimes with a friend.  
However, she experiences perhaps the greatest pleasure in coming back.  ?I love 
getting on, is it a 38 bus? If I come back from Kent? or even if you get a taxi back?, 
because she loves the journey through London, taking in all the history, ?a lot of 
history?, which leads to her home at the Brunswick, as an integral part of that history. 
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 Annie and Anthony also have a caravan which they keep down on the south 
coast and use for holidays.  They have several models of it ? ?nice reminders? ? 
displayed in their living-room, along with a painting of the location where they keep 
it: ?I love that painting because it makes me think of going down to the caravan.?  
They say the children love being in the country on a farm: ?that?s what?s so nice when 
we go away, that we escape? that?s what holidays are for.?  But they would never 
want to leave their Brunswick home: ?We?re determined to stay?.   Their caravan 
existence complements their life at the Brunswick, the caravan itself forms an 
extension of the home space, but the time they spend in it also emphasises their sense 
of belonging and emplacement when they return to the flat. 
  If there was an idea that the Brunswick flats would be occupied by 
?urbanites?, using their flats as little more than base-camps for a more expansive life 
out in the city ? or, as Kevin puts it, ?people who just worked in London and went 
home at the weekends? -  then there is evidence that residents do invest in their flats as 
proper ?homes?, as focal points of belonging and identity, in a more profound sense.  
Kevin claims: ?I never say I?m going back home when I come to London [from 
summer holidays in Ireland]? where I live this is my house, my flat, but no it?s not my 
home?; but in the same breath he declares with absolute certainty that he feels ?very 
much? at home in his flat: ?I look forward to coming back. Oh absolutely, yeah.?  
While Ireland may be ?home? in a grand original sense, the flat at the Brunswick is 
home in a real-life, day-to-day basis, and all the more so for the fact that it is the point 
of return after each of those Irish summer holidays. 
 But although holidays themselves provide opportunities to leave and return to 
the Brunswick, part of the Brunswick?s particular appeal is the fact that it has ?a 
holiday feel? itself, as Gloria puts it.  Her words reflect a common perception that, 
whatever the problems of living there, the architecture has a quality which lifts it out 
of the everyday and the ordinary.  While some people, like Lynn, compare it to a ?big 
ship?, or a cruise ship, carrying its passengers on a leisurely journey somewhere else, 
others describe it as having a ?continental?, or a ?Mediterranean? feel ? the quality of 
a holiday location.  For Kevin, it is ?like a Greek island? ? or will be, when the 
external paintwork and re-planting is finished.  When Gloria moved in, she ?had the 
feeling that once the good weather came it was almost like being on a holiday?; so 
much so that she was tempted to tile the floors throughout ? Mediterranean style - 
until her mother suggested it might not be safe for her young daughter, and she 
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resigned herself to conventional British carpeting, with parquet flooring in the hall, 
laid by a man from Camden Town.  For her, the flat, and the Brunswick as a whole, 
has a ?fabulous?, ?unique?, and festive dimension which is uplifting in much the same 
way as the experience of going on holiday, while also providing permanence and 
security, ?roots?, in a community she belongs to and is known to.  
  
5.2. Representations of identity within the home 
5.2.1 ?home? and ?work? 
Notwithstanding Gloria?s evocation of the Mediterranean in her description of her 
environs, she has furnished her flat with what she describes as ?very old-fashioned 
furniture? entirely sourced in the local area, notably a shop called Simmonds, just 
north of the Euston Rd, which sold secondhand furniture. Her two armchairs came 
originally from a ?gentleman?s club? in St James?s, and she had them re-covered.  
Other furniture comes from her old flat on Great Ormond Street, while the bedroom 
furniture is ?only MFI stuff or something like that? but it suits me down to the 
ground.?  The flat is wallpapered, with floral prints and ?antique? ornaments on 
display, alongside a large collection of photographic portraits of her daughter, the 
comedienne.  She has screened her radiator behind a decorative wooden casing, 
because it was such a ?big, ugly thing?.   
 Gloria?s flat represents a Victorian-Edwardian ideal of traditional, hierarchical 
domesticity, completely separated from the world of work.  It is upholstered, 
decorated and homely, precisely the characteristics that Modernism rejected in its re-
 casting of the home as a hygienic, functionalist working environment.  Gloria says 
that ?if I were to go into an ultra-modern all chrome and glass flat, then I would go 
for what toned in, what the flat called for?, implying that she does not consider the 
design of this flat particularly ?modern?, even though the Brunswick was ?unique? and 
a ?showpiece? in architectural terms ? ahead of its time.  But her real preoccupation 
seems to be with dressing things up (including herself) to give a sense of ?warmth?, 
which she cannot find in the more functional, minimal ?modern stuff? for which her 
mother had the greater preference. The reason she has used wallpaper in the bedroom 
is because ?emulsion can be a bit cold?, and it seems unlikely she could ever feel 
comfortable in an ?ultra-modern? flat.  The idea of warmth, implicit to her sense of 
?being on a [Mediterranean] holiday?, is also implicit to her idea of homeliness and 
domesticity, and expressed in her choice of furnishings for the flat. 
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 Conversely, Gloria is shocked by some of the flats she?s seen at the Brunswick 
which are ?like glorified offices, they look like offices, I think, there?s no semblance of 
a home. It seems odd.?  By contrast with hers, they are ?cold?, and her description of 
them as office-like is a clear criticism.   They blur the distinction between work and 
domesticity, in a way which is antithetical to her own concept of home.  Her 
comments are echoed in Amanda?s criticism of Rob?s flat on exactly the same 
grounds ? it looks clinical, ?like an office?, with its grey metallic Venetian blinds 
(cold) where a proper ?home? would have curtains (warm), regardless of the 
architectural aesthetic of the building as a whole.  For Rob, on the other hand, whose 
work is fundamental to his sense of identity and control over life, it is a ?comfortable? 
environment with a pleasant neutrality, the walls left as a ?blank canvas? do not give 
away too much about the identity of the occupants to others, and hold out potential for 
the inhabitants themselves - the possibility of future evolution.  Gloria, by contrast, 
would see that as a failure of ?self-expression? ? and, as she says, ?if you can?t express 
yourself in a room this size [the living-room] then there must be something wrong 
with you.?  It is, no less, a form of dysfunctionality, though a different kind from that 
of her neighbour who not only smells, but also has no furniture to speak of in his flat, 
and sits upright in a chair to sleep at night.  It represents a condition of blurred 
boundaries between domesticity and work which result in a misrepresentation of 
?home?. 
 If the concepts of ?home? and ?office? represent two opposing poles of 
representation in the interior realm of the Brunswick, then Lana?s concept of home 
represented as ?workshop? falls somewhere in between.  In contrast to Gloria, she has 
completely rejected the old-fashioned furniture she had in her old flat, regardless of 
family associations ? ?rather heavy old dark furniture, hand-me-downs and things.  
From the family.?  She says, ?I didn?t want the country look here?, but also she had 
developed a complete horror of the idea of traditional old buildings, which she had 
come to equate with heavy repair bills and continuous financial outlay:  ?ivy creeping 
up and eating bits of mortar?, internal cornices and mouldings, the sight of which 
causes her to ?wince?, to ?feel sick?.  She specifically wanted to live in a place which 
was more fluid, less defined, where the edges between spaces could be blurred, and 
pictures on her walls will bleach in the sun, ?change all the time?.  She didn?t want to 
be confronted by spaces which were ?asking you to make [them] proper? any more, 
and she didn?t want to feel any pressure to put her space and herself on public display, 
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contrasting her own situation with ?those houses in Holland which are there to show 
everybody how clean and tidy and respectable they are.? 
 Lana?s architect friends tried to redesign her flat for her as a bright, clean 
modernist space, but she woke up one morning and realised she didn?t want that 
either: what she wanted was a ?utilitarian space?: ?I like the idea of my flat being like 
a workshop.?  She has consciously abandoned the idea of ?homeyness?, except in one 
small area, the entrance hall, represented by a piano, and gone back to her original 
?perfect space?, the one ?huge room?, with ?a bed, bookcase, painting corner. Eating 
bit. Sink? that she lived in when she first came to London.  She also draws a 
comparison with the way that people live in France, at least as represented in the 
movies: ?you know how they all live in flats, in very tight spaces.  I thought I really 
like that idea, with the bookcase and this wall around you, and then you eat?. 
Surrounded by your books?. 
 Lana?s neighbour, who she describes as being like one of her aunties from 
Pinner, thinks Lana lives like a student. ?She?s not being critical, but in her eyes it 
doesn?t acknowledge conventional traditional notions of space.?   Susan, a few doors 
down from Lana, describes her own flat, when she moved in, as being like ?your 
granny?s flat? all very smart, not our taste.  Quite wallpapered, Joan cleaned every 
other day.?  The choice of fabrics and papers also made it feel ?like staying in a bed 
and breakfast.?  Susan?s neighbour, a ?proper old lady, about 80? lives in a flat which 
is ?always immaculate, a great big 3-piece suite? carpet? so plush.?  By contrast, 
Susan, like Lana, has made her flat less ?proper?, more of a ?hotchpotch of things?, not 
even ?the sort of look you would have designed?. 
 Lana has emphasised the fluid, unfixed sense of overlapping activities that she 
wants to achieve in her flat by putting most of her furniture on wheels, so that it can 
be moved around as she likes.  She uses one of her bedrooms as a studio, and her 
living-room provides a gallery space for her paintings and her son?s and her partner?s 
photographic works.  In a very real sense, her flat is a place and a focus of work, a 
real ?workshop?, as well as a home.  It does transgress conventional ideas of 
appropriate separation between home and office, home as a retreat from work; and 
also, it does not meet the conventional expectations that a home should be the locus of 
intimate, caring social relations.  Lana and her partner James, who lives downstairs, 
have made a clear decision that they do not wish to live and share a home together: 
?we like it that way.?  For both of them, in their respective identities as artist and 
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photographer, their homes are most important as safe, private places in which to 
explore and develop their creative identities through their work, and not as a focus for 
intimate relationships of the sort which they have both rejected at previous stages of 
their lives.  But at the same time, they are spatially linked and connected within the 
larger framework of the Brunswick as ?home? and a common space of belonging. 
For most long-term residents of the Brunswick, the convention of separating 
home and work is still respected, but there are an increasing number of others whose 
representation of home within their flats is thoroughly mixed up with narratives of 
work, often of an artistic/ creative variety.  On the one hand, there is somebody like 
Jean, who has always worked from home as an embroideress, which fitted in with her 
other ?work? as carer for her elderly housebound mother, but was always maintained 
as a distinct activity separate from the traditional, domestic identity of the ?home? 
itself.   But for many newcomers, the presence of work, as an important form of self-
 identity combined with a means of earning a living, is fundamental to the 
representation of home, and there is in some sense a self-conscious effort to blur the 
conceptual segmentation between private and public lives, even though the physical 
boundaries between home and exterior may be quite firmly delineated and 
maintained. 
 Conal and James both work in offices from their homes, as does Susan?s 
boyfriend, though he will have to move out soon to make way for their baby?s 
sleeping arrangements.  Conal?s ?end bedroom? has been transformed into a 
study/office crammed with books, files, drawing equipment and a computer, and a 
number of his architectural models are on display in the living-room, mainly because 
he has nowhere else to put them.  His late partner Mary used to paint from the flat, 
and many of her paintings are displayed on the walls, while her painting-box, made by 
Conal to store her equipment in, still has pride of place next to the sofa in the living-
 room.  James has carved out a bit of the main bedroom to create a darkroom where he 
can develop his photographs, and in his second bedroom he has a desk and computer.  
Part of the storage/display unit he made for his living-room is designed for hanging 
prints to dry.  There is evidence of his work throughout the flat, photographs on the 
walls, cameras stored in cases on shelving above the doorways in the halls.  Susan?s 
boyfriend has been using the second bedroom as an office, working at a desk where a 
desktop computer is installed.  This is complemented by a second laptop computer 
which moves around the flat as required. Annie and Anthony similarly have a laptop 
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computer at home which can be used in whatever location is most convenient, but 
since Annie started a full-time job on a magazine she has moved her old school desk, 
made by her father, into the bedroom from the living-room, which is where she used 
to do her freelance work.  It has been replaced by an electronic piano, part of a plan 
for their daughters to have piano lessons, the project of bringing up their children as 
another form of ?work?. 
 Annie and Anthony have made efforts to move evidence of the actual activity 
of their work-as-livelihood away from the living-room, and to replace that a narrative 
which is more about the project of family life ? while at the same time maintaining 
various signs and symbols of their work interests and status within the space in the 
form of designed objects such as the Ingo Maurer lampshade or the Aalto trolley.  
These objects quickly tell the informed observer that the occupants of the flat have an 
educated taste and some kind of expertise in design: ?our taste is a cleaner, more 
modernist sort of outlook on things? we?re interested in [design culture] and that?s 
our jobs.?   By contrast, Ruth?s living-room is overrun by papers associated with her 
various areas of campaign work, and is very clearly less of a social space than an 
active work-space, even though she is retired.  But at the same time, there is little 
sense that she is intentionally placing her work on display.  Rather, it is a question of 
inadequate accommodation.  June also feels her life is overwhelmed by papers, but 
makes concerted efforts to confine them to her bedroom, and not let them spill over 
into her living-room.  Her work activities are conceived as a private affair, not 
something which she wants to turn into a any kind of public statement of identity.  As 
she says, in a slightly different context, ?I don?t believe in inflicting one?s ownership 
on people.  I?d never say, oh look at this, oh look at this.  Ever.  I just wouldn?t?.   
  
5.2.2 family and other narratives 
Gloria primarily exhibits framed photographic portraits of her daughter in her flat, 
along with antique ornaments, some of which are inherited from her mother, and 
some old prints of 17th-century floral ?hand-ties?, also from the family, presenting a 
traditional, formal image of home as a set of distinct spaces, ?properly?  dressed.  
Although she does sometimes bring home floral bouquets from her shop to display on 
a side table, her motivation seems to be less about bringing ?work? into the flat, than 
in putting the finishing touches to the ?dressing? of her home: ?if I knew you were 
going to come and take some photos, I?d say just send me round some things.  But I do 
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like flowers in the house.?  She is upset by what she perceives as the inappropriate 
under-dressed state of the exterior of the building: she is looking forward to it being 
?all painted and lovely?, but depressed by the fact that it will only extend to the 
?cosmetic aspect of it all.  Because it is rather like putting on your finery and 
forgetting to change your underwear.?  However, she can compensate for that inside 
her own home, where she can put on an appropriate level of display. 
 Gloria lives alone now, but brought up her daughter here and also cared for 
her mother, followed by her disabled sister, who both lived in the flat after Catherine 
(the daughter) until their respective deaths. So despite the absence of a husband or 
further children, the flat has been the stage for a fairly complex family life of an 
?extended? nature.  Now, the bedroom which was occupied by Catherine and then 
Kathleen, has been specially redecorated by Gloria to accommodate her grand-
 daughter when she visits, with stickers of Disney characters on the doors and walls, 
and new curtains to keep the light out so she won?t wake too early in the morning.  
The living-room is completely dominated by the pictures of Catherine ? a much-love 
daughter, but also a success story in the public domain. 
 By contrast, both Rob and Francoise, and Annie and Anthony, make a point of 
telling me that family pictures do not have a place in their homes.  Annie says they 
have no interest in that sort of thing ? ?not at all!?; however their wider family 
networks are represented by various pieces of furniture and pieces of artwork that 
have been given or made by family members.  For instance, the big dining-table 
comes from Anthony?s parents, the school-desk was made by Annie?s father, and the 
Aalto trolley was a wedding present from her parents.  In the hall hangs a painting by 
her sister. Like them, Rob also emphasises a certain antipathy to family pictures, 
explaining that they never had any at home when he was growing up: ?my parents 
never had pictures of family on the mantelpiece.  Some people have, the whole place 
is filled with pictures of cousins and children and babies and grandparents.  The dear 
departed.  So I don?t have those, Francoise doesn?t have them.  Not working to that 
sort of mentality.  Relationships with people.?   
 As far as Rob is concerned, his home is not about putting his relationships 
with other people, other than his girlfriend, on display. Perhaps for him, relationships 
are essentially to be acted out, not (consciously) represented by inanimate objects.  At 
the same time, because he has no children, the flat provides a vehicle for him to 
explore an idea of his own identity extracted from the web of social and familial 
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relationships which entangle people to varying degrees.  Since Francoise has left the 
flat, and prior to the arrival of his new girlfriend, he has taken the opportunity to 
engage in some fresh introspection, and he likes the idea, rejected by Francoise, of 
hanging some of his more abstract photographs of the Brunswick on the walls.  He 
has also taken ?a few things out of boxes, which I quite like but she didn?t like because 
she thought they were too crafty?, and putting them out on display in the empty spaces 
resulting from Francoise?s departure.  And although his new girlfriend has introduced 
new items into the flat which he admits are not really to his taste, and certainly would 
not have been to Francoise?s taste, he is rather enjoying the ?unpredictability? of it and 
the ?spontaneity of things? happening to break entrenched habits and routines of his 
own, the potential it offers for reshaping his own sense of self and its manifestation 
within the home.  
 In a sense, Susan and her boyfriend are going through a similar process, 
following the arrival of their new baby.  Having lived in the flat for some years as a 
single person with flatmates, then as part of a couple, Susan is enjoying her latest 
change of circumstances, transforming into a mother and a family unit within the flat, 
where new items connected with the forthcoming baby are gradually insinuating 
themselves into the interior landscape.  A moses basket filled with toys waits by the 
bed, the parking spot for the pram has been identified in the hall.  The office/study has 
been earmarked as the baby?s room, and, on my visit after the birth of the baby, the 
bathroom is festooned with nappies hanging out to dry.  With the installation of 
Venetian blinds to the living-room windows, there seems to be a symbolic marking of 
the boundaries between an internalised family life within the flat and the world of 
social relations beyond it.  This might also mark the point when Susan starts to divest 
the flat of the last remnants of its former occupants, adopted as quasi-surrogate 
grandparents, in order to establish her own family narrative within the space. 
 Bob and Jean have lived together throughout their lives as siblings, and for 
many years they lived with their mother as well.  It was on her account that they 
moved to the Brunswick, where they also had friends, because she could no longer 
manage the stairs at their old flat not far away in Clerkenwell.  Jean and their mother 
shared the larger bedroom, and Bob had the other, ?children?s? room.  Today the 
rooms are clearly distinguished from each other by colour coding ? pink for Jean?s 
room, blue for Bob?s.  While Jean?s room is decorated with pictures and ornaments 
related to ballet, her great love, and furnished with classic white ?feminine? furniture ? 
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an oval bedside table and dressing-table ? Bob?s room is tightly filled with his 
bookcase and desk, portably TV, and pictures of London.  They are quite clearly the 
bedrooms of a single man and a single woman, whereas the lounge could belong to 
any married couple of a certain age and social status, and the entrance hall is 
decorated with ornaments belonging to Bob ? model cars and buses, pictures of 
London, reflecting his great enthusiasm for and expertise in the area of London 
history.   Bob reveals that they have a constant struggle to make people understand 
that they are not husband and wife, but siblings, and it seems clear that this ambiguity 
about their relationship is a source both of frustration and also of some anxiety to 
them.  Bob relates how the people he meets when he goes out to walk the dog will 
persistently ask after ?the wife?, and how he?s given up correcting them because if he 
stresses that is not the case it is immediately understood she must be an illicit lover.  
But he is particularly exercised by the reluctance of the council tax administrators to 
recognise their relationship correctly:  ?You deal with this in the sense of two separate 
people? two separate individuals.  [But it was] a long time before they accepted the 
fact that we were quite separate.?  The colour coding of the bedrooms is a readily 
understood sign that they do not share that side of their lives, and they have achieved 
a high degree of separation in their daily lives as well, although it is clear that they 
care for each other and Bob, particularly, feels a sense of responsibility for Joan, who 
is older, less physically able, and, in his view, less able to deal with the ?commercial? 
world.  They do not eat together, and when they do eat, they eat different foods; they 
go to bed and get up at different times, and Bob is absent from the flat between 10 
o?clock and 6 o?clock every day.  They do not even argue: as Bob says, ?We get along 
very well really?. But if we did really disagree I?d always go for a walk? I don?t see 
any point in arguing.? 
 Part of Bob?s motivation for this level of segregation is also to establish a 
degree of independence between himself and his sister in anticipation of the time 
when ?one of us is going to go, and one?s going to be left.?  Thus the prospect of death 
at some point not too far in the future structures their daily life in a matter-of-fact and 
practical way.  As Bob points out, many of their friends have died in the last four or 
five years, and they have no family left to speak of, save ?one cousin who we never 
see, apart from that we have no-one else.?  Curiously, none of these people are 
represented in photographs, only Bob and Jean themselves and their dog, which they 
clearly dote on, although there are plenty of souvenirs and memorabilia on display, 
 174 
along with various plants, and ?some family things?, which possibly include the pretty 
gold-painted glass decanter and glasses.  There are also quite a lot of clocks: ?We 
rather like clocks?, says Bob, even though the sound of the clocks ticking must be a 
constant reminder of time passing to its ultimate conclusion. 
  Alone in her flat upstairs, Giulia also lives in a state of anticipation of death, 
especially since she recently suffered a heart attack, but her life has become 
considerably more introverted than Bob and Jean?s.  Although she still cleans her flat, 
she has given up cooking, even though on my first visit she was still happily 
providing for herself with a turkey drumstick from Safeways, some vegetables and a 
bottle of wine which would last a week.  Now she will just eat a sandwich, and she 
has give up reading, except for the Bible.  Her Spartan bedroom, which used to have 
decorative floral wallpaper, but has now been repainted in magnolia emulsion, is a 
space which she describes as ?good for meditating, communicating with God?, or at 
least it would be if the noise of the building works outside and underneath the 
building would only stop.  When it is noisy, she can only ?communicate with the 
devil?, she says, and she warns that it will send her into illness and depression, like her 
neighbour who recently died of depression. 
 Many of Giulia?s neighbours and friends have now died, along with her 
younger brother, and she herself has suffered a heart attack in the last few years.  Her 
flat is adorned with numbers of photographs of friends, former patients, and her 
family, and her furniture also seems to have been mostly given to her by people she 
has looked after in the past and relatives of those friends who have passed away.  For 
instance, a glass display cabinet with a mirrored back and decorative coffee-cups was 
given by ?the children of those two elderly ladies when they died.?  Giulia herself ?had 
nothing? when she moved there, except a few pieces of embroidered linen from her 
mother, and seems to have furnished her flat with whatever she was given in return 
for her nursing care, in a gesture of reciprocal passive acceptance.  One item she 
points out as being of particular personal significance to her is a print of a painting by 
Constable, an artist she discovered on her regular visits to the National Gallery, and 
fell in love with, presumably for his representations of an England which entranced 
her.   The others are her bizzy-lizzy plants out on the balcony which she talks to every 
day, perhaps in lieu of the  human relationships that no longer exist. 
   
 
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5.2.3 social status and ethnic identity 
Giulia?s flat, uncarpeted and sparsely furnished, devoid of the conventional British 
three-piece suite and soft furnishings, has a distinctive Italian look about it, but she 
claims she is unaware of it, and her determination to stay in England, notwithstanding 
a trial return trip after her retirement, suggests her affection and loyalty to the country 
of her birth and her sense of ethnic identity is limited ? although, after 50-odd years in 
England she maintains an intense Italian accent.  She emphasises that she is open-
 minded about other people?s ethnic background, that, unlike other people in her 
village in Italy, she was never bothered, for example, by the unfamiliar smell of the 
food cooked by the black and Indian people who lived there.  The issue which 
interests her more is that of social status and wealth, and she clearly identifies herself 
with a hard-working working-class, which she believes is being pushed out of the 
Brunswick by people with money.  She says it was ?wicked? of Mrs Thatcher to sell 
off council housing, knowing that it would be sold on for profit to a different kind of 
person.  She dreads the idea of what the Brunswick will now turn into, and it makes 
her angry and resentful:  she ?doesn?t cry for rich people? because they ?don?t care 
about me.? 
 Giulia has a self-awareness of her social status as a hospital cleaner, and a 
pride in the fact that she has worked for a living, doing a job that other people won?t 
do.  This is combined with a sense of political justice, which she describes as ?a little 
bit more Communist?.  She really admires the social system in England for its welfare 
provision, against which Italy ? where the elderly and sick have a choice of spending 
their money either on food or on medicines, and there is no such thing as social 
housing - compares most unfavourably.  In addition to that, ?high culture? in England 
is accessible and affordable compared to Italy, allowing people like herself to share in 
it and educate themselves. 
 Giulia has not been well-off in her life, but she has not spent the money she 
has had on investment in her home.  She seems to have had no interest in furnishing 
the flat in such a way as to support any particular idea of social standing.  She has 
simply accepted various items that she has been given, and is happy to live with 
relatively few material comforts around her.  She sits in a plastic, cushioned, high-
 backed garden chair , and the centrepiece of her living-room is a round table, covered 
with a cloth, and four dining-chairs, located in the centre of the space.  The main 
decorative elements are her framed photographs of family and friends arranged on and 
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above her sideboard, the palm crosses from church, and pieces of embroidered linen 
from Italy. She has thin floral curtains across her windows, screening out the view of 
the changing Brunswick, and a battered concertina blind over the raked glazing which 
must have been one of the originals installed at the beginning by the council for its 
tenants.  
 By contrast, other council tenants at the Brunswick are criticised by 
?newcomers? such as Rob and Francoise for the accumulation of material goods which 
distinguishes their home-making enterprise from the their own, and which is 
interpreted as a clear indicator of social class status.  ?People have got things like 
collections of tankards, or china dolls.  Lots of people have got bloody great big 
televisions.  Really enormous TVs.  That?s the awful thing? the poorer social classes 
are, the bigger the television set is going to be.?   Because the flats were not designed 
to provide the sort of ?nooks and crannies that you fill up with bits and bobs?, the 
result of  the ?collecting? instinct shown by such occupants is a proliferation of 
?shelves, all higgledy-piggledy?.  There is a clear sense of disapproval of this apparent 
inability to live in a condition of simplicity and order at home, the sort of comfortable 
?neutrality? which Rob and Francoise espoused, which in turn is seen as clinical and 
?office-like? by other tenants.  But for Rob and Francoise, the ?Spanish-style? fit-out 
which their flat had been subjected to by the previous owners was a nightmare: ?Dark 
curtains, lots of wood, polystyrene tiles? well, I?ve seen worse but that was quite 
enough.?   
 However, Francoise reveals that in their previous flat she had happily indulged 
a love of ?kitsch?.  She says the style was very different from the approach they have 
adopted at the Brunswick.  But her use of the word ?kitsch? elevates what might 
otherwise be perceived as her own private attachment to consumer culture onto a 
more self-aware and educated aesthetic level, distanced from the vulgarity of 
consumption styles which she has witnessed in people?s homes at the Brunswick. 
Annie and Anthony describe their own attitude to ?things? in the home as 
explicitly anti-consumerist.  They do not spend large sums of money on furnishings 
and fittings, notwithstanding their interest in and professional promotion of 
contemporary design, and describe themselves as ?pretty ruthless? in getting rid of 
items they no longer need; while, somewhat perversely, Annie invests her efforts in 
collecting discarded packaging, cardboard boxes which might come in useful at some 
point ? ?everything needs a box you know? ? despite the problem they have with lack 
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of space.   Their outlook is reflected in their passion for their caravan, which 
complements their existence in the Brunswick as a get-away, but also delights them as 
the embodiment of an approach to organisation of a tight space, using economic 
means: ?all the details are really beautifully done and clever storage??  
 Such an ideal of economy is one that is not readily understood by other 
Brunswick residents. When Annie and Anthony moved in their first priority was to 
remove all the superficial cosmetic surgery that the previous family had carried out 
there, and ?salvage? the original simplicity of the design.  Annie and Anthony now 
have a black carpet, with a black cat to match, and grey walls, with a tiny TV that can 
be wheeled away to the side of the room.  They echo Rob and Francoise?s disparaging 
class-conscious comments about large televisions, as does Susan, and even Kevin the 
caretaker, whose TV is big by their standards, but, as he explains, negligible by 
comparison to others in the Brunswick:  ?you know I could take you into flats and this 
looks like a really small TV! I know somebody who spent ?1000 on ? ?1000!  You 
can pick it up and steal it if you want, you couldn?t pick up and steal that one.?   
While Annie and Anthony can afford to be anti-consumerist in the 
construction of heir homes because, in Rob and Francoise?s words, ?they don?t have to 
prove anything?, residents such as Lorraine are astonished by the way that newcomers 
will rip out the ?improvements? made to flats by their new ?owner-occupiers? in order 
to demonstrate their change of status from that of council tenant.  As far as she is 
concerned, the modern aesthetic of the original design is nothing more than a signifier 
of council, ie lower economic and educational, status.  Even though she herself has 
done very little to her flat, due to lack of funds, other than install a glass partition 
between the kitchen and living-room, she is mystified as to why ?more intelligent? 
newcomers would want to make their expensively-bought homes look like council 
flats again.   
For residents such as Lorraine and Gloria, a more traditional representation of 
home, replete with upholstered furniture, curtains, pelmets, and carpets, is ?proper?.  
Ornaments, pictures and consumer goods are part of that proper representation; 
neutrality, the ?blank canvas?, the idea of home as ?workshop?, or as a ?work in 
progress?, are concepts which just don?t make sense to them, and which are clearly 
associated with the values held by newcomers in regard to the idea of the home.  Both 
Annie and Anthony describe their home-making enterprise very much in terms of an 
ongoing, collaborative project, to be carefully thought out and realised bit by bit: ?it?s 
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a work in progress, always changing ad infinitum.?  They lived in the flat for a year 
before they did anything at all, then ?Anthony did a design?.  The main obstacle to the 
realisation of their project is the insidious accumulation of ?stuff?, material goods, 
especially associated with the children: ?everything closing in on us?.   
Susan, likewise, reveals that her flat was ?a joint effort, completely?, with her 
architect flatmate, and that, although they did not explicitly approach it as an 
architectural project, ?we did draw before we built.  Proper architect way!?  She 
resisted having a carpet for some years, because it did not fit in with the implicit 
architectural agenda, until out of consideration for her downstairs neighbours, who 
could hear everything dropped on the concrete floor, she finally set out to source and 
specify precisely the right product and found a black and white patterned carpet which 
was specially made in India.  Her flat presents a warm but carefully controlled and 
orderly aspect, with a place provided for everything, although the arrival of her baby, 
and the prospect of family life, potentially threatens that regime.   
However, not all ?newcomers? have subjected ?clutter? to the same level of 
control.   Conal?s flat is hardly a shrine to consumer culture, in fact quite the opposite, 
considering that many of the fittings and furniture have been specially made to his 
own design.  But it is full of items which he has collected over the years, and clearly 
enjoys, such as his collection of chairs, and many pieces of artwork, souvenirs and 
mementoes which fill the available shelf space.  Conal himself refers to his displays 
as ?the mess?, and says that visitors, including his girlfriend, ?sort of raise their 
eyebrows? but what the hell.?  He clearly values the ?mess? as a tapestry of embodied 
memories and associations, and a means of organising them, and he takes pleasure in 
pointing out different items and where they come from.  He says he has ?just 
gradually accreted all the bits and pieces?, and although, ideally, he would like to get 
them into a more orderly state, he is not prepared to give up his weekends to 
reorganise the flat according to the plans he has.  Ultimately he believes that ?people 
ought to be able to live in their houses the way they want to live in them?, and he 
clearly feels comfortable surrounded by the things he has amassed over the years, 
which give his personal history a certain structure. 
Lana describes Conal?s flat as ?very interior?, perhaps because of this very 
emphasis on ?things?, which contrasts with the emptiness of her flat and its more 
abstract, outward focus towards the sky and sunlight which bleaches her paintings.  
Hers is almost an inversion of the idea of ?home?, or as she puts it, ?homeyness?, a 
 179 
quality which only has a place in her naturally introverted entrance hall.  In a similar 
vein, she describes her partner James?s flat as being full of ?millions of things?, a 
whole life-history embodied in objects, pictures and maps and even the bicycle, 
enshrined in his front hall, representing the traumatic accident which changed his life 
for ever.  
June speaks of her ?familiar objects? as her ?lares and penates?, her household 
gods, and the essence of her home.  She has made a conscious decision not to collect 
things, abandoning her collection of china dolls, because she ?thought you can?t 
collect things in a small flat!?  But at the same time, things are clearly very important 
to her.  She has consciously ?tried to pare down? her ornaments, so that what she has 
now are ?only things I really like? cherished??, and has now reached a point where 
?I don?t think I?d get rid of any of my artefacts, because they?re all here for some 
reason?.  Many of these items seem to be connected with family, including a cabinet 
of curiosities in her bedroom inherited from her mother, and the dining-suite which 
was one she helped her mother to buy originally. 
In Kevin?s flat, things also play an important role in establishing a clear sense 
of family continuity expressed more broadly in an ethnic dimension.  There is a sense 
in which they are used quite explicitly to create an idea of the home as a world apart 
from the world outside ? another, private realm of existence which is tightly linked to 
the Ireland of his birth and which he considers as his true ?home?.  He is adamant that 
he doesn?t want to ?grow old in London?, and anticipates a final return before that 
happens.  In the meantime, many, perhaps most, of the objects on display in the flat 
speak of that connection with Ireland, although he says there is nothing he is so 
attached to that ?that I?d put in a box to take with me? when he returns; after all, they 
are only temporary substitutes for the real thing.  In particular, there are several 
painting of Irish rural scenery, so that when he?s doing the washing-up he can ?take 
myself off to Donegal! While something?s burning!?.  Or, when lying in bed, he can 
gaze at a picture of Eniskillen: ?both of us were brought up in rural Ireland, so?.I 
don?t really want a picture of the tower blocks on the wall.?  There is also a Yeats 
poster on the living-room wall, almost like a manifesto for Irish culture, china from a 
?well-known pottery in Ireland? actually wedding presents given to my Mum and 
Dad? family heirlooms?, and a framed sepia wedding photograph of his parents 
hanging right by the front door.  This, as he explains, was taken in Dublin, which was 
as far as his Dad ever travelled: ?my Dad never left Ireland.? 
 180 
Kevin?s Irish identity is really important to him and his family, and his home 
effectively provides a vehicle for expressing that.  Although he comments that ?some 
of the flats [at the Brunswick] are amazing designs? really wonderful and 
imaginative?, he stresses that they are ?completely different to my flat?, and that he is 
simply not interested in that approach to home-making.  For him, much like June, the 
flat is more about the things inside it, for which it provides the container, than the 
space itself, considered as a potential ?project? or design challenge. It serves it 
purpose quite well as it is, bar a few areas of minor dissatisfaction which, as a council 
tenant, he wouldn?t consider addressing himself. 
 
5.3 Conclusion 
The material culture of the home provides an abundant and richly significant mass of 
evidence from which to distil and interpret narratives of self and belonging which in 
themselves constitute strong threads of connection between the relatively internalised 
world of home, and the external world beyond it.  I have roughly divided this 
evidence into three categories, which are broad in themselves, and full of overlapping 
areas which may never perhaps be comprehensively analysed as discrete areas of 
inquiry.  However, they describe three key areas of social identity which are 
represented within the contemporary home in contrasting ways. 
 One of the features of the Brunswick flats which residents comment on as an 
advantage is their ?neutrality? and the fact that they do not seem to exert a dominating 
aesthetic or ideological influence over occupants? perceptions of how they might 
transform the space into a home which expresses their own, widely varying, personal 
experience of life and sense of who they are.  Even though the Brunswick as a larger 
architectural framework of inhabitation is sometimes experienced as dominating, even 
oppressive, it does not seem to impinge on the sense of freedom which people have to 
?express themselves? in their own private space, while for others it provides a 
liberating, even holiday-like environment which has a specific power to engage the 
imagination in a positive way.   
 Different people draw the boundaries between their private space, the larger 
context of the Brunswick, both as a physical and as a social setting, and the world 
beyond the Brunswick territory ? made up of work, family, friends and other social 
and ethnic identities - in different ways, allowing more or less permeability between 
the two.  However, the Brunswick itself provides a specific and meaningful context in 
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which the experience of home is anchored and evolves as the focus of a more general 
sense of ?emplacement? in the world, as I shall discuss in the following chapter.