As photographed by Nick

Several hundred people were able to visit the historic houses on Little Green Street  yesterday (Saturday 19 September).

All were shocked to realise that this is probably the last time they will be able to visit, as the tearing up of the cobbles is due to start as soon as the developers can convince Camden Council that their flaky finances are sufficiently robust.

If you visited and want to do something, Frances Wheat at Camden (frances.wheat@camden.gov.uk) is the name to contact - do call on 020 7974 1680, but if you are in media or otherwise can influence people who might be able to intervene and stop this madness (remember - it has planning permission, albeit with onerous conditions well beyond the competencies and funds of the current developer) then please do help.

If you're considering buying this problem development off the current heavily over-mortgaged owners, read carefully. Even if you think you'll make a better job of it than ham-fisted attempts of the past nine years, it isn't the easiest win. We all make mistakes. Buying the railway club site was world class. Don't make the same error. You'll never make a penny off it. Do the math. What margin? Don't say we didn't tell you.

The Council have their thirty pieces of silver (well £130,000) from the developers to dig up the street. I've written before that the Highways Department have alweays been unnaturally keen to get digging (remember when they pretended it was on behalf of Thames Water?) but the developers (Euroinvestments Limited through the project's architects Peter Tigg Partnership) have to comply with pages of conditions before they can start.

None of you will be surprised that Mr Patel has shown no interest in doing anything about them, nor honouring commitments to surveys (ibid.) and will quite possibly just turn up and start anyway, but with an almost entirely new team of officers, top to bottom at Camden, perhaps they will be held to them.

Forgive my cynicism, but I will believe it when I see it.

So the latest is that Little Green Street will not be ripped up until 'September' and that the trees will be accidentally killed soon after that. If this coincides with Open House it might prove embarassing, but little else.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention the 'average/typical' 48 truck movements a day along the street during the early part of the four year demolition, excavation and construction adventure that will follow the ground-breaking. It was the prospect of that madness that started this campaign. Soon you'll be able to see for yourself.

At least they'll lose money on it.

Twenty houses, ten flats and an underground car park are fine. One resident had an application for a temporary, if rather modern (grass roof, etc) garden shed recently turned down on the grounds that it would "be harmful to the character and appearance of the host building and the conservation area".

You couldn't make it up.

The venerable tradition of opening up notable houses so people who don't live or work in them can see inside this year thkis year will include most of the houses in Little Green Street.

This September (assuming the road isn't impassable - see earlier postings) you can see for yourself how families have continued to live in these little houses since before modern America was established (and hopefully even through the destruction of the environment around them - the cobbles will be gone by then, as indeed might have the large tree at the end of the street, 'accidentally' damaged beyond saving).

More info here. See you then?