New Kent Road
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
New Kent Road is a 1 kilometre (0.6 mi) road in the London Borough of Southwark. The road was created in 1751 when the Turnpike Trust upgraded a local footpath.[1] This was done as part of the general road improvements associated with the creation of Westminster Bridge; in effect it was possible to travel from the West End/ Westminster to the south-east without having to go via the Borough of Southwark but could now cross St George's Fields to the junction of Newington Causeway and Newington Butts which is where New Kent Road starts at Elephant & Castle. The route runs eastward for a few hundred yards to the junction of Great Dover Street and Tower Bridge Road, known as Bricklayers Arms, where it joins the original route to the south-east Old Kent Road (the A2).
The road forms part of the London Inner Ring Road and as such forms part of the boundary of the London congestion charge zone. New Kent Road is designated the A201 which, to the north-west past the Elephant & Castle, becomes London Road.
In 1878, historian Edward Walford noted that the New Kent Road was formerly named Greenwich Road, and explained that "[it] is a broad and open roadway; it has been lately planted on either side with trees, so that in course of time it will doubtless form a splendid boulevard, of the Parisian type, and one worthy of being copied in many other parts of London."[2]
The 1955 Survey of London still maintained that "[the] road also has a spaciousness lacking in many of its 19th-century counterparts, for the 1751 Act stipulated that the road should be not less than 42 feet (13 m) wide and many of the older houses still retain their front gardens."[3] Just a few older houses still remain, mostly on the south side.
Elephant and Castle to Elephant Road
The southern side of New Kent Road starts at the site of the former Elephant & Castle Shopping Centre, built in the 1960s and often cited as London's ugliest building. It was demolished in 2021.[4]
The 1955 Survey of London reports that 16–18 New Kent Road, part of the current site of the Shopping Centre, was "the auction yard for horses, ponies and vehicles known as the London (Elephant and Castle) Repository."[3]
At 26 New Kent Road, a pub attached to the Shopping Centre was named after a famous local ex-resident Charlie Chaplin. It is said that Chaplin had a martini at the pub during a visit to the area in the 1950s. It closed in 2018 and was demolished in 2020.
Until it closed in 2018 The Coronet club and music venue stood at 28 New Kent Road. The site was first occupied by the Theatre Royal, built in 1872 and destroyed by fire only six years later.[5] Rebuilt as the Elephant and Castle Theatre in 1879, Charlie Chaplin performed there. It was converted to an ABC cinema in 1928. After several more name changes, it became the Coronet Cinema in 1981. The Coronet Cinema closed down in 1999, leaving the Elephant & Castle area with no cinemas.
Elephant Road is a short road that connects New Kent Road with the Walworth Road. The railway arches on the west side house businesses including a bike shop, Corsica Studios art space and several businesses selling Latin American goods.
Elephant Road to Rodney Place
East of the railway bridge is the site of the large Elephant Park complex of businesses and residential units which is still under construction.[6] It is being developed by Oakmayne Properties[7] who also built the nearby South Central East residential building on Walworth Road. The site of Oakmayne Plaza was formerly occupied by UK's largest used Volvo showroom and the Elephant Road Industrial Estate. From Elephant Road to Rodney Place previously stood the Heygate Estate[8]
In the summer of 2008, a 35 feet (11 m) high sculpture of a stag by Ben Long was erected on the Oakmayne Plaza site. It was constructed from scaffolding materials, and after a few months was dismantled and reformed into a new structure on a new site.[9]
Multi-coloured spherical lights in the trees were installed in 2005 by the Elephant Impacts project. The project has repainted and added feature lighting to a number of bridges and buildings in the area, including the adjoining railway bridges on Walworth Road and Newington Causeway, and to London College of Communication and the Metropolitan Tabernacle. Proposed feature lighting at Metro Central Heights was abandoned when residents feared it would cause light pollution.
Crossway United Reformed Church was the last part of the Heygate Estate that remained standing, until it closed in 2017 and was relocated to a new building nearby. The Two Caryatids sculpture by Henry Poole, originally created in 1897 for the old Rotherhithe Public Library, stood in a locked garden behind the church for many years, but was removed in 2009[10]
A footbridge that connected the Heygate Estate with the north side of New Kent Road was demolished in 2014.[11]
Beyond Rodney Place
At 128 New Kent Road, Watling House is a new development of flats managed by the Landmark Housing Association.
The distinctive Baroque style building at 172–180 is Driscoll House. It was originally built as a women's hostel in 1913 and became a hostel primarily aimed at international students, until it closed in 2007. It reopened as Restup London in 2012,[12] extensively refurbished but with some of the distinctive tiled interiors of Driscoll House still intact.
There is a small green space next to Driscoll House, and beyond Searles Road there is a larger one called Paragon Gardens, named after the building erected on the site in 1787,[13] designed by Michael Searles the Surveyor of the Rolls Estate. It was demolished in the 1890s when the road was widened and replaced with more modest housing — on Searles Road — and the Paragon School for Girls and Boys, later under the ILEA (Inner London Education Authority) Paragon Secondary Boys' School with Sixth Form. The school closed in 1988 and was for a number of years run by Southwark Council as a centre for Evening Classes and art studios before finally being sold for private development and converted into a residential building named The Paragon.
