Demolition to begin at housing estate featured in Michael Caine movie.
If you’re a property owner and someone approaches you saying they’d like to use your premises for a new Michael Caine movie, it might be best to decline unless you want to be the proud owner of a pile of rubble.
With the dust barely settled on the demolition of the Gateshead car park made famous in the Caine movie Get Carter, the actor’s Grim Reaper-like touch is about to befall a housing estate in south London that formed the backdrop of the recent Harry Brown movie.
Demolition teams were set to move in on one of Britain’s best known housing estates. The dismantling of the sprawling Heygate estate in Walworth, south-east London was due to start on Friday.
The Heygate estate is close to the Aylesbury estate, which Tony Blair visited hours after his 1997 election victory. In his first leadership speech he described the residents as the “forgotten people” and pledged to tackle social exclusion in the area.
The destruction of the Heygate estate is part of a £1.5bn regeneration project in Elephant and Castle, an area widely considered as one of London’s eyesores. It aims to transform it into “a brand-new town centre” over the next 15 years.
Read more here or view a full set of photos (courtesy of Planning Resource) here.
