On Harlow: Parndon Mill's futuristic vision

Meeting the artists exploring the town's modernist history and charting a path towards renewal

Early Bird, Jordan Cook 2019

It’s easy to miss the turning to Parndon Mill. The narrow lane towards it runs perpendicular to Elizabeth Way, its entrance just past a row of light industrial units first built when Harlow New Town came into existence after the Second World War. Pulling down here, past the new build estate raised up from the fields which used to belong to the local rugby club, I feel as if reversing would be more appropriate, such is the sense of passing back into quieter times. The church of St Mary’s at Little Parndon, all stone walls and gable roof, is a relic from a time when this was a distant rural parish rather than a town just 30 minutes from London via the trainline which runs alongside it. A rectory was first built here in 1254. The church’s stained glass is the stuff of local legend and yet I have not entered since I was a young child, when its glittering blues and reds struck an inexplicable fear inside me.

Crossing the railway over a hump backed bridge, I take a quick glance down the track which leads to the banks of the Stort Navigation, so often the jumping off point for adventures along the river’s banks: down towards the ‘backwater’ which runs around the lock at nearby Hunsdon, my uncle’s ageing fishing rod and tackle in hand, in search of the giant perch which plied its waters; walks along muddy banks upriver towards the Moorhen pub and its adjacent marina; bike rides where a lack of mudguards made for a splattered look after a couple of hours’ spent trundling along the then churned up towpaths.

I am not here to walk. Rather, I am here to delve inside the mill itself. It is a building I have passed on countless occasions, usually on those adventures, but never entered. I once helped to pull a sodden German Shepherd from the adjacent lock on a Boxing Day wander with my wife and my dad, but that’s as close as I’ve come to time spent inside. 

A mill was mentioned here in Domesday, 900 years before the New Town was conceived and built. Today’s building dates from 1900, its place in local arts lore assured after the in-house miller Neville Smith died in 1960 and it became dilapidated and run down. With an inevitability that speaks to the self-starting nature of the Harlow arts scene, something imbued with a proto-punk spirit, its journey towards its current incarnation began in the late 1960s, when local artists moved in and began taking steps towards making it the ideal space for makers and creators.  Today its vast expanse is home to 30 studios and its own gallery. But there’s a newness and vibrancy here, thanks to the quiet incursion of a group of young artists who have moved back to Harlow after completing their studies, the town’s modernist promise and ready access to inspiration allowing them to create work that is of a piece with the area. Work that speaks to the power of the place and a willingness to see beyond the entrenched social issues, from Brexit to immigration to RAAC-ridden schools, which have become so dominant whenever the national spotlight falls here.

I’m hear to see Jordan Cook, who has a double-sided space which in one direction looks up the river and past the narrow boats moored north of Parndon Mill lock and, in the other, south across floodplains and on towards the backwater of my childhood. I first met Cook at his Redrawing Harlow exhibition in the town’s Civic Centre in the summer of 2023. Bright, ebullient and with a flop of dark hair from below which a single earring glints, he is helping to lead a charge for the arts in our shared hometown. His charcoal drawings draw largely on the brutalism and modernism of Harlow’s architecture, works that emphasise beauty, whether it’s the sweep of curving roads through 1960s housing estates or the now-impractical, once pioneering strip that forms the Town Centre’s bus station.

Cook takes me into his studio, where framed works ready for sale lean against whitewashed brick walls and new sketches are pinned up ready for closer inspection. One depicts the unexpectedness of the red brick tower which stands on the edge of Town Park, a 1990s creation which seems stark against the concrete pallor of similar structures around the town.

‘I haven’t quite got the colour right on that one,’ says Cook. Usually he works in charcoal only, but there is something striking about this new work. I love it.

Cook and I have been messaging back and forth ever since I conceived of a project about Harlow, something that marries memoir, polemic, social history and nature with an optimism that is at the town’s core. The latter is something he finds in his work and seems to see everywhere. It is impossible not to be buoyed and excited by it.

After peering through the open windows down to the water, the floodplains which edge this northern end of town now knee deep, swans stretching their wings, starlings chattering in the branches, Cook takes me on a whistle stop tour, up and down narrow wooden staircases, past locked doors. I am quickly, hopelessly lost and utterly in his hands when he knocks on one door left slightly ajar and leads me into a space which is unquestionably my idea of paradise: Snootie Studios.

Walking into this room on the mill’s south western corner, there is an unerring sense of coming home. The ceilings are lower than in other studios, desks scattered with prints, mind maps for future projects and a single copy of this week’s Private Eye. A small kitchenette looks out south, while a large window offers a glance west over the river and the distant A414. The burnt red of turning leaves brushing the panes of glass and the low autumn sun lend everything a golden glow. The light bounces off of vintage posters on the walls, advertising the great Harlow show of 1977 in the Town Park and a luminous orange number showcasing the Bonfire Night procession from The Stow along First Avenue. Upcycled armchairs and shelves stuffed with books, LPs and CDs complete the look.

‘I remember that,’ I say, pointing to the procession poster, addressing not just Cook but his friends Abbie, Harry and Laura, who set up Snootie after finishing degrees at Camberwell and Brighton. It’s hard not to feel ancient amongst such young and enthusiastic up and comers, although if there’s any sense of them sensing that grandad has come to visit, they certainly don’t show it. Talk soon turns to the way modernism and concrete seeps into your bones if you come from Harlow (a reason, no doubt, why I feel in love with UEA as a student). It seems they were very happy to come back and be at the forefront of something new and exciting, building on the work of the sculptors whose works are found across town. Abbie explains they have plans for an oral history of the Town Park bandstand, a way to highlight the way working class art and creativity was something that dominated and resonated in the late 20^th century, especially in a place like this. We discuss the old estate pubs, named after butterflies, which have thrived, come close to the brink and are now battling for survival. And the criminal demise of the Harlow Square, an iconic indie venue flattened in the last decade for housing and still an empty, boarded off space.

‘There’s not really anywhere for people from the alternative scene to hang out any more,’ bemoans Harry. The studio seems to be doing that job for now. Soon there are eight of us squeezed in, talking of shared histories, changing buildings and concerns for plans to turn shops into homes in the town centre. It is a place I would have loved to have access to 20 years ago, although I leave Snootie and Jordan feeling as if I’ve shed a decade or two having just been in their company on their own turf. There’s a bounce in my step as I head back to the car, memories colliding with plans and a passion to see this place done right. A chance to explain why it says so much about our country and all the things that can be done right when optimism meets gumption.