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.

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.

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. 🙂🐘

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.

So many memories from that run down shopping centre 😭

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.

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.

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.

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.

I remember taking our Green Shield stamps to the shop there; now that’s going back a bit!!

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 .

Stratford shopping centre is probably my favourite "workaday" shopping mall, it survives and thrives by being completely different to Westfield across the road

Used to live on the Rockingham, off Old Kent Rd, nearly 30 years ago, back in Scotland now. You just took me down memory lane. Thanks.

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.

I'm pleased the statue is not being thrown away. As for the lockdown who knew what would happen, then or in the future.

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 ❤

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 notice you almost said "generification", which wouldn't be an inapposite Freudian slip to drop in there.

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 😀.

When I moved to Camberwell 35 years ago, on my visit to the shopping centre they were giving children donkey rides. Now that's a Shopping Centre :)

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.....

It's such a weird relic. On the inside it literally looked like something straight from the 80s

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

Used to frequent the area as a kid. As part Latino i have very fond memories of the centre. And am sad to see it go

I bet it becomes apartments for Saudi princes and Russian oligarchs within a decade. Why should it be different to the rest of London?

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.

To simplify London’s ambitions,out with the poor and in with the rich.

Awww this is sad so many memories I have to show my children this video to explain the stories 😔😔

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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?

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.

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 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.

Like saying goodbye to a old friend.

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.

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 .

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 :-)

I remember it in the 80s. It was already a dump then.

I live around the corner from elephant and castle and have witnessed a lot of this change. Thanks for documenting this moment.

I worked at Elephant a few years back and walked through the shopping centre most days. It had a weird feel about it, like a zombie film set!

Damn! I’m going to miss the Elephant. This area won’t be the same.

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.

I loved the shopping centre😭 Pricebusters shop👍 good luck boys👍

Went to London once, and had to walk through here. I felt i had landed on another planet. seemed like one of those post apocalyptic movie sets.

The elephant 🐘 never forgets.

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.

My childhood was wasted in that place and I’m saddened by this is how I found out it’s closed

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.

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.

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 😢🤣🤣

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.

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!

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.

It was an eyesore, but now I shed a tear. Sad to see it go. The community especially, wont be the same.

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.

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.

I visited there in 2004 on a random day out to London. I bought The Sims 2 for PS2, which I still have

Wow, nothing but pure facts in this video, thank you for this!

Thanks, I always enjoy your videos, they’re food for thought and I seem to be able to relate to them. Thanks again.

Thank you for deflating the elephant in the room 🤣

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.

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.

Your piece reminds me that for all the vainglory of architectural aspiration, the soul of a building are the people who make their lives in it.

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.

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.

I didn't even know the center was closing. I used to shop there with my family occasionally. Great video!

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.

Such a shame! Councils couldn't care less about us...ordinary people! Social housing!....my a**e! Will we EVER see the elephant again!! Great video as usual 💕

I went in there once by mistake and promptly walked out. For health and safety reasons.

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 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.

That shopping centre was truly ghastly when it was pink

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.

Lovely place just needed a lick of the plan is paint used to love going there to play Street Fighter and sneak into the cinema Those Were The Days

Thanks mate for this, the place means a lot to me as I arrived in the UK from New Zealand in 1995. The centre was our local shops and supermarket and we loved its quirky, friendly atmosphere. Very busy at that time and we relied on it and its market outside. I’m very sad to see it’s gone and it will take a piece of our hearts with it. Deanna.

I recall a TV series in the 80's called "Up the Elephant and round the Castle" featuring Jim Davidson who sat on the Elephant statue in the intro.

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 :)

I used to work on the 9th floor in Hannibal House from 2016 to 2018. I will miss this building!

Lot of childhood memories in there from 30 years ago. Thanks for the video 👍👍👍👍

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.

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.

Great video thanks. Whilst I can't bring myself to lament the loss of E&C, I have no confidence that its replacement will have any more success that its predecessor!

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.

can i just say one minute your at 100 subs then bomb , all i can say is people like me have been waiting for someone like you to do this , thankyou

Same thing that happened to the Aylesbury estate regeneration

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!

In 1964 I got my national insurance card, I was 15 years and 3 months old apparently that was the minimum age that you could get them. I then got a job in the Woolworths in the shopping centre as a Saturday girl after passing a written maths test. I was given a green overall and had to stitch on the number which was 97. The shop back then used to be packed with people on a Saturday. I got paid in cash 10 shillings and 3 pence for the day. About 55p in today’s money. I loved working there, I have great memories. I’m now over 70 lol.

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.

They changed the road network around there and it’s now a nightmare

Thanks for the update & upload of this as I just moved away from there the beginning of 2020 had no idea it had closed down so recently.

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.

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 😊

The new development....will look exactly the same as all the other new developments. Same shops, same overly expensive flats with a smidgen of modern 'design' façade, landscaped grounds and fitted kitchens covering up poor quality building standards and built in future decay almost guaranteed sold to the pretentious upper middle class 'professionals' with higher salaries than IQ. New start? More like same old same old......

I was in London a couple years ago and remember seeing this place on my bus ride to the Southbank Center. I remember seeing many Colombians near there. They were easily identifiable as it was was during the world cup and they were all wearing Colombia National Team shirts. That was interesting to me because my first time in London in 2010 I didn't see even one Latino. Anyway. I remember seeing that statue with the castle and the elephant and also the tube station named after it. If I remember correctly, the Elephant Castle bus makes a turn right in front of that tube station. And the shopping center, well I remember passing it on my way back to Peckham where I was staying. London is a great place.