[3] The street was saved from slum clearance in the early 1960s, after the nearby area of Richmond, or the "village on the hill", was completely demolished.

[4] The University of East Anglia planned to buy the Victorian terraced housing of Argyle Street from Norwich City Council for student homes in 1979.

However, on 6 December 1978, forty squatters moved into fourteen empty houses and one of Britain's largest and longest running squats had begun.

In 1981 a £1 million grant was agreed for a major renovation scheme, but in 1982 the Department of the Environment blocked Norwich City Council's plan to sell or lease the houses to the co-operative.

[8] In 1981, Argyle Street became the setting for scenes of a filmed adaptation of Doris Lessing's dystopian novel Memoirs of a Survivor.