Elephant and Castle
The deed is done. Southwark council, in cahoots with property developers Delancy, finally closed the Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre on 24th September 2020.
This last bastion of multicultural working class community in north Southwark is to be demolished and reimagined as more luxury flats, shops for those who might live in them and a shiny new campus for University Arts London.
Any concessions, such as help to relocate some of the market traders, only happened through the tireless campaigning of local people, sick of this vision of a London that holds no place for them.
Meanwhile further demolitions and the anti-gentrification fight back continues a few miles south on the Aylesbury estate.
These photographs were taken as an on-going, living archive, over five or so years when the shopping centre was still ours to enjoy.
There’s an archive here that I will add to, given time.
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