Living in Elephant and Castle: area guide to homes, schools and transport links
Elsewhere, nothing else is standing in the way of the regeneration plans powering through Elephant & Castle.
This Zone 1 location, still best known for its confusing roundabouts and that tatty shopping centre, is now being turned into a new town of modern tower blocks.
The biggest developer by far is Lendlease which is on its way to building 2,500 new homes on 28 acres around the neighbourhood, including on land once occupied by the demolished troublesome Heygate Estate.
Lendlease’s plans — known as Elephant Park — include a two-acre park, 50 new shops and 50,000sq ft of new workspaces. The entire development is due to be completed in 2025.
Other developments include Uncle’s 457 new mainly rental homes on Newington Butts where the ground floor will soon provide a new home for the Southwark Playhouse, one of London’s leading fringe theatres.
Then there is Delancey’s Elephant Road with 374 rental homes, 272 student studios and a Sainsbury’s supermarket.
Two Fifty One is a mixed-use 41-storey tower on the site of Eileen House in Southwark Bridge Road, while Manor Place Depot is the conversion of a listed Victorian baths and wash house and coroner’s court, plus new-build homes, in Manor Place off Walworth Road.
The largest scheme in the pipeline is housing association Peabody’s plan to build between 600-700 homes with shops and restaurants and a new public square on Borough Triangle, a two-and-a-half-acre plot in Newington Causeway on the site of a former paper factory, now temporarily occupied by street food venue Mercato Metropolitano.
Southwark council is clearly on a mission to reinstate the area as the “Piccadilly of the South”, as it was known in Victorian times.
Back then it was home to the department stores Rabbit’s Shoes, Hurlock’s and William Tarn & Co along with music halls such as the Trocadero, the 4,000-seat Palace of Varieties and the Royal Surrey Gardens Music Hall.
That all came to an end during the Second World War when bombing raids razed much of the area to the ground.
A fascinating Elephant & Castle timeline has recently gone up round a wall in Elephant Park. It is sometimes claimed that the area’s name is a corruption of La Infanta de Castilla but it is more likely to be named after a pub that stood there in the 18th century, if not earlier.
The famous statue of the elephant with the castle sitting on its back which once graced a grand Victorian pub, demolished in 1959, now stands outside the increasingly forlorn shopping centre.
The timeline tells the story of the famous people associated with the area and the two small rural villages of Newington and Walworth; people such as the early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) who wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and spent her formative years in Walworth, and the Jacobean playwright Thomas Middleton, who is buried in St Mary’s churchyard.
The property scene
Modern high-rise apartment blocks feature in Elephant & Castle and in the surrounding streets are Georgian, early and mid-Victorian houses and estates of social housing.
The most expensive homes are in West Square — completed in 1810, one of the earliest surviving Georgian squares in south London — and also the penthouses in the new tower blocks.
A four-bedroom house in West Square is on the market for £3 million, while a two-bedroom 26th-floor penthouse at Conquest Tower in Blackfriars Road is on at £2.6 million.
There is a fine row of Georgian houses in busy St George’s Road where a four-bedroom home is for sale for £1,595,000.
Close by is a pretty enclave of three-storey early Victorian houses in Gladstone Street and Colnbrook Street; in Gladstone Street a three-bedroom house is £1,325,000.
The first green shoots of change blew through Elephant & Castle 20 years ago at Metro Central Heights, the conversion into flats of listed Alexander Fleming House, an office building designed by modernist architect Ernő Goldfinger.
Two-bedroom flats in Metro Central Heights range in price from £450,000 to £510,000 and there is a four-bedroom penthouse on the market for £1.25 million.
The Pullens Estate, between Crampton Street and Penton Place, is an area of historic tenement flats which were originally linked at the back to the workshops.
Today, the workshops in quaintly cobbled Iliffe Yard and Peacock Yard are home to artists, architects and craftspeople who regularly hold open days.
The tenement flats occasionally come up for sale. A one-bedroom flat in Peacock Street is currently on the market for £450,000.
New-build homes
Lendlease is currently selling homes in West Grove in Elephant Park where two-bedroom flats start at £784,400 and three-bedroom flats at £1.2 million. Call 020 3675 9955.
Housing association Notting Hill Genesis is selling apartments at Manor Place Depot in Manor Place off Walworth Road, which includes the conversion of a listed Victorian public baths and wash house and a coroner’s court and mortuary into 270 new homes.
One-bedroom apartments start at £472,500, while two-bedroom flats are priced from £607,500 and three-bedroom flats start at £732,500. Call 020 7531 2500 for more.
First-time buyers
Help to Buy is available at Manor Place Depot (as before).
Call 020 3944 3709 for the shared-ownership flats: two-bedroom flats start at £148,750 for a 25 per cent share of a home with a full market price of £595,000.
Renting
Many developers working around Elephant & Castle, including Delancey with Get Living, are building flats to rent rather than buy. At Elephant Central, Get Living has one-bedroom flats from £1,855 a month; two-bedroom flats from £2,160 a month and three-bedroom flats from £3,465 a month. Call 020 3701 7900.
There are one- and two-bedroom flats to rent overlooking St Mary’s churchyard at the UNCLE Elephant & Castle tower block in Newington Butts, with a communal sky lounge on the 45th floor.
One-bedroom flats start at £2,310 a month and two-bedroom flats at £2,705 a month. Call 020 3953 3333.
Staying power
There are enclaves of period homes in Elephant & Castle where families have lived for many years. Only time will tell if people buying and renting in the many new flats will eventually choose to make the area their permanent home.
Postcode
Elephant & Castle falls in to SE1, the central postcode. On its southern border it strays in to SE11, the Kennington postcode, and SE17, the Walworth postcode.
Best roads
West Square, Gladstone Street and Colnbrook Street for period homes, and penthouse flats in the new developments.
Up and coming
There is a pocket of three-storey Victorian terraces around St John the Evangelist church off Walworth Road; a two-bedroom garden flat in need of work in Charleston Street is for sale for £499,950.
Travel
Elephant & Castle is currently the last stop on the Bakerloo line Tube, although there are plans to extend the line south to Lewisham.
It is also on the City branch of the Northern line and a new station is part of developer Delancey’s plan for the town centre.
The train station, awkwardly accessed via a back street or the shopping centre, has services to Gatwick airport, Blackfriars, Farringdon and St Pancras International but although it is one of the area’s vital transport links, there are no plans to upgrade what is a very run-down hub.
Elephant & Castle is in Zone 1 and an annual travelcard costs £1,404.
Council
Southwark council is Labour controlled. Band D council tax for 2019/2020 is £1,386.78.
Lifestyle
Shops and restaurants
The legal challenge to the redevelopment of the shopping centre has now failed. The open basement area – known locally as “the moat” - has a market which is home to a number of small businesses, many catering for London’s South American community.
The shopping centre itself has a mix of independent shops and chains including Co-op and Iceland supermarkets; Boots, Greggs, Peacocks, Poundland, Superdrug and WH Smith. La Bodeguita is large South American restaurant in the shopping centre.
North of Elephant & Castle, Palador on London Road is a gluten-free South American restaurant; the Albert Arms in Gladstone Street is an often-packed gastropub; and 80 Stone is a coffee shop which sells its own-roasted coffee.
Along Walworth Road south of Elephant & Castle, long-standing G Baldwin describes itself as “the oldest and most established herbalist in London”; East Street Market off Walworth Road, one of the oldest in the capital, sells everything from clothing to fruit and vegetables, to household items, and is open every day except Monday; CheeMc is a Korean restaurant serving spicy fried chicken and Louie Louie is a café during the day, at night a restaurant featuring guest chefs and music events.
Tucked away in the backstreets and worth seeking out are: Sidecar Coffee in Spare Street; Electric Elephant Café, at the entrance to Iliffe Yard in Crampton Street; and Hoa Phuong, a tiny Vietnamese restaurant in Hampton Street.
Mercato Metropolitano in Newington Causeway, occupying a site awaiting development, offers a large Italian deli and street food stalls arranged around a central seating area.
New shops, bars and restaurants are beginning to occupy the ground-floor spaces in the new developments.
In Sayer Street off Heygate Street there is craft beer at Tap In; ramen at Koi Ramen Bar, which started life in 2015 in Brixton Market and has now expanded; Ethiopian vegan restaurant Beza and Caribbean Tasty Jerk. In Castle Square, Elephant Road, pizzeria Pappagone is an outpost of the popular Finsbury Park pizzeria of the same name.
Along Rodney Road there is coffee roaster and coffee bar HEJ, and in a former pub Diogenes the Dog is a wine bar serving wine from small producers.
Open space
Developer Lendlease claims Elephant Park is “the largest new park in central London for 70 years”; the first phase of the park opened in 2017 and it’s due to be completed this year.
Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park in St George’s Road is a local park behind the Imperial War Museum featuring a children’s playground, a Tibetan peace garden and community orchard.
Burgess Park is local council Southwark’s flagship park; off Albany Road to the south of Elephant & Castle this 140-acre park reopened in 2012 after an £8 million restoration.
It features a café in former almshouses at Chumleigh Gardens where there are a series of world gardens; two community food-growing projects; children’s playgrounds; sports facilities including a BMX track; and unusually for a London park, free-to-use barbecues.
Leisure and the arts
Elephant & Castle has two theatres. The Southwark Playhouse in Newington Causeway, a leading fringe theatre, moves to its new home in Newington Butts this year. Community theatre, the Blue Elephant Theatre, is in Bethwin Road.
The highlight in 2020 will be Chinese contemporary artist Ai Weiwei’s takeover of the atrium at the Imperial War Museum, now known as IWM, in Lambeth Road, from April, the first time the whole atrium has been taken over by an artist.
Before Elephant & Castle was ever in a developer’s crosshairs, it was famous with clubbers for the Ministry of Sound, the giant dance music venue in a disused bus station in Gaunt Street, which opened in 1991 and has been going ever since. Corsica Studios in Elephant Road is a smaller, more intimate music venue.
Southwark council has appointed developer General Projects to reinvent the fire-damaged Victorian town hall building in Walworth Road for use as workspace and a community and arts hub with a café and restaurant.
Schools
Primary school
Primary schools rated “outstanding” by Ofsted are: Crampton in Iliffe Street and Archbishop Sumner CofE in Reedworth Street in nearby Kennington.
Comprehensive
The “outstanding” state comprehensive schools are: Notre Dame RC (girls, ages 11 to 16) in St George’s Road; Oasis Academy (co-ed, ages 11 to 16) in Westminster Bridge Road; and St Saviour’s and St Olave’s CofE (girls, ages 11 to 18) in New Kent Road.
Globe Academy (co-ed, ages three to 18) in Harper Road is an all-through school judged to be “good”.
Haberdashers’ Aske’s Borough Academy (co-ed, ages 11 to 18) in Sawyer Street opened in September last year and has not yet been inspected by Ofsted; it will move to its permanent home on the site of the former police station in Southwark Bridge Road this September.
Higher education
King’s College London Mathematics School in Kennington Road is a sixth form Free School specialising in STEM subjects; it too is judged to be “outstanding”. Ark
Morley College in Westminster Bridge Road is a specialist designated college offering an interesting range of daytime and evening courses.
DLD College (co-ed, ages 16 to 18) in Westminster Bridge Road is a private sixth form with a large number of overseas students.
Private
The nearest private schools are: Westminster School (boys, ages 13 to 18, with girls in the sixth form) in Deans Yard in the cathedral precinct over the river in Westminster; Dulwich College (boys, ages two to 18; girls ages two to seven) in Dulwich Common; Alleyn’s (co-ed, ages four to 18) in Townley Road; and James Allen’s (girls, ages four to 18) in East Dulwich Grove, a bus ride away.