The last days of Elephant and Castle's 1970s housing project

Built in 1974 the Heygate Estate in Walworth feels like a vision of a Warsaw suburb from the communist Soviet Bloc era. It is soon to be demolished as part of the Elephant & Castle regeneration project. Residents began moving out in 2008 and 99% of them have now been re-housed by Southwark council either on nearby estates or in Dulwich
Photograph: Joshua Surtees

Human sounds are largely absent on the Heygate estate. Row after row of former homes are boarded up with metal panels sealing doors and windows. Even the most hardcore squatters have been deterred by the threat of imminent demolition
Photograph: Joshua Surtees

A surreal detritus of discarded toys, broken glass and deflated footballs litters the untended gardens and trees
Photograph: Joshua Surtees

Oceans of satellite dishes point towards the sky, waiting in vain for a signal that will never come, to transmit pictures that will never be seen
Photograph: Joshua Surtees

Astonishingly, amidst the desolation, signs of life still exist. As you wander through echoing walkways, across doomed footbridges and through puddles of muddy water, suddenly you find yourself looking through a window into a perfectly normal kitchen scene. You have found survivors. Riikka Lahti comes from a remote village of 3,000 people in the east of Finland
Photograph: Joshua Surtees

Riikka, aged 20, and her flatmate Cindy, 23 from Sydney, Australia, moved in to the crumbling flat last December and expect to be moved out by June. “I’m going to stay until they demolish the place. We like it because we can do what they want. We probably wouldn’t have moved in if the community had still been here”
Photograph: Joshua Surtees

“It feels a lot safer with nobody around,” say Ross and Gemma, two Community Police Officers. “Police patrol regularly now. It’s not as scary as the occupied flats near the station.” They have patrolled this estate for two years. “It’s quite sad really. Some people have lived here 30 years, they don’t want to leave. We’d made friends here. We don’t know where they’ve gone now.”
Photograph: Joshua Surtees

Ihmet, a Turkish Cypriot, arrived in London in 1974 after the Turkish military invasion of Cyprus triggered violence, partition and the loss of his home in Nicosia. He has lived on the Heygate since it was first built and does not want to leave. He is one of the last remaining residents. Soon he too will be re-housed
Photograph: Joshua Surtees

Born in 1938 and having lived in Elephant & Castle all her life, Yvonne Castelle has survived more than council bureaucracy and botched town planning. She remembers the days before the Heygate estate. Her early childhood was spent in picturesque streets of ‘two up two down’ Victorian terraced houses. When German V1 rockets destroyed much of the area during The Blitz, Yvonne saw the skies over Walworth turn red with flames
Photograph: Joshua Surtees

Yvonne Castelle shows me pictures of her acting, dancing and cabaret career. In 1969 she was paralysed for life after an accident on the set of the movie Moon Zero II. She remained bedridden for 10 years. When she finally emerged, wheelchair bound, the streets she knew had changed forever. The behemoth Heygate Estate had been erected
Photograph: Joshua Surtees

View from the 10th floor of Claydon block. Soon the South London skyline will be transformed. The Heygate Estate will be pulled down. While residents hope for high quality affordable housing, the regeneration project has stalled several times and the planned new neighbourhood remains a long way off
Photograph: Joshua Surtees

The eerie deserted scenes have attracted artists, photographers and film makers to the estate
Photograph: Joshua Surtees

An Eritrean woman and her four children are the only people left on the 4th floor of the Claydon block. 35 empty flats surround her. It’s the same on the floor above and below. “It’s very dark here and the heating goes off all the time. I don’t have heating right now.”
Photograph: Joshua Surtees

A group of teenagers at the Temple Foursquare Gospel Church take a break from singing and playing instruments
Photograph: Joshua Surtees

Family groups use the Latin American Multicultural Group as a community hub. As well as computers, a crèche and adult learning classes, the group creates colourful costumes for carnival
Photograph: Joshua Surtees

Community services and buildings like this GP surgery will soon be removed
Photograph: Joshua Surtees

The estate resembles a ghost town of sheet metal and barbed wire. Security vans patrol the estate. These procedures are more intense than when the estate was fully populated
Photograph: Joshua Surtees

A man and his two young children walk towards the doomed Heygate Estate. In the distance the new high rise apartment block Strata looms over the horizon. This building development, part of the regeneration project, has been criticised for pricing out local residents. Luxury penthouse apartments cost around £850,000
Photograph: Joshua Surtees