# Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre when new...



## boohoo (May 9, 2009)

The original photos show it as a much more brighter space. It seems it's contiunal revamps have made it worse rather than better. 

Article on Elephant and Castle Shopping centre


And Elephant pre hideous shopping/Heygate development






And Heygate going up!






And the elephant itself (can someone figure the viewpoint??):


----------



## Stoat Boy (May 9, 2009)

Great photos.

I have a soft spot for the Elephant and Castle shopping centre. Found it one of the best places in the world for people watching and it had something about it that made it a cross between 'Blade Runner' and 'Mind your language'. 

For the price of a very good coffee from the South American coffee bar on the upper floor you could see a people from all over the world just getting on with their lives and whilst not the biggest flag waver for the whole 'multi-cultural' hysteria it certainly was a place where you could see a whole slice of modern urban Britain in one place and realise that if left alone it might just work out ok. 

Plus it used to have a smashing second hand bookshop but I understand that has closed down now.

Give me the E&C over such places as Blue Water and others of that ilk any day of the week.


----------



## Gingerman (May 9, 2009)

Wow facinating stuff,cycle through the area on me way to work every day,shabby as the shopping centre is,Ive got a soft spot for the aul place,all human life and all that


----------



## girasol (May 9, 2009)

boohoo said:


> And Heygate going up!
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Is that one the same one as this?






e2a, ah no it's not, the orginal one has that tower block to the left of it, this one has the incinerator.


----------



## lenny101 (May 9, 2009)

A mate of mine thinks Elephant & Castle is rhyming slang for stick it up your ass hole.


----------



## Shippou-Sensei (May 9, 2009)

it needs to be pink again


----------



## toblerone3 (May 9, 2009)

Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre is


----------



## quimcunx (May 9, 2009)

When I shopped there it just depressed me.  Felt like Lochee in 1976. 

The Elephant and Castle statue pic.  That one isn't there any longer is it?


----------



## girasol (May 9, 2009)

toblerone3 said:


> Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre is



I hadn't been there for many years until today and I wish I could have stayed longer, it had something about it that you just don't get in modern shopping centres (character?).  Need to go back and explore more.


----------



## boohoo (May 9, 2009)

I think that statue is on second Elephant and Castle on that site. I think nothing in the picture is there any more. However I really can't place it. I need more elephant and castle pictures!


----------



## _pH_ (May 9, 2009)

boohoo said:


> And Heygate going up!



ewwwww.......

like the soviet union.


----------



## _pH_ (May 9, 2009)

boohoo said:


> I need more elephant and castle pictures!













there you go boohoo. hth


----------



## boohoo (May 9, 2009)

hoo hum...

Proper elephant and castle. You can see elephant on pub. Domed building behind is the Northern line station I think.... hmmm. still not sure how it works.






poo, image has disappeared....


----------



## _pH_ (May 9, 2009)

sorry I'll refrain from posting silly pics now 

any idea what date that is boohoo?

the trams appear to be running on the lecky coming from the trough in the ground between the running rails


----------



## boohoo (May 9, 2009)

actually maybe image is taking foreve to up load or my laptop is crap.... any another picture:


----------



## boohoo (May 10, 2009)

I figured out the picture through help of other pictures off very rubbish slow loading southwark website and my 1930s map. There is one, yes one building in the picture still standing and that is the entrance to Bakerloo line. So the view the road on the left goes past the Bakerloo line entrance and the road on the right goes to london bridge.


----------



## _pH_ (May 10, 2009)

I can still see the other pic 

interesting thing about both pics: no traffic lights!

e2a: pics in posts #13 and #15


----------



## boohoo (May 10, 2009)

It's the one in 13 taking forever on my computer....


----------



## _pH_ (May 10, 2009)

can you see it now? (had to drop the quality a bit to get it under the upload limit on here)


----------



## boohoo (May 10, 2009)

hooray and thanks!!! I'll look for the southwark site tomorrow - some great elephant and castle pictures on it!


----------



## boohoo (May 10, 2009)

Same view- different period.


----------



## _pH_ (May 10, 2009)

Earlier innit? I wonder by how much.

Horse drawn trams!


----------



## cybertect (May 10, 2009)

About 1895 according to the LT Museum (and they say they're actually "mule drawn" as a "short lived experiment" )

e2a: they have quite a few other photos online


----------



## toblerone3 (May 10, 2009)

World mule population in 2003

Top mule countries are

1. China
2. Mexico
3. Brazil

4. Venuzuala
4. Spanish Sahara


----------



## toblerone3 (May 10, 2009)

Erno Goldfinger who designed Alexander Flemming House at Elephant and Castle






...was also responsible for the Trellick Tower


----------



## Onket (May 10, 2009)

I really like the E&C shopping centre too. It does have character and reminds me of what it was like growing up (not that I grew up in London).

It'll be a shame when it's gone, and whatever replaces it is bound to be shit and look out of date within 10 years anyway.


----------



## tbaldwin (May 10, 2009)

Elephant and Castle used to be known as the Piccadilly of South London. Then the planners got together with old labour and fucked the whole place up.......Whatever anybody says about New Labour people should think just how bad Old Labour were at times.


----------



## lang rabbie (May 10, 2009)

The pub was at the northern end of a peninsular site - which I think is now somewhere under the northern roundabout/Faraday memorial.

It was bounded by Newington Butts on the west side and Walworth Road to the east - Walworth Road used to continue all the way north to the New Kent Road until the 1960s reconstruction.   The shopping centre is built over the old line of Walworth Road.


----------



## Etymologist (May 14, 2009)

Wonderful Thread. Some really splendid pictures I hadn't seen before. About a year ago I emailed the southwark local history library asking about Elephant and Castle history (both topographical, etymological and iconographic aspects). I got the most marvellously comprehensive and detailed email back. Here are some quotes:

"The Elephant and Castle Public House goes back only to the mid-18th century. The big junction that we now call the Elephant and Castle was referred to as Newington or Newington Butts in the 18th century and earlier.  It was the centre of the parish and village of St. Mary, Newington Butts, and was the first distinct place out of London (and, of course, out of Southwark) on the old Portsmouth Road. 

The pub was previously occupied by a farrier's. [A farrier is a specialist in equine hoof care, including the trimming and balancing of a horse's hoof and the placing of shoes to the horse's foot]. In fact, it seems very likely that the first Elephant and Castle Public House occupied the same building that had been the farrier's, which had used the name and sign of the White Horse from the late 17th century onwards. The pub first appears in written history under its familiar name in 1765.  

Almost certainly, the change from farrier's to pub relates to the opening of New Kent Road under an Act of 1751.  The evidence suggests that the change of function and name may have taken place as early as 1755.

As for the wider story of the Elephant and Castle sign, it was the case as early as the 11th century that any depiction of an elephant - in carvings of wood or stone, and paintings as in bestiaries - always involved a 'castle'.  In the simplest sense, this was just an elephantine version of a horse's saddle.  A horse would normally have just one rider on a saddle, but an elephant could take several.  In the mediaeval mind, in view of the use of elephants in warfare, the elephantine saddle inevitably became a 'castle'; in art, this element became more pronounced than it was in reality.  The warriors did need protection, of course.  And that reflection of the military use of elephants went back to Hannibal* and perhaps beyond.  The ancient Roman
world was certainly well aware of the elephant in warfare, which was in turn translated into the conventional idea of the elephant and castle in the Middle Ages.  From that time onwards, elephants were almost always depicted in that guise.

The sign is a fairly common one for pubs. There used to be another exmple at Vauxhall**, about a mile and a half from Newington, and a further case just across Westminster Bridge.  Across England, the tally is several dozen.  The oddity of the case, I always think, is why people consider that the one at Newington has to have a special explanation. Mere prominence, I suppose."

I will credit these quotes to their most generous author: Stephen Humphrey, who is an Archivist at the southwark local history library. local.history.library@southwark.gov.uk

I reccommend emailing them for any queries you have about local history. They are simply amazing.


*I noticed that the office block building above the northernline tube entrance is called Hannibal House. Don't know if this is deliberate?

**Still there last time I looked, above the Starbucks. Visible from the ground but best viewed from the mainline train platform.


----------



## Spion (May 14, 2009)

"In the south suburbs, at the Elephant, 
Is best to lodge."

Twelfth Night, Shakey

I was taken aback when I heard that line at the Globe, was living at E&C at the time, so I had to agree


----------



## cybertect (May 14, 2009)

toblerone3 said:


> Erno Goldfinger who designed Alexander Flemming House at Elephant and Castle
> 
> ...
> ...was also responsible for the Trellick Tower



also the Odeon/Coronet adjacent to Alexander Fleming House, demolished in 1988.


----------



## Melinda (May 14, 2009)

Its awful. An agonising shit hole. 

Terribly neglected and depressing.


----------



## Etymologist (May 14, 2009)

Spion said:


> "In the south suburbs, at the Elephant,
> Is best to lodge."
> 
> Twelfth Night, Shakey
> ...



Thats odd. It doesn't square with my quoted archivist saying "The pub first appears in written history under its familiar name in 1765". Twelfth Night was written in 1601, thats 164 years before that. I might have to drop them a line down at the southwark local history library, see if they can clear it up for me. Confusing.


----------



## teuchter (May 14, 2009)

I'm another fan of the shopping centre in its current form. Going in there's a bit like time travel. Or a visit to Eastern Europe. I find it quite a calming place compared to the traffic and baffling underpass nightmare just outside.




toblerone3 said:


> Erno Goldfinger who designed Alexander Flemming House at Elephant and Castle



Oh. I never knew that was a Goldfinger design. But I do now.


It would be interesting to see a map of the E&C pre-war to understand where the various photos posted above are taken from.


----------



## zenie (May 14, 2009)

The Friend of Kennington Park do local history talks and the history of Elephant and Castle was one of them last year. I thought you were with me at that one boohoo but it might have been another! 

The pics are great


----------



## cybertect (May 14, 2009)

boohoo said:


> And the elephant itself (can someone figure the viewpoint??):



Obligatory Bert Hardy reference...

http://www.jameshymangallery.com/pages/exhibition/535.html


----------



## lang rabbie (May 14, 2009)

Etymologist said:


> Thats odd. It doesn't square with my quoted archivist saying "The pub first appears in written history under its familiar name in 1765". Twelfth Night was written in 1601, thats 164 years before that. I might have to drop them a line down at the southwark local history library, see if they can clear it up for me. Confusing.



Because it isn't a reference to the Elephant & Castle.




			
				William Shakespeare's spirit is channelling this to me as I type said:
			
		

> It is a reference to a tavern called The Elephant in "A City in Illyria; and the Sea-coast near it



ETA ... BUT of course, now that we are all post-structuralists, we have to say that the author's intentions count for nothing and the reader views are what's count.

(i) So for me, being a bit of a sucker for historical materialist aesthetic theory, I go looking for some parallel historical sources at the time of composition:  




			
				Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare 8 The London Scene - City & Court by Anne Barton said:
			
		

> 'In the south suburbs', Antonio tells Sebastian in Twelfth Night, 'at the Elephant / Is best to lodge' (3.3. 39-40). Illyria may be a geographically remote and fictitious country. Its capital, where the comedy unfolds, often seems to shadow a more familiar city, and not just because there was, in fact, an Elizabethan inn called the Elephant in the High Street of Southwark, that London suburb south of the Thames in which Shakespeare's Globe playhouse stood. Like London, Illyria's capital is close to the sea, and also to wooded country in which its ruler can be urged to divert himself by hunting deer par force - on horseback, with hounds. According to Antonio, Orsino's city is renowned for its 'memorials and the things of fame' (23): churches, private monuments, and public buildings like those John Stow had described with loving care in his great Survey of London (1598/1603). It is a mercantile centre too, its foreign trade sufficiently important that the inhabitants of another state will even compensate for booty taken in war in order not to disrupt so beneficial a peacetime 'traffic




(ii)   But if Spion really, really wants Shakespeare to have meant the Elephant & Castle, even though there was only a farriers in the middle of a field there in his day, then post-stucturally-speaking that is the truth.


----------



## flash (May 14, 2009)

In some respects I'd be sad to see it go. It was part of my child hood, my nan and grandad took me shopping there when I was little. Work took me back through there about two and a half years ago (changing Thameslink to Bakerloo Line I think, can't remember exactly). Either way I was shocked at how much it had changed in about 18 odd years (err it's run down to put it bluntly, it had bled for a while and had all but flat lined). Still it's part of the area and would need to be re-built in some way.


----------



## boohoo (May 14, 2009)

teuchter said:


> I'm another fan of the shopping centre in its current form. Going in there's a bit like time travel. Or a visit to Eastern Europe. I find it quite a calming place compared to the traffic and baffling underpass nightmare just outside.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I have 1930s A-z type thing which I could lend you if you are nice to it...


----------



## boohoo (May 14, 2009)

zenie said:


> The Friend of Kennington Park do local history talks and the history of Elephant and Castle was one of them last year. I thought you were with me at that one boohoo but it might have been another!
> 
> The pics are great



yer I was at that one! It made me more aware of how pretty and grand the area had been.


----------



## boohoo (May 14, 2009)

I'm a little biased to Elephant and Castle because it is the area I was born in. I was born in Lambeth hospital which was on Brook drive ( 
area behind the leisure centre) Photos on this site

Lambeth hospital link

and the area features in this video and the hospital is still standing at this time) ( as well as spotting it in a Harry Potter film)


----------



## JohnnyOrange (May 15, 2009)

boohoo said:


> I need more elephant and castle pictures!








https://dvd.easycinema.com/visitor/product_detail.html?product_id=89296

Are you sure?


----------



## boohoo (May 15, 2009)

I vaguely remember that programme- doesn't really sell the place does it...


----------



## teuchter (May 15, 2009)

boohoo said:


> I have 1930s A-z type thing which I could lend you if you are nice to it...



Do you have a scanner?


----------



## cybertect (May 15, 2009)

No need. It's online on the A-Z site, google maps style. 

http://www.a-zmaps.co.uk/?nid=383

(and you can buy a reprint edition if you really want one)


----------



## teuchter (May 15, 2009)

cybertect said:


> No need. It's online on the A-Z site, google maps style.
> 
> http://www.a-zmaps.co.uk/?nid=383
> 
> (and you can buy a reprint edition if you really want one)



That's handy to know about.

Would be nice to see something a bit larger-scale though.


----------



## cybertect (May 15, 2009)

An OS 1:5000 would be nice, I'd agree.


----------



## lang rabbie (May 15, 2009)

£47.95 on Amazon for a used copy of the reprint of the map that normally sells for £2.25


----------



## lang rabbie (May 15, 2009)

Elephant & Castle on Booth's poverty map of 1898-99


----------



## Etymologist (May 15, 2009)

lang rabbie said:


> Elephant & Castle on Booth's poverty map of 1898-99



Fascinating. So "Middle class. Well-to-do" people lived in houses on the site of what is now the south roundabout.


----------



## Etymologist (May 15, 2009)

lang rabbie said:


> Because it isn't a reference to the Elephant & Castle.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Wonderful, thanks for clearing that up. I better email Michael Quinion and tell him he's wrong (or at least, that he's a post structuralist, in case he is unaware): 

http://www.worldwidewords.org/topicalwords/tw-sub1.htm


----------



## kyser_soze (May 15, 2009)

I assume by 'character' on this thread people mean 'atmosphere of despair and desparation', because that's the only feeling I've ever got going in there.


----------



## lang rabbie (May 15, 2009)

Etymologist said:


> Wonderful, thanks for clearing that up. I better email Michael Quinion and tell him he's wrong (or at least, that he's a post structuralist, in case he is unaware):
> 
> http://www.worldwidewords.org/topicalwords/tw-sub1.htm



I spotted that howler a couple of years ago, when engaged in online debate elsewhere on the earliest use of _suburb_.   

However, I thought I was already too much at risk of turning into a parodic, pedantic Stephen Fry sound-alike and desisted from public derision of Mr Quinion's knowledge of 16th century South London geography.   

He is otherwise a gentleman, scholar and cidermaker.


----------



## pk (May 16, 2009)

Stoat Boy said:


> a place where you could see a whole slice of modern urban Britain in one place and realise that if left alone it might just work out ok.



That's an astoundingly accurate reflection of how I feel about E&C too.


----------



## Etymologist (May 18, 2009)

lang rabbie said:


> I spotted that howler a couple of years ago, when engaged in online debate elsewhere on the earliest use of _suburb_.
> 
> However, I thought I was already too much at risk of turning into a parodic, pedantic Stephen Fry sound-alike and desisted from public derision of Mr Quinion's knowledge of 16th century South London geography.
> 
> He is otherwise a gentleman, scholar and cidermaker.



Quinion is indeed a fine specimen and much respected. I couldn't help it though. I had to wax pedantic. I emailed him. I hope he wasn't offended. I just can't stand by and have an error like that gracing his marvellous website. I'd lose sleep over it. He responded saying he'd look into it when time allows.


----------



## teuchter (May 22, 2009)

There aren't many British shopping centres with interior decoration like this...












I'd like to take more pictures of the interior before it disappears. I'm wondering how long I'd last before an officious security guard asked me what I'm up to.


----------



## Etymologist (May 26, 2009)

Nice photos. Do do more.


----------

