Urban Jungle

Elephant and Castle is an area just south of the River Thames close to Waterloo.

It is going through enormous redevelopment. 

It seems fitting that a new park area between the blocks of flats should have an elephant and hence my Blip for today.

The area is said to derive its name from a local coaching inn. The name is sometimes explained as a corruption of "La Infanta de Castilla which is more fanciful.

Above the shopping centre which will be demolished is an office block called Hannibal House.

In the locality in the 1820s there was a zoo which lasted to 1855 before the animals were sold. The site of the Zoo and Music Hall was sold to St Thomas' Hospital in 1862. The old music hall held 300 beds while the giraffe house from the zoo held the cholera ward.

The redevelopment replaces over 1200 homes that formed the Heygate Estate demolished between 2011 and 2014. Over 3000 people had to be rehoused and were scattered throughout the borough and beyond.Cost of emptying the estate was over 40 million UK pounds.