London’s Elephant and Castle was once a place to pass through rather than linger. Most people are on their way to somewhere else, in a car or on a bus servicing one of 36 routes that pass through the district’s convoluted gyratory system.

Once known as the Piccadilly of the South thanks to smart shops and a vibrant nightlife, the area was badly bombed in the war and rebuilt in the 1960s and 70s. Forty years later it was tired, down at heel and dominated by constant traffic with the most distinctive feature being the Michael Faraday Memorial, a large stainless steel box housing a substation in the middle of the gyratory system. The other unusual sight was a pink elephant carrying a white castle on its back standing guard over the entrance to the dismal 1960s shopping centre.

This sense of decay in the area was exacerbated by the Heygate Estate, a crumbling, 1970s brutalist council housing estate notable for its huge slab blocks bearing down oppressively on the gridlocked New Kent Road.