Qualla: Barbican Estate

Barbican Estate: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stephencdickson, CC BY-SA 4.0. There is a layer of bedrock under London that, if you cut through it cleanly, reads like rings in a tree. At the Barbican Estate, three of the rings happen to be the foundations of a Roman fort built around the year 120 AD, the burial ground of the medieval London Jewish community, and the ash of the Cripplegate ward after it was effectively obliterated by German bombs in 1940. On top of all of that, between 1965 and 1976, the City of London built two thousand flats in the most uncompromising brutalist landscape in Britain. It is now home to about four thousand people.

Read more: Barbican Estate on Qualla

Image: Stephencdickson | CC BY-SA 4.0

Barbican Estate: Where the Word Came From

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cocoablini, CC BY-SA 4.0. The estate's name is older than the buildings by nearly two thousand years. Around 120 AD the Romans built the principal fort of Londinium roughly where the Museum of London now stands, on the corner of London Wall and Aldersgate Street. Around 200 AD the city walls were extended...

Read more: Barbican Estate on Qualla

Image: Cocoablini | CC BY-SA 4.0

Barbican Estate: A Hidden History

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tom Parnell from Scottish Borders, Scotland, CC BY-SA 2.0. Beneath the green squares and concrete walkways lies one of the most poignant layers of London's history. The land where most of the residences and the central square now stand was, in the thirteenth century, the cemetery of the London Jewish community. Records show the burial gr...

Read more: Barbican Estate on Qualla

Image: Tom Parnell from Scottish Borders, Scotland | CC BY-SA 2.0

Barbican Estate: Out of the Blitz

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tilman2007, CC BY-SA 4.0. By 1951 only forty-eight people lived in the entire Cripplegate ward, down from many thousands before the war. The Luftwaffe had erased it. Discussions about what to do with the wreckage began in 1952, and on 19 September 1957 the Court of Common Council of the City of London res...

Read more: Barbican Estate on Qualla

Image: Tilman2007 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Barbican Estate: Names from English History

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tilman2007, CC BY-SA 4.0. The estate's fourteen terrace blocks are named after figures connected, more or less, with this corner of London: Bunyan Court for John Bunyan, the Baptist preacher; Defoe House for Daniel Defoe, novelist and spy; Frobisher Crescent for the Elizabethan privateer Martin Frobisher;...

Read more: Barbican Estate on Qualla

Image: Tilman2007 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Barbican Estate: How the Buildings Work

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Arpingstone, Public domain. Walk around the Barbican and you are walking on a podium. The whole estate is built on a raised pedestrian deck, with vehicles relegated to a lower level and most circulation taking place on highwalks - elevated walkways one to three storeys above the surrounding streets. There i...

Read more: Barbican Estate on Qualla

Image: Arpingstone | Public domain

Barbican Estate: Listed and Loved

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Riodamascus, CC BY-SA 3.0. In September 2001 the Arts Minister Tessa Blackstone announced that the Barbican complex would be Grade II listed. The decision came as some politicians and developers were still flirting with the idea of pulling down brutalist 1960s and 1970s buildings wholesale. The listing mad...

Read more: Barbican Estate on Qualla

Image: Riodamascus | CC BY-SA 3.0