I have lived in the Barbican since the early 1980s. I like it here.
This is how this website came about. My 2001 Christmas plans got derailed for some reason and I found myself sitting at home in my Barbican flat with time on my hands. I decided to look up the Barbican on the internet. ‘The Barbican’ did have a website – except that it was a bed-and-breakfast in Wisconsin. ‘Barbican estate’ took me to a former sugar factory in Jamaica.
There was nothing much about our estate. So I decided that it wouldn’t take long to put something together which would give residents of our estate a bit of information about their home, and let anyone thinking of moving here find out what sort of place it is.
These things have a tendency to get out of control. Soon I was poring over manuscripts at the City Corporation Records Office, badgering Barbican staff on the intricacies of the Garchey system, and getting lists of the trees in the gardens. In short, it became a labour of love. (Probably I should have stopped labouring before producing a potted history of concrete.)
For 35 years I had a law firm, Barretts Solicitors, which bought and sold a lot of Barbican flats for clients over the years – in the many hundreds, in fact. We merged with Bishop & Sewell in 2013. You might want to consider instructing Christine Corion, my invaluable colleague from my Barretts Solicitors years, to act for you if you are buying or selling a flat. I don’t think many people could claim to know more about the pitfalls and complexities of the Barbican Estate … and how to get round them … than she does.
I hope you will find this website useful.
MICHAEL BARRETT,
DEFOE HOUSE
PS If you like the site, please sign up for the newsletter by clicking here.