PENNY RIMBAUD AND Gee Vaucher discuss the origins, ambitions and decades-long history of Dial House–the Epping farmhouse from which Crass emerged–in the Homes section of The Observer (4 October).
As Rimbaud describes it, the current incarnation of Dial House emerged in 1967 to play host to “a revolving cast of visitors, some friends and artistic collaborators, many of them strangers who simply asked to stay.”
The article, illustrated with full-colour photographs of the Dial House interior by Mark Anthony Fox, suggests:
It is a place of production, a centrifugal organism that spins its creative energy off into a one-acre garden. Vaucher has a studio in the house, bright and relatively high, populated by inspirations and work in progress. There’s another room where she’s organising her archive for the forthcoming Gee Vaucher Foundation, whose aim is to preserve her work and support like-minded artists.
Outside there are sheds, studios and an old caravan, places where visiting artists can stay and make, if they’re happy to live with a composting toilet. Rimbaud sleeps and works in one of the larger outhouses – a collage of salvaged building components, including a graceful old shopfront rescued from demolition and doors inset with stained glass.
— Rowan Moore, The Observer
Dial House “the self-sustaining anarcho-pacifist open house” will feature in Earthly Paradise: Radical Living in the UK, an exhibition at the William Morris Gallery that “explores the people and places that have helped shape art and activism across Britain over the last 200 years.”
Through objects, painting, drawing, photography, sound and archival material, Earthly Paradise highlights individuals and communities that defied contemporary conventions and the homes they created to realise their new visions of society. The exhibition considers the role that money and class have played in providing access to these spaces and the freedom to challenge social norms. It traces the roles activist groups and those excluded from and overlooked by mainstream society have played in imagining new ways of living and seeing the world.
— William Morris Gallery
Rowan Moore and Mark Anthony Fox. 2026. ‘Inside an open house in Epping founded on radical kindness’, The Observer, 4 October. https://observer.co.uk/style/homes/article/inside-an-open-house-in-epping-founded-on-radical-kindness
(The online edition of The Observer offers new readers one ‘free to read’ article before registration on the site is required).
Earthly Paradise: Radical Living in the UK
William Morris Gallery, Lloyd Park, Forest Road, London E17 4PP
Now until 28 March 2027
(Open Tuesday to Sunday | 10:00 to 17:00 | Free entry, but donations welcome)
The exhibition will then tour to Tŷ Pawb, Wrexham (April–September 2027), Blackwell–The Arts & Crafts house, Bowness-on-Windermere (October 2027–February 2028) and Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh (March–September 2028).