We're back....and in south London at the Heygate Estate

We've decided to leave our East London home this time and headed down to Elephant & Castle.

When you come out of the tube just south of the river and head west, the first estate you'll come across is the Heygate - a fairly large set of council homes built between 1970 and 1974 by London County Council at the tail end of the post World War II social housing boom.

This picture shows the estate under construction in 1973, and below how it looks today.



Even at the time the 1,194 homes were built it was generally recognised that the Heygate was shabilly constructed and in 2003 Southwark Council gave the go ahead for the demolition and re-construction of the homes.

The developer Lend Lease is now in talks with Southwark Council to take on the £1.5 billion project.

Demolition was meant to start earlier this year, but it seems funding has been slow to materialise and it's not even certain if the "before Christmas" deadline will be met.

In the meantime the council have slowly been moving people out, wherever they can rehouse them in the borough.

On the Heygate, as of last Friday there were 117 secure, non secure tenants and leaseholders left - 67 secure tenants, of whom over half have direct offers for alternative accommodation.




Those left behind, like this tenant here in the photo on the left, are living surrounded by vacant properties that have been boarded up to keep out squatters (though why they would come here when they can find plenty of properties to squat in Mayfair is baffling!).

Here's a great blog on what life was like on the Heygate.

And here's a video of life on the Heygate.













And though there's no doubt that the residents that still live here are looking forward to some new (and hopefully more modern) accommodation, it seems a shame that these brutalist buildings - where a strong sense of community still exists - are being demolished.