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The squatters who managed to live for free in £1 million London house for more than 31 years
Calthorpe Street Three were able to claim freehold of the house as it had not been registered
Agoshaman Ceribel and Umiak Mahoupe singing with World Tree Theatre, a remnant of some of the most revolutionary groups in 60s London (Image: World Tree Theatre)
Many of us dream of living in a £1 million house in a salubrious part of Central London. Many of us play the lottery each week with exactly that kind of thing in mind. Well perhaps if we dream hard enough, one day we'll get there.
On April 6, 2004, the Irish Independent reported just such an incredible story of three squatters who had been living rent-free in a Grade II-listed, five-bedroom house in Clerkenwell for 31 years. The trio, who first moved into the property in 1973, had applied to a county court to become the registered owners of the house.
Camden Council, which had owned the house, said it had made repeated attempts to evict the trio, but admitted a decision not to contest their application.
In fact the council had made unsuccessful attempts to repossess the property in 1990 and 1983. But the clever squatters, Agoshaman Ceribel, then 71, Umiak Mahoupe, then 50, and a friend known as Anne - dubbed by the press as the "Calthorpe Street Three" - were able to claim freehold of the house as it had not been registered under the Land Registration Act.
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But no one actually checked out who these clever squatters were - although their names were printed clearly in the press at the time - until now. Putting the pieces together, it turns out Agoshaman Ceribel and Umiak Mahoupe were the survivors of one of London's most revolutionary hippy art movements in the 1960s that was largely responsible for creating the idea of "Swinging London".
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YouTube video caption for their World Tree Theatre project reveals the troupe met in London in 1967, at the time of something called the "Exploding Galaxy". This was a psychedelic troupe of young radical theatre performers formed at the height of the hippy movement which wanted to transform London through spontaneous happenings. It was based in a house at 99 Balls Pond Road and was a dance/performance troupe that performed at many of the key London psychedelic clubs and venues including UFO, Middle Earth and the Arts Lab.
The happenings held by these groups were seriously cutting edge. Often experimenting with psychedelic drugs, they believed art could be part of everyday life and could be practised in any medium. They hoped to change people's view about how rigid society was and some of their thinking was really revolutionary.
Agoshaman Ceribel and Umiak Mahoupe singing with World Tree Theatre (Image: World Tree Theatre)
The group later appears to have morphed into "Transmedia Exploration", and then much later some of its members went abroad to work in France under the name of "L'Arbre du Monde" or World Tree Theatre.
Amazingly the video shows the group has mellowed beyond beyond belief over the years, now performing chilled folk music and telling stories. It's a far cry from the existential experimentation of their youth.
At the time the video was posted about four years ago, Umiak Mahoupe was clearly still looking for her little piece of heaven though, as she says the group had just been lent a manor house for the summer near Cognac, with piggeries, a dairy a forge and a gated courtyard. The group then plays a quaint folk song called Paint the Flame which she said is about painting the group's orange lorry that they travel around in. There's a fiddle, an Irish whistle, a guitar and a banjo and Agoshaman is singing.
It's sweet, folky and sentimental and definitely not revolutionary. The group has even set up a charitable trust called the World Tree Arts trust. Its mission states: "We promote art works and performance including "World Tree Theatre Troupe". Our touring educational programme includes arts and environmental education in the English language. The visual arts sector is expanding, and we are renovating our studios to show works to a widening public."
Their website
here has videos, music and paintings done by members of the group at least some of whom hail from Ireland. The address on their
charity foundation website is listed as 49 Calthorpe Street, exactly the house that was 'given to them' after Camden Council made its almost unbelievable error.
www.mylondon.news
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