Campaigners on the site of the future Calthorpe Project in 1983

A SHORT story in the Camden New Journal in January 1983 announced the launch of an “exciting new community venture for King’s Cross”. It was to be called the Calthorpe Project, the result, it said, of “people power” mobilising to prevent a derelict piece of land in Gray’s Inn Road being sold off to office developers.

It officially opened 18 months later and quickly blossomed into a neighbourhood centre and gardens, taking in its first cohort of children for its under-fives playgroup and constructing the beginnings of a football pitch. Now as it prepares to celebrate its 40th anniversary later this year, it is looking to chronicle its history with the help of those who once passed through its doors.

“When we launched the project we did not know what it would turn out to be, let alone whether it would survive. The main thing was that we had secured a valuable plot of land for community use,” says one-time Calthorpe director and trustee Annika Miller Jones, who was at the forefront of the campaign to thwart the developers.

“We built it up bit by bit. It amazes me that today the children and grandchildren of those who first came along are using our facilities. That is a real history and we are looking for former users who would like to contribute their memories of the Calthorpe for use in a podcast or publication.”

She shows me a picture of herself and a group of fellow campaigners in 1983 surveying plans for the unpromising expanse of earth and rubble that stretched out before them. Once the site of a building yard belonging to the brothers William and Thomas Cubitt, who more than 200 years earlier built much of the area’s fine Georgian housing, it was later occupied by garages and an engineering workshop before being acquired by property magnates Lyons in the 1960s. But after levelling the land, the firm went bust and in 1981 Camden Council stepped in, insisting that it would still be used for office development.

“We were outraged,” says Annika, an architect whose home in Ampton Street overlooked the site, which was still studded with abandoned steel construction poles. “This was an area crying out for more community facilities and it didn’t take long to mount a campaign among local people.”

The turning point came with a delegation of residents to the council, which included the late Brian Woodrow, who would go onto become a councillor, and local activist Ricki de Freitas. The council agreed to drop its plans, signalling that it would like to see part of the site used for housing. However, it did not have the money to take the idea forward, leaving campaigners to come up with their own proposals. “We drew up a questionnaire and held many meetings in local schools, community centres and the local shopping centre to find out what people really wanted. This ranged from immediate short-term use to more longer-term proposals, which included a health centre. Initially the focus would be on landscaping and gardens.”

It was decided to name the project after the Calthorpe Estate, which during the 19th century owned and developed much of the neighbourhood. “As soon as we moved onto the site, it was open to the public. We grassed a piece of land and got people in to plant bulbs,” continues Annika, who became the project’s first director.  “We set up an under-fives playgroup in a second-hand Portakabin and created a makeshift football pitch. Then we embraced the Bengali community in its early days by setting up English classes for women. Once the main building was opened in 1990 we were able to have many more activities. It just grew organically – we responded to what people wanted and what we were able to offer.”

Now known as the Calthorpe Community Garden, it is often described as an urban oasis with a reputation over the years for its imaginative programme of activities for adults and children and hosting big-scale events like the Latin American Festival. When it started out it benefited from the largesse of Camden Council and, in its dying days, the Greater London Council. Today, like all community ventures, it faces an ever-shrinking budget and reduced staff. In 2011, it survived the withdrawal of core town hall funding and the threat of seeing part of its site being annexed for housing. More recently it has faced the disruption and loss of income from the construction of a research centre by University College Hospital on the site of the Eastman Dental Hospital next door, though it has been compensated for this.

Yet the project continues to be propelled along by the same energy that first gave birth to it 40 years ago. “Calthorpe has never stopped,” declares Annika, now retired as a trustee but keeping a close eye on things. “It has kept on looking at ways of generating its own income and putting into practice the principle it began with, which is building from the bottom up rather than top down. It’s a community space that people feel a part of, whatever their age, and that is why we want to record their memories of it.”

• Calthorpe Community Garden celebrates its 40th anniversary on September 28. If you would like to contribute to its history project contact calthorpememories@gmail.com