David Bowie absolutely hated the place while Kirsty MacColl hoped it might one day be blown up. But the National Trust profoundly disagrees – it wants people to love Croydon.
The organisation, best known as custodian of some of Britain’s most beautiful country houses, is turning its gaze on to the 60s and 70s high rise office blocks of a London suburb that always seems to spark extreme opinions.
“It has this rather insalubrious reputation of being some kind of suburban hell that Londoners should somehow avoid,” admitted Joseph Watson, the London creative director of the trust. “But actually it is incredibly rich in history, heritage and green space and in our view it has a kind of weird beauty.”
Watson is helping to organise tours of Croydon taking in architectural highlights such as NLA House (now No 1 Croydon), sometimes known as the ‘threepenny bit’; the Corbusier-inspired Corinthian House; and St George’s House, or the Nestle building.
It is, Watson said, about trying to understand why Croydon is how it is, what makes it so distinctive and why it is so cherished by many proud Croydonians.
“We are not pretending it is everyone’s cup of tea,” he said. “But we would make the case for wanting to understand somewhere like Croydon.”
Croydon has not been greatly helped by its appearances in popular culture. For an older generation the borough was the home of Terry and June in the 80s BBC sitcom with the couple harrumphing round the Whitgift shopping centre looking for each other in the opening titles.
More recently it was the dispiriting home of Mark and Jez in the Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show, starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb.
Bowie was no fan, saying in a 1999 interview with Q magazine: “It represented everything I didn’t want in my life, everything I wanted to get away from. I think it’s the most derogatory thing I can say about somebody or something: ‘God, it’s so fucking Croydon!’”
Meanwhile, MacColl once said of the suburb she grew up in that it was number five in the top 50 things she hated, hoping it would all be blown up one day.
On the other hand it has been described by its fans as ‘Space Age’ and a ‘mini-Manhattan’.
Watson said Croydon did not have as much grey concrete as some people imagined and there are many architecturally impressive and important buildings.
Not least the Fairfield Halls, which was modelled on its immediate forerunner – the Royal Festival Hall, and was officially opened in 1962. The whole site is due to close for two years this month for a £30m refurbishment, allowing the National Trust to offer a last-minute backstage tour.
Croydon, the trust argues, was one of the best examples of the post-war optimism that sought to build a better society. Ambitious civic leaders wanted to create a third city in London, alongside Westminster and the City of London.
People on the tours will be able to go up the Amp House office block and hopefully see in the distance the building that effectively quashed those ambitions in the 1980s – 1 Canada Square on the Isle of Dogs.
The National Trust is turning to Croydon after its successful tours of London’s brutalist concrete buildings, places it argues should be cherished as much as Croydon’s towers.
Watson said: “Concrete has such a bad reputation that people always want to call them jungles and monstrosities and wastelands and busy themselves with trying to pull them down. We’re just saying look, every era makes its mark on society architecturally and we have to try protect some of the best at least – and Croydon clearly has some of the best.
“As a society we owe it to that era to protect those buildings. It was not very long ago that we were busy pulling down some of the finest buildings from the Victorian era under the rubrick of Victorian monstrosities.”
The project has been organised in conjunction with Croydon council. Timothy Godfrey, council member for culture, said: “For those of us born and bred in Croydon, we know the optimism and opportunity of the place, its ability to re-invent itselfand be welcoming to those who have moved here in each of its growth stages.
Other events will include a Routemaster tour of the borough and a screening of archive 1960s footage of Croydon.
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Edge City: Croydon, running from 15 to 24 July
