I remember when it was painted pink. I got married in the church opposite the Metropolitan Tabernacle and have the shopping centre in the background of some of my wedding pictures. 🙂🐘
Big irony here. It was a grotty shabby place. I moved into area in about 1972. I lived in Nursery Row, run very well by a private landlord called Yates. The street was full of people who had survived the war, the bombing, the gangs, the lot. I lived with a school teacher who used to work at Walworth School which I think was near the Albany Road. She showed me around the area and I grew very fond of it. East Street market and Baldwin’s of Sarsperela fame were my favourites but there were many more details. But I rarely went to the shopping centre which I thought was a dump. At one time some wit had decided to have it painted pink - which amused my young daughter at the time. The last time I visited it was probably about two years ago - and yes, it had become very different. It felt like the kind of community life that used to thrive in the area back in the 1970’s when there were cheaper rents and lots of odd places people set up odd little businesses. They had gradually been moved out because of developers and possibly ended up at the shopping centre. The last time I was there it really did have a community atmosphere with an eclectic range of shops and cafes. The people themselves had made it all happen and it was wonderful. Myself and my partner were moved out of Nursery Row in about 1978/9 to a pleasant modern flat in a block in Bagshot St. It was quiet, plenty of parking spaces and gradually near a huge park that was being built - Burgess Park. For a while it was a great place to live. You could drive from there and park free of charge around the South Bank centre and spend the afternoon wandering around there or crossing the bridge and wandering around near Covent Garden etc. Nursery Row was pulled down. Lots of the odd places folded. The Sarsperella man down East Street market died and Baldwin’s expanded into a shop next door. The park, Burgess Park, continued to get makeovers, a huge Tesco’s was built on the old lorry park, the Green Man, the Dun Cow and the Thomas a Becket got make overs or were shut down. Other little businesses disappeared and the posh flats started to be built around the park. When I was last in the area I was shocked to discover part of the Aylesbury Estate as it was known had been knocked down to make way for posh flats. The park had had yet another makeover and the flat where I had lived in Bagshot Street had deteriorated even more. It’s only when you have lived in an area like the Elephant for years do you really see how it all works. It doesn’t work for the poor people at all. The council as a rule were pretty horrible and complained that everyone was badly behaved even if the were not. Some struggled to survive - I saw many desperate things. Many immigrants were placed in this kind of area, the kind of area least able to cope with the pressures on local poor communities, creating the kinds of resentments that lead to the rise of racism. The park was originally for the poor people so they had a place to go as a break from the pressurised life living in the flats near Thurlow St and all the way to the Walworth Rd. Gradually, as you say, gentrification has crept in and will eventually drive the most desperate out. By the end the Elephant and Castle shopping centre has become what the area always needed. A refuge for shops and a community sensed area for the real people who live there. The bright ones create businesses and life style havens that make sense in terms of the real locals. The racial mix becomes represented in a much more positive light and that experience is taken back to each individual home, healing the divisions and the conflicts created by the brutal and harsh way they are treated by the council or landlords. Yes - the shopping centre has become a very different place than intended, but certainly a place that was desperately needed. It is a very sad thing to hear that this is to be demolished, but I am not surprised at all. This is all to make way for gentrification as you say and demonstrates as clearly and as vividly as possible that government doesn’t care but it does still want to use it for photoshop opportunities. It is just down the road from Parliament. Developers are destroying everything eventually. The whole area, which has always been under flux, is now being exploited for massive financial gain. In this case nature - being the forgotten and neglected local people who created their own environment that worked, are being driven out by the Anti-Nature Death Cult - which is not just destroying the organic spirit of the Elephant but is destroying the countryside as well. A timely, poignant and sad story told here, but vital that has been told. Now at this time I am very sad to hear that this is to go. Thank you for this movie.
Problem is that the Aylebury has always been a shit hole. But its always been the plans of the planning department of Southwark. To quote them, they want to turn the Old Kent Road into a canyon lined by high rise flats.
ON the pubs, I agree. Wiped out again by Southwark council Take the Gin Palace. Destroyed again. No doubt lots of back handers. Same with other flats. If you are in with the planning department, you get to build flats without paying section 106 money. It's completely corrupt.
good piece that is written with real understanding of the area. I too know the area well. Remember that when the Aylesbury and other local estates were born they destroyed thousands of Georgian and Victorian homes . Imagine that change taking place from 1950 to 1970. Each generation makes it mark.
I never went in, but every time I rode or walked past it I marveled at how feral the shopping centre looked, and how ripe it was for obliteration. But its insistence on existing was comforting. In a prime piece of London, it was like a small, defiant gesture of anti-aspiration, anti-commercialism, anti-exclusive sentiment. Yes, real.
Oh come on. The place was a dive, had almost no redeeming qualities and was so "feral" that it scared off a lot of people, including you and me. We can't preserve every building, so if new things are to be built, this is a far better place to do it than the site of an attractive building or culturally important location. This is the first time I've disagreed with Jago, but cleaning up a dodgy site is surely a good thing and this "gentrification" will benefit everyone, both locals and the disadvantaged people in social housing who will mostly move to far nicer homes.
That was it’s charm from the hoodies who hang around by the entrance to the overground station to the homeless guy begging for change by the northern line ticket office I loved the place it was my second home as a kid
@@Dave_Sisson I don't actually disagree with you, in large part. Its demise was inevitable, and I accept that. It's just that its lingering presence symbolised something (for me, at least). One can regard the idea of a thing with admiration, without clinging to the thing itself. It was in this case a morsel of abstracted beauty in the aesthetic beast. Or a little wry humour in a city that is perhaps liable to take itself a little too seriously.
I delivered to the Tesco at Elephant and Castle back in the mid 80's, back when lorry drivers weren't treated as cash cows, and if you had difficulty finding your access to a delivery point you could actually pullover and ask someone and not risk an instant fine on a red route. When I got to the loading dock I was told the 'backdoor man' was on breakfast, I was offered breakfast in the canteen free of charge, and I was greeted by cheerful people, best full English I've ever had. That's my only memory of the Elephant and Castle and I'm keeping it.
I lived in Camberwell until 2001. Loads of memories from there as well as the Heygate Estate where I had family. I bet I wouldn't recognise the Elephant these days. 😥
I was an exchange student at the south bank university, lived in halls nearby and did all my food shopping at this shopping centre. Good memories. I really loved this area despite its rundown ruggedness. Really nice people.
Stratford shopping centre is probably my favourite "workaday" shopping mall, it survives and thrives by being completely different to Westfield across the road
That's because a lot of locals avoid the Westfield like the plague. If you are doing your grocery and running errands there is no way you would inflict Westfield on yourself especially on weekends
@@zydhas2838 good point... also i remember when snooby people said they would'nt shop at Lidls and now there turning their back on Waitrose to get bargins at Lidl.
I grew up just off the Old Kent Road and used to go to Saturday morning pictures (when they're used to be 2 cinemas) at Elephant. Southwark deliberately let the place rot for decades. Anyone else remember when they painted it bright pink?! Def end of an era. There will be pretty much no social housing that I am certain. I remember the Heygate scandal very well and this development will be the same, sold off to foreign investors who will have the cheek to rent out a 1 bed flat for £1200pw 😕 To this day I still cannot figure out how anyone affords these rents.
@@adicbn I bet you don't make any where near £1200pw unless if your daddy is paying or are as old as Jesus. Even if you did, that would only cover your rent. Housing prices in London is stupidly high and everyone knows it.
@@sirkastic but what happens if all properties are £1200 per week but your earnings stay at £500 per week? Do we continue to shrug our shoulders and say "that's what the market dictates" as more and more people are left homeless? There comes a point where being able to provide basic shelter and food for people is something that is dictated by human decency, not the market. The market has its place, that's for certain, but if it's the only thing that dictates how we live, I see us reverting to a Dickensian London.
There used to be a second-hand bookshop, many years back, that I shopped at. It was a veritable treasure trove of books out of print. Especially in the science fiction and fantasy genres.
Wonderful comment. As you say, "there used to be..." In the London that used to be there were many places where individual traders such as the second-hand bookshops could operate-Farringdon Road is a notable example-but now they hardly exist. The end of an era indeed.
That bookshop was the only reason I'd route my commute through Elephant & Castle when I lived on Brixton Hill. As a poor student I did leave disproportionate share of my disposable income at the time there. Mind you, after walking around the rest of the Shopping centre once I believe I never strayed from Tube-bookshop-bus stop route. Last visit probably sometime in 1999.
As a child I used to go to Elephant and Castle shopping centre almost every day with my parents and my sister and my brother made so many good memories at the shopping centre ☺️, I going to miss it very much 😀.
I remember going to Tesco's in 1974 when I was a student at South Bank Poly. It seemed run down even then. Visiting Waterloo recently, the whole area seemed very trendy, we didn't get to elephant but crossed over the foot bridge. My dad was born in Kennington and my grand parents married in St Johns church Waterloo .
I first viewed this area around 1963 or so when. I started riding a scooter to work, it looked like a building site at the time but as time goes on I agree with the narrator of the video, this area will now become a faceless cement jungle like so many others, Lewisham in particular I can't even recognise the place anymore having known it for most of my 77 years. I am glad I no longer live near these faceless places, sadly, but I have my memories.
Totally agree with you Jago. I was an ex-public schoolboy who married a girl from the "Heygate". My kids loved the E&C shopping centre. Like East Street market, the market that sprang up around the shopping centre felt authentic and reflected the spirit of the local community. Perhaps a video on East Street market? Lots of local history there- changing demographics, "Mad Frankie Fraser", the Bell pub shooting.....
So, they're knocking down a grotty concrete shopping centre that sums up all that was bad about 60s architecture, and replacing with a bunch of sterile glass towers that sum up all that is bad about 2010s-20s architecture. Guess that's what count as 'progress' in London these days.
@@petitkruger2175 dear god... the walkie talkie is the most hated building in London. So horrifically tasteless in every regard it beggars belief it was ever granted planning permission.
@@petitkruger2175 modern buildings lack any beauty or character or cultural significance. London is one of the ugliest/blandest cities of western europe and it's thanks to it's horrible architecture
Born in camberwell . This and east lane very fond memories alas things and people change . The old manor is not what it once was 😢😊❤️life goes on . Living the dream since 1968 ❤️🙏🤣👍keep safe people and enjoy your best life xx
I actually stayed in a student dormitory not far from Elephant and Castle back in the summer of 2018. I wanted to grocery shop at a proper supermarket instead of the corner stores, so I'd walked down to Elephant and Castle ignorant of its reputation. But frankly, it was fascinating to see such a relatively grungy and homey shopping center as close as it was to London's city centre. Even thinking back on it, it felt exactly like so many old American shopping centers I'd visited as a kid, still open long past their prime and surviving largely off independent and low-income retailers. They're generally eerie as hell, but they're also still vital for struggling communities. I enjoyed walking around Elephant a bit and the Tesco seemed to have the best grocery selection within walking distance of where I lived, and it really stands out to me how much I remember of Elephant and Castle for only visiting it maybe 3 or 4 times, so hopefully the renovations don't totally destroy its character.
Growing up in Battersea, I've always been familiar with the Elephant and Castle shopping centre. We used to pass it regularly in my dad's car as we drove northwards to visit family north of London. In later life, I passed it twice daily on the Thameslink going to and from work in the City. But only once did I ever set foot inside, when I had just turned 12, and I bunked off school one day looking for somewhere different to spend the record tokens I had just received for Christmas. Even then (1978/1979) the place felt shabby and run down, but it had character, it was full of the kind of people I was used to being around in Battersea, the type of people who gave London its soul. I can't help thinking that future users of the site will care little about the history of the area as they take that first post-Uni step of moving to London and attempting to set foot on the corporate ladder. The London of today is no longer the London I grew up in, and the last remaining remnants get fewer by the day. Farewell, grey/pink/blue monstrosity, you were never pretty to look at, but you were ours.
I remember what was there before they built the shopping center and the Haygate estate, tall crumbling Victorian houses, tenements and down at heal shops. The planners no doubt thought they were doing the community a favour, today those favours are made out to the developers while the poor just have to cope. I made it out to rural Norfolk and my occasional visits back to the Elephant were like stepping into the market scenes in Blade Runner. A place abandoned by everyone except the poor and disadvantaged. London has always evolved and always will but the speed seems to be quicker. Maybe the consequences of COVID will slow it down. But the natural consequence of change means that when so much of the world you knew is physically demolished you are forced to live more inside your own head.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. I remember The Maccabees mentioning that Elephant and Castle was the last real place standing in London, several years ago. They feared the gentrification they had witnessed around them was looming and the great community would be dispersed; sad to see it come to pass.
I only ever passed through the shopping centre for two reasons: a) to get to the National Rail station from the Underground station, and b) to get a pasty from Greggs. I shall miss the old (presumably Nineties) Greggs shop front that they never bothered to update. Do you remember it?
It was still there last time I went down there, but that was probably two years ago now. It was a shit hole but it had real shops which is quite unusual for somewhere so close to the south bank.
Can't remember a Greggs there form the time I went to SBU, the noddle bar on the outside I can remember been cheap but nice and you got a big plate of stuff too. I sure it was red/pink in those day's
It was and always would be a dump - especially the way they painted a depressing blue - a colour code rather than a colour of life. It was once you got inside - and some of the surrounds as well - that the wonder of what individuals with a bit of imagination can do to bring life to it. Once others discover a place that they can recognise that relates to them and their lives they revisit, tell their friends and then they all begin to meet there. Migrants who have moved to the area because of cheap rents or have been dumped there on mass creating ready made ghettos - for what ever reason through no fault of their own - had a chance there to create something that related to them and their companions. They brought something of the vitality of their own cultures which originally had wonderful bazaars and thriving market areas in their home countries. There are various negative comments on this thread by our American cousins, people from a stolen land and very little cultural history - who have developed ways of commercial culture that reflect their immigrant origins - some which are exciting and others which are corrupting, vulgar and exploitative. They provide cheap food but dull food, most of it tastes like cardboard or worse and has doubtful nutritional value. The idea is to con people into thinking that they are getting something of quality when in fact it is all about the money by selling cheap with cheap food in a robotic bland homogenous way - destroying the body and damaging the brain. The value of what the Elephant shopping centre became was to be able to by for example South American or West Indian food that tasted of something - like it was meant to be - plus the service could be great because they meant it. It was that sense of service that made it so attractive, not the sense of exploitation that you from the worst of American food chain outlets. They were places where people mattered, not profits.
Greggs... was that a Broomfields or Bakers Oven before the Greggs empire engulfed everything. I used to clean that shop and the Bakers Oven at Camberwell.... amongst others
I have a work colleague who bought a pastie in the Elephant Gregg's every lunchtime. I preferred to try different food from time to time. In the seventies, the Wimpy Bar was great
The Elephant and Castle was the closest thing to a downtown that people living in and surrounding areas had. There were two cinemas opposite each other, one old and one modern, there were pubs, The Pineapple (a great place to listen to rock music) The Charlie Chaplin (which Charlie Chaplin visited in the 70s) and others, also there were places to eat and do the shopping. The tube station also has a direct line to the West End, London's centre (the bakerloo line). The shopping centre was an important part of that local 'downtown' feeling without having to go to the West End. It was a place to go to for an enjoyable day or a night out. I haven't been back there for a long time, but I guess it still has that local downtown feeling, so it's sad to hear that the shopping centre is being demolished. Hopefully, what they will build in its place will be something positive and not negative for the area, which isn't always the case as I have experienced in another city where I was living, where they totally destroyed a popular area.
I worked in greengrocery section of Tescos back in the 70's, the largest store in the country and with a home and wear attached, quite something in those days, and it was the first store in England to take £1m in a week. I always remember you couldn't drink the water from a tap, it tasted like acid lol.
Home and Wear and the staff canteen were the floor above the food section. I have relative who used to work there. It was used as a location (food part) for an American supermarket in Death Wish 3.
Water is still undrinkable in the South, since making the fatal mistake of moving here, it's been bottled water. I miss Northern soft, lovely water. And everything else back home.
@@JasmineSurrealVideos The water was always hard and I thought it tasted salty. It isn't just the hardness, when I lived in North Wiltshire, the water tasted nice even though it was hard. So it was the amount the water had been re-used increasing chlorides which gave its taste as well as the hardness.. Now I live in Cornwall and have natural soft water and it tastes good.
Big cities around the world are gradually becoming places where only the wealthy can afford to live. The less economically independent people are being forced out by sky-high rental or purchase prices. Eventually, all the services for the new wealthy owners and occupiers of these city centres will have to commute in from farther out and pay the cost of high transport and parking costs. Essentially, the world is being designed more and more to accommodate the rich and powerful in enclaves of security and isolation from the rest of humanity. This helps them treat the rest of humanity more and more like canon fodder for their industries, services, etc. Any claims they may make to "benefit" the community or create more employment is pretty much lip service only. The City of London developed it's own model of privilege many years ago, what we are witnessing now is a gradual expansion of that same idea. I grew up in London in the 60s & 70s and lived there for most of the 80s and 90s, so I've seen these changes come about with my own eyes. I only went into the Elephant and Castle shopping centre a couple of times and it was a place where many local people would shop and find things they need or meet up with friends. Obviously, it was old and lacking modernisation, but in general it was maintained enough to provide services to the community. Large American style shopping centres (or Shopping Malls as they call it) are still developed and built around the world, but you'll notice that they are all very similar, the same big brand and chain stores operate in them and the owners of the shopping centres are often exclusively in the hands of a few international consortiums who probably contribute little or no tax to the country where they operate and then get subsidized by local councils in terms of services to the shopping centre.
Due to globalization the last 20-30 years has seen the largest movement of people from the rural countryside to urban areas. There are more people living in cities now than at any other time in history. China alone has, in the past 40 years, lifted over 400 million of its citizens (that's six times more than the entire population of the UK) out from poor rural communities to become their new middle class. And you see this happening everywhere especially in newly developed countries. The complaints about gentrification mostly comes from residents of Western cities who neither have or strive for upward social mobility and want or expect their neighbourhoods to remain the same generation after generation. Similar to the kind of people that expect social welfare and social housing while obstensibliy embracing capitalism?! Progress requires change. We don't want stagnation.
@@kamma44 you have made some good points, but it's not about being against progress, rather it's about people having choices about where and how they would like to live. Isn't that the kind of freedom you would want for yourself, your children and others? If that kind of freedom can only be paid for by ever less affordable sums of money, then it makes for a world where ONLY the economically and socially upward mobile minority can CHOOSE to buy in big cities for their work and/or investments, while at the same time buy land and property in other cities around the world. I'm not against capitalism per se, however it does need to be reined in for a better distribution of wealth and opportunity for all. This doesn't mean we all earn the same or live in the same areas, it's about developing economic policies and government strategies to address the big socio-economic and environmental issues. Your example of China conveniently ommits to mention how many millions work in extremely restrictive conditions so that the middle class can make it ahead of them. Upward social mobility is usually accompanied with exploitation of many others to achieve that. Is that what you are defending here? It's not wrong to aspire to do better, it's how it's achieved and at what cost to others and the environment that is at the crux of building a better world for people and the planet, both of which are at risk of heading towards ever more perilous times.
@@kamma44 More comments on people who've lived in these places for generations not wanting change - when you look past the all too easy to judge surface of a small percentage of unfortunates who dont care no matter where they live (there's high end drug dealers too!) one might view the bulk of decent hard working folk therein, to say they dont foster change is a deceptive perpspective, you may as well have injected in a veiled hint at the poor pulling themselves up by their bootstraps in bold type, for these places of struggle have always been morphing in changeable ways from inception. There are many folks who have come from nothing, only to work a lifetime of multiple menial jobs just so they can leave their kids something to give them a platform to start, of which they never had thenselves, so too have they tried to get into higher education or saved by the penny for their kids, some succeed & are fortunate to open shops or businessess contributing to the betterment of their neighborhoods, others not so much but at least they gave it a crack before going back to those available working class jobs, because those put immediate food on the table, & despite not bringing in much, they still brought value to local commerce benefitting other local small businessess & facilitating further employment, even a teen dishwashing is a teen off the street til something better is on offer. And yes, there are tens of millions of Chinese, many peasants who've left or been forced off the land who are nowhere near being middle class, who are living in the very factories they work at, toiling 12 to 16 hour days in slave labour conditions under threat that if they dont like it they're told, 'there's plenty more where you came from' & there are, this, yet they take that treatment because money is needed to be sent home as they too dont want to see their loved ones drowning in poverty or debt, due to the land being unfruitful or simply not having enough extended family to assist in the labour necessary to make it viable. Yes too, they have a large middle class who aren't complaining - yet, but are these numbers sustainable..? What happens when all these new wealth putting their kids through higher education find out there's not going to be the same number of jobs to go around, & how long will disaffected shabbily treated workers put up with poor pay & conditions, before they revolt to protect themselves & cultivate organisations that advocate for workers who demand better wages & working conditions, nobody knows because poor Chinese havent been allowed to have a legitimate voice to date, they're too busy stuck under the thumb dying in factories after being poisoned soldering circuit boards in the millions of mobile phones for years. Maybe think a little more next time you make huge generalisations concerning the poor & working class who just like anyone else want to see their communities thrive & prosper. For outsiders, it might appear the place is rundown, & they're happy to have feasible investment that draws a community together, this is not that, it's for all intents & purposes just another cold investment that cares nothing for the livelihood of the folks who reside there, they see it because it's happened before, rip out anything that makes a poorer community viable, dissolve anything that happens to be an incentive for them to subsist comfortably within their financial means & when it's all built over new, make it impossible to afford anything in the frameworks of what they were used to, as now the housing is upmarket, the pricing of food etc follows, as those who can't afford it leave, there goes the effort, intimacy, pride & support of kin & community held fast throughout previous generational changes, the moneyed don't care for the human cost, it's simply a matter of economics, the breakdown is meaningless to all but those who spent a lifetime making improvements in all but what the wealthy think that matters.
Back in the early 2000's I worked in an office just up the way on London Rd near where Ministry Of Sound was located. I found the neighborhood to be real and vibrant. I used to enjoy going to the Imperial War Museum on my lunch breaks and often spent quite a few minutes standing in the middle of the round about watching all that traffic go past as well! Coming from little old New Zealand this sirt of neighborhood was quite an experience. Thank you for the memories :-)
Thankyou for this. I used to go here shopping with my Grandma who lived in a council flat in Kennington who liked a whiskey or two. My job was to carry the Bells home. I liked the local feel of the place. Happy memories. She died in 2003. I miss her a lot ❤
I lived at the Elephant from 1952 to 1956 . In those days it was a very nice place . We lived in pullens buildings , where charlie chaplin lived , very briefly in 1907 . Happy days .
I love the names of places in London, when a friend and I visited England a long time ago we spent a week in London and searched for a long time trying to find a pub with a non-smoking part. We finally sound a place called the Slug and Lettuce, where the hard cider on tap had us giggling and wobbling all the way back to our bed and breakfast. Had a lovely time in London, the cheery quirky names and the cheery quirky people alike.
I had lunch in a cafe there last year while waiting for my mother to come out of surgery at tommies. You have described it well but there was something comforting about the centre and the fact that I could have a great meal a a fraction of the cost in the cafes around the hospital. I will miss the shopping centre when I next visit London, a unique place RIP
Yeah comforting cafe when I sat and ate a fried egg roll finding a long hair inside, oh how I'll really miss that. What do you do, just take it out, and finish your roll. YUK...😖never ever again..................breeding germs there. I am sorry for the businesses revenues, but if you are an entrepreneur, you spring up somewhere else, because you have visions and dreams.🤔
My aunt and cousins lived in those flats back in the early/mid 90s, I’d always get out the station with my dad looking at that elephant knowing I’d be on my way to see my family! Although I was as young as 6 I had some great memories there!
It seems like a kinda curse, if an area is struggling you'll often get a lot of less wealthy and smaller independent shops and businesses moving in which are usually the most interesting but the fact that they are good then in turn makes the area more desirable which leads to it becoming targeted for redevelopment that forces out those people. The ultimate irony of this all is that those redevelopments then often fail because they forced out everyone who made the area interesting and then 30 years later it'll again be a struggling area.
Yup. Happened to Brixton, Hackney, Herne Hill now...the list goes on. Hippies move in first, arty types combined with immigrants make for eclectic and interesting. This draws in the middle classes .....then the rich etc just as u said.
@@iordanneDiogeneslucas: exactly. The inner boroughs, and those with good transport links, will draw the moneyed who can't afford Notting Hill or Chelsea. They have no interest in the area since they will be spending most of their time working and sending out for food and consumer goods. Their home is essentially a gilded dormitory.
Thanks for this informative report on the Elephant and Castle shopping centre. I knew it well having lived in the area for 20 years. It was refreshed in the 1990s if I recall with pink paint. ( determined to have been chosen because in tests it calmed prisoners whose cells had been painted in the colour!) It has had a strange life and one , as you say, which could never have been anticipated by its original planners. The area population has changed massively in the span of the life of the building. Although tatty and unloved the market in recent years had its charm. The outside sold cheap street food and odds and sods. The inside had a few Latino shops and one or two heritage stores including an original W H Smiths little changed in 50 years. What the heck happened in that massive " Thunderbirds" office block in the middle of the centre?. Never could figure that out. I passed the place a thousand times and will oddly miss it. Expect to see shiny new glass fronted apartments and a smattering of Tesco metros and bars in its place.
I heard they painted it pink because the concrete needed covering, grey was not liked and a "Pink Elephant" was better and that they'd never consider it being a "White Elephant".
My grandad used to drink in the elephant pub that was attached to it. I grew up around there, the Walworth rd, the Lane. Of course it’s rough it was a poor area doesn’t mean the place didn’t have character and characters
I worked in office building over the E&C Hannibal House which had several NHS departments in there. The building was a throw back to the 1960.s and 70s and I loved it. The shopping centre was alive with people, the 'mad cafe' which always had a chair flying out the door and Telon Books, a bookshop long gone but where `I spent most of my lunchtimes. The best barbers shop and great food all around the centre. I'd left a government department that had been based in Pimlico with a river view to work at the office in E&C and never regretted it. What a sad loss to London life, enough of boring food chains and brands, E&C had history, life and a soul. I saw it being taken down as I worked across the roundabout in Skipton House and would sit on the balcony at lunch time, watching a world collapse. So many memories.... and so sad.
david mulligan I remember it opening too. The top floor only ever had a handful of shops occupied and after a few years the whole of this floor was closed and became, I think, offices. Will be sorry to see it go, though I don’t live anywhere near it now. I did go into it last year when passing through the area. Think it should have been kept and refurbished.
I had the great misfortune to work up the road at St Georges Circus in the 70's, from which that monstrosity could be seen. I renamed it The Effluent and C Arsehole.
Lived there for 5 years and loved going to the centre. They concreted over the walking subways which was a travesty. I liked the down to earth outlook of the centre - it was a great leveller.
My lasting memory of elephant and castle is being lost for more than half an hour in what used to be their subway pedestrian walkways. I followed sign after sign and went to exit after exit and never got to where I was trying to go which was simply across the road. I ended up just leaving the subway and trying my luck on crossing the busy dangerous road. I continued to just cross the dangerous road whenever in the area as I could not take getting lost again. I’m happy the area is being redeveloped but I’m sad for the community it is displacing.
I first went there in 1994 with my dad when there was a public protest for the Stephen Lawrence murder and then well into my early adulthood, I used to buy cheap Nike trainers from the market there. Memories 😢🤣🤣
I used to live across the street of the shopping centre for a year when i was studying at the London College of Communication. I graduated from my course a few months ago and during my first year there, elephant and castle was my first home away from home. First time living by myself with complete strangers and this shopping centre is where I found most of the things I needed. I always thought that is was depressing on slow days and I always tried to rush through the centre if I had to walk through or shop there, but I still had some good memories thanks to that place. Me and my friend would try to find the best meal deals we could for lunch and found the boots in the shopping centre had the best value and variety. There’s a bowling alley and bingo parley that we went to celebrate a flat mates birthday in, and ones of those flat mates even bought cocaine in the toilets up there that night. And I can’t forget the Chinese restaurant on the corner on the centre. That fucking place was the best Chinese restaurant I’ve eaten in if I had a craving for good crap Chinese food. The waitresses that didn’t smile, the cheap food and sun bleached pictures on the menu. That place was the best and I’ll miss it greatly. Sadly that area changed a lot when I first went there for a portfolio interview to when I joined. It was much more dangerous to cross the road due to the underground tunnels under the road. A confusing and muggers heaven for concrete that really turned me off the place. So I thought the gentrification turned out to be a good thing. But it wasn’t. Homeless people sleeping outside the station every night and day was constant. People begging for money and I even got conned out of 50£ because I was being stupid and kind. The area really wasn’t the best, but if you want to live in London this was definitely an option to experience “London life”. Now my uni is tearing the place down, kicking the same people that attended their school out of their homes to build a new luxury campus to teach their lessons that are too expensive, and employing people that are racist and sexist to lecture them new generation to think the same. (I hated uni). Elephant and Castle is changing and definitely not for the better.
I remember when they painted the whole thing pink! It did little to improve its appearance. Even back then, 30 years ago it’s felt ready to be demolished. And yet I agree, despite its ugliness, it seemed appreciated by the local community and had a bit of culture and character to it.
Living in Northern Ireland, our Primary School took a school trip to London 1984 (I was 11 years old). Travelling on the coach around the capital, the driver stopped off at this Shopping Centre to let us see the Elephant and Castle statue featured...It was nice to see it again, and to relive childhood memories. Thank you.
Ah... I was a regular in the Elephant shopping centre while studying at South Bank Uni for four years. It was always somewhat 'down at heel' but all the better for it. There were a collection of shops you would never see elsewhere, it was a place with character and heart. I am rather sad to see it go and the traders scattered... A sad day and another win for the faceless 'money men' as you put it.
@@GlamStacheessnostalgialounge Is it? 'mebresa' Sounds quite accurate to me, but to more precise half of the 'poor' they mentioned are not as 'poor' as they make us believe.
From1973 to 1977, I lived in Camberwell, just 2 or 3 miles from the E & C shopping centre, but, oddly enough, never went there. it wasn't until about 20 years later, long after I'd moved to the US that I visited the centre on a trip to London, and was showing my son around my old stomping grounds. I remember going into a second hand book shop there, something you generally don't associate with urban shopping malls.
I was there in 86/87, played a 5 a side competition at a sports place nearby. Had some food and a cuppa in there, it was a Thursday if I recall. The place was a bit shabby but it had character and characters which gave it an atmosphere. I was living in Milton Keynes at the time, brand new shopping centre, sterile, devoid of any mental attraction but this place had a bit of edgy energy, something that was a great place for people watching.
On Milton Keynes I remember a major sociological study that found people didn't identify with it as a place (sterile centre etc) but they were happy there. The individual housing pockets worked well as communities. So the planners had been successful but not in the way they expected or intended!
I've grown up in Southwark over the last two decades, and used this shopping centre a fair few times - it was a community institution and we still have the angry birds hats we got from the street market! The community displacement is what upsets me so about 'regeneration' in our area - it just seems an excuse to turf out everybody living within range of a tube station who doesn't have a trust fund to justify it. The Heygate was scandalous - so far as I gather, the whole estate was sold for about four million pounds when it was worth hundreds of millions at the least - and I'm glad at least that the Aylesbury Estate is still around. I may not be one for the architecture, but in times like these, I don't think anyone can use concrete brutalism as a valid excuse to expel hundreds of people from their homes. Of course, the irony is that the powers of compulsory purchase that the councils use to get rid of social housing were originally given to them with the express intent of being used to create social housing!
Even much of the Aylesbury has started to be demolished, in a few years it’ll be gone, although hopefully replaced with a higher percentage of new council homes, unlike the Heygate
@@sdrawkcabUK my friend . If you have been there for over 3 decades I assume you own rights to your home. Just be happy your property is now worth more than you and enjoy your new wealth
One of your videos was recommended to me an hour ago...and I'm still here. And subscribed. 😀 I'm Canadian, and haven't been to London since my teens, 40 years ago, yet I've always had an interest in the city's history and buildings. Your videos are absolutely fascinating, and I'm sure that I'll work my way through them in the next little while.
Here's a couple of memories of the Elephant and Castle I have as a 16-year-old Irish lad who used that train station a lot back in the early 1980s I bought my first Van Halen record (Women and Children First) in the shopping centre. I remember walking through the underground tunnels (that linked all the roads ) back in 1983 and seeing blue stenciled markings on the walls announcing the new single from 'New Order' called "Blue Monday" and wondering to myself what that would sound like? Got a taxi there one night (back to Brockley) and it was being driven by Patrick Murray (Mickey Pearce from Only Fools & Horses) EDIT: Just got the news later today that Eddie Van Halen had passed away - RIP Eddie ....Lifes a long song folks, enjoy it while we can, eternity waits for no one.
I lived on the haygate as a child and remember my mum sending my sister and I shopping for her at Tesco, In the shopping centre I am now 50, it is a lasting memory so is the Saturday morning pictures as well. The cinema was just at the top of the ramp leading to the elephant and castle.
Some of us remember the Elephant as it was prior to the atrocity that was built there. Tell you what, pull it down and build a pub there and call it The Elelphant and Castle.
The Shopping Centre opened on my mum and dad's 10th Wedding anniversary. I was eight years old. I used to play on the ramps, rolling down them sitting on a book on a roller skate. Great fun!
It's always a little sad when a familiar place is torn down for something shiny and new. They are more than simply geographical landmarks...they become markers of people's lives. A first job...a place where people went to work each day...or just a place to go and spend time, I'm certain the old Elephant meant more to a lot of people than just an old building.
@T Doran I agree that there are buildings that are so unimaginative that they are, as you say, just a block that appears to have been plunked down, with no prepossesing qualities. And some buildings look so awful, you might wonder what the architect was thinking when it was designed. However, my comment was not related to building design or appearance, but to the people who use buildings. Ugly or not, it's still a part of peoples lives that will be gone.
The place was definitely like stepping into a time warp, a sort of 'other London' that we don't see any more. I likened it to a steroidal version of Ilford's Pioneer Market. You're right about its sense of community offering, you could see real Londoners in there. It clung on for so long - does London have any more commercial centres like it from that era? I'm clutching at straws to say yes.
Omg... It's finally gone! So much memories and always joking about this shopping centre getting done up since 2004 and having lunch at the Chinese and the bowling.
Many a Saturday spent in the excellent record shop on the first floor,CDs for a tenner or less 20 years ago and great selection,doubt it is still there
I thought the Brent Cross shopping centre was the first American style undercover mall in London/Europe? They even employed the huge chain "anchor stores" like American malls do, something you never see in British shopping centres for some reason.
Oh, I thought we do, or did have "Anchor Stores" in quite a few, only that some of them went bust, or decided to move out when the capital investment firms that funded the shopping centers put up their rent.
@@adamjvegan The Grafton Centre in Cambridge used to be anchored by BHS, but they are no more. What will always be Lion Yard to me (bring back the statue and hang the council) is anchored to Robert Sayle / John Lewis. There's one on the edge of Peterburough that's about half-filled by a gigantic Tesco. The one in the middle of Peterburough had a big John Lewis too, I think. Not been there since 2007 or so.
The Brent Cross (1976) was indeed first "real" shopping US-style mall in the UK. At outskirts of the housing area, with huge parking space, ment rather to go by a car (like americans do) or by bus, that by walk. I personally always enjoyed walking from Neasden to Brent Cross with my girlfriend, but that's another story. On the other side, it was Tesco's Crawley (1968) to be first US-style superstore (supermarket). As for Elephant & Castle - sadly I was there only one or two times.
@@worldcomicsreview354 BHS was one that came to mind, including the likes of House of Fraser, and Debenhams. The worst thing is, once these tenants leave, the units are still too big for any other company that may want to come in and take over it, even after you split the multi-storey unit to single floor ones. That said, I'm pretty sure John Lewis is planning to axe some pretty big units soon.
Sadly I never entered the Shopping Centre I only drove round it Going from Balham (Gateway to the South) to the East End. It seemed to surrounded by dual carriageways and roundabouts I suspect its failure as an "American style shopping centre" was due to the presumption of getting to the centre by CAR which didn't / couldn't happen. Looking at the map, I noticed that it matches the old adage about East Anglia - cut off on three sides by the sea and on the fourth by British Rail The metal box in the roundabout at Elephant and Castle is interesting It is a memorial to Michael Faraday and is Grade II listed As a student of the history of the sciences Michael Faraday is an important figure as an experimenter / discoverer as well developing the intuitive model for electromagnetism later codified by Maxwell into mathematics and a core set of ideas for Quantum theories too. I had not realised that the box was a memorial to him. An option for a "weird memorial" in London.
@@fumthings It is covering for an electrcity substation for the Bakerloo line It might be moved. There have been plans to move it to Walworth Road - near the Cuming Museum but they came to nought. We will wait and see.
@@stanvanillo9831 I read Lillian R. Lieber who wrote several books on the sciences in the ninety forties. Her style was to write like this. In the introduction to her book on Einstein's theory of relativity she wrote: "This is not intended to be free verse. Writing each phrase on a separate line facilitates rapid reading, and everyone is in a hurry nowadays." Hope that helps.
@@stanvanillo9831 Lillian R. Lieber was a very interesting woman and her books range from good clear introductions to topics like: logic, geometry and relativity Though the Relativity book does cover the full general theory in this "pseudo-verse form".
I recall being fascinated by that metal box as a child, as I sat in the back of my dad's car, stuck in traffic on the roundabout as we attempted to make our way to or from home in Battersea. After dark it would take on a particularly magical, futuristic appearance as the lights from numerous cars and streetlamps illuminated its many concave squares. I really should get up there with my camera to capture it before someone somewhere decides its presence is no longer required.
Nobody who lived down them parts thought it was easy on the eye, but you would always bump into local people you knew, always time for a chat, plenty of the older generation meeting sons daughters & grandchildren for shopping & a meal, something quiet endearing about them days gone by
Reminds me of Phibsboro Shopping Centre in Dublin. Same story of it. Old, run down, probably cutting edge for the 1960s. It's adjoined to a large tower and shares it's rear with the home of one of Ireland's oldest football teams (Bohemian FC). Both the shopping centre and the stadium are to be redeveloped.
Its an iconic building and i dare say that the kids being born now wont ever see London with the vast amount of post-war 'pop-up' concrete buildings that prolifirated the captial. They had something about them, but as long as Kitten Kong doesnt take out the PoT, E&C is one place which is better consigned to history.
alze I would suggest you look into the unsavoury habits of Saudi princes and Russian oligarchs - there is a lot of crossover. They just have more money to bribe people than the locals and diplomatic immunity to boot.
@@allangibson8494 We cant blame them totally. Most of what they're doing is to satisfy United Nations agendas 21 and 2030 and cram us all into box apartments in total surveillance 'Smart' cities so that they can reclaim and rewild the countryside, including vast amounts of farmland
@@daweicarnochan Of course not, we can't have real people in zones 1 & 2, these are reserved exclusively for tourists, bankers and politicians, send them out to some provincial palookasville outside the home counties.
@@750voltsdc3 nah you dum ass. We are all real people. No need for that whole °us and them° nonsense. We need to invest in new infrastructure. Otherwise we'd all still be living in the stone age. 🤣
Arrived there by underground in April 2018 and had breakfast at the local greasy spoon, "Jenny's". Very atmospheric shopping center and market. Leaves a notalgic memory. Cheers!
I lived in SE London (Greenwich/Blackheath/Hither Green) for >20 years. After every car trip away from London, on the return journey, the sight of the Elephant always let me know it was just a few short miles to sanctuary, from the Death Race 2000 of returning to London on a Sunday evening :)
I've always found that that shopping centre - and the immediate surrounding environs - one of the most depressing, dispiriting, oppressive and ugly places I've ever been to - London and everywhere else.
When I first went to London a few years ago, I heard about it and that it will close down soon. I specifically ventured there to see for myself and even though it was really run down it had a special atmosphere (even I felt it who were there for the first time). I purchased a few minor things there and I went back a few more times and I am keeping these stuff ever since - empty perfume bottles, etc - because I feel happy that for a very small amount, but I could be part of this :)
Gonna miss the place, graduated from London Southbank this year, glad I got to know the area in its final years of being one of the last proper London inner city areas.
Alan Currie Yes, I have navigated it a few times and unfortunately my antiquated sat nav thinks the full roundabout still exists, consequently I never have a clue where I am going or which lane I'm supposed to be in. Can be quite buttock clenching.
I hated the place & felt really intimidated going in. It is however in a community and plans should have been made for the community. Ground level houses, high streets & squares but who could afford that? You can’t stop progress (quote Marie’s Wedding) Was Bill Heslop on the stupid planning committee? Good luck to all who dwell in the shadow of the next colossus, you have my sympathy. Great video! Thanks 😊
I appreciate your current events videos. I see how it makes accuracy difficult, however it would be nice to know that I could look to you for any key historically significant events in London, such as this one! Thanks for your work in any case
