I’VE heard the Elephant and Castle called a lot of things over the years but, until now, international tourist destination had not been one of them.
But that was the verdict of a bunch of housing protestors who turned up there last week to complain about the number of flats in the neighbourhood let out through Airbnb and other short-term rental outfits.
With foreign tourists currently absent for the duration, many of the flats are emptier than usual and should be requisitioned for ordinary folk who need them, according to the campaigners.
The slightly edgy and traditionally working-class district has suffered over the years from the curse of “regeneration”, a weasel word that often serves as cover for making a profit by turfing out the locals. I’ve seen two such heralded rebirths of the Elephant in my lifetime.
It’s not so much a neighbourhood as a junction, with roads leading to Kennington, Walworth and the Borough, south to the Old Kent Road, west to Parliament and north to Blackfriars. In other words, pretty central.
In its pre-war heyday, It was nicknamed “the Piccadilly Circus of South London”, a bit of a stretch since the real thing is only three stops north on the tube.
Those were the days in which none but the most intrepid north Londoner would dream of crossing the Thames. Maybe they were scared off by the reputation of the Forty Elephants, an all-women crime syndicate of Cockney amazons who ran with the notorious Elephant and Castle gang.
I remember the old blitz-scarred Elephant from the days before its 1960s’ regeneration, with its elegant if smog-blackened stores, the back-street workshops and the mighty Trocadero, a massive 3,000-seat mock-Renaissance cinema, built in the days when such over-the-top venues were called picture palaces.
The art deco Coronet cinema opposite survived as a night club until 2018.
But the Troc went in the 60s’, along with most of the surrounding department stores and shops, to be replaced by two gigantic roundabouts and a covered shopping centre, Europe’s first mall.
The pub that gave the area its name made way for an anaemic modernist replacement.
Council flat construction continued into the 1970s and the area kept its working class flavour with the admixture of the Latino culture of the many Colombians, Peruvians and Ecuadorians who gravitated there from the 1980s, with some setting up shops, restaurants and night clubs.
Now, they and the rest of the community are threatened by the latest regeneration, which mainly consists of developers exploiting the area’s central position to build massive blocks of luxury flats.
Investors include the Qatari royal family, who seem to have taken a shine to Sarf London, having paid for the Shard just up the road.
A three-bed flat in the One The Elephant block will set you back only £1.2 million. And don’t worry if you’re a buy-to-let overseas investor – they do video-viewings.
There’s plenty of property available, particularly since the vast and uncared for 1970s Heygate council estate was bulldozed to make more room for upmarket blocks.
According to local campaigners, the Elephant is ground zero for the gentrification of London. But the high life remains very much up in the air. When the newcomers descend from their penthouses, they walk out into increasingly tatty streets.
For the Elephant is as much a victim of planning blight as of regeneration. The shopping centre was supposed to come down a decade ago but is still just about operating and looking increasingly forlorn.
Poor old cash-strapped Southwark Council now seem more in league with the developers than with the locals, gratefully accepting the promised crumb of “affordable housing” in exchange for planning permissions.
The developers have changed over the years as have their often shadowy investors. There’s really not much to show so far, apart from the luxury blocks, for a promised £3bn transformation.
Anyway, if you’re planning a trip to London when the virus settles down you could do worse than Airbnb it at the Elephant at £90 a night. You’ll be in easy reach of all the central London sights.
Just be careful on your way out. You still get the odd gang killing at a junction where the territories of rivals overlap and even the school kids can be pretty lively.
In one incident last year, two mobs of the little angels squared up to each other near the shopping mall. The police moved in, although there is no confirmation of reports they brought tasers to get the children home in time for bed.
Idle Thoughts on London Walks 