London Park Hotel in Elephant & Castle

[poster342002]

I remember there being a huge building near the Elephant & Castle roundabouts that had illuminated red lettering at the top which read "London Park Hotel".

Does it still exist? And is it still a hotel? What type of hotel was/is it?

[Dubversion]

most recently i think it was used as a hostel for Eastern Europe asylum seekers/refugees. as if the poor sods hadn't suffered enough they had to stay there and spend their days hanging round the fucking shopping centre :)

[poster342002]

What was it used for before that? Did it ever function as a regular hotel for tourists and the like?

[Dubversion]

some history here (http://www.derelictlondon.com/id14.htm)

Tanzanian-born Firoz Kassam (also owner of Oxford Utd FC) owned the London Park hotel at Elephant & Castle. It
had a Home Office contract to house 600 asylum seekers. The Observer carried an article in 2000: "Refugees slam
'hostel from hell' Victims of tyranny talk of violence between ethnic groups, bullying and theft at the sanctuary that
costs council £3m a year...It looks like any other anonymous, run-down inner city building. Its name, the London
Park Hotel, suggests a rural oasis amid urban squalor. But, say residents, it is closer to a prison. .. an atmosphere
of gang violence, intimidation, frustration and petty theft. They told of a world where the strong bully the weak, and
the weak bully the weaker. 'There is much trouble, much fighting. I never feel safe. You cannot even take out a
cigarette because someone will take it from you,' said Mohammed, 31, a student who escaped from one of
Saddam Hussein's jails."


Recently used by the BBC for 26 weeks in the filming of the 2nd series of Hussle the building will be demolished
in 2006 to make way for a major redevelopment plan for the whole Elephant & Castle area.

[poster342002]

Interesting - but I remember this place being around as far back as the 1980s. What was it like then?

[Dubversion]

no idea. only lived round here since the early 90s..

[lang rabbie]

IIRC it was built as a Rowton House

Yup...

Rowton and the Guiness Trust

Rowton was a philanthropist, who helped set up the Guinness Trust in 1890. He undertook a survey of London's ‘common lodging houses’ for the Trust and decided to set up working men's hostels – to give men a better, cleaner place to live.

Rowton put up the first £30,000, an astonishing sum, and the first Rowton House was opened at Bondway Vauxhall in 1892. In the first year 140,105 beds were let at sixpence (2.5p) a night. The customer got clean sheets, the use of tiled wash rooms, footbaths and washing troughs for clothes, all with plenty of hot water.

It was a revelation, better accommodation than in the average working class home of the time. In 1894 King's Cross Rowton House opened with 678 beds; In 1897 Newington Butts (Elephant and Castle) followed, and another at Hammersmith. The Tower House, Whitechapel was opened in 1902; and the largest hostel, Arlington House, Camden Town, was opened in 1905.

Down and Out in Paris and London

Working men of the time commonly had to stay in filthy and disease-ridden common lodging houses. Rowton Houses won a reputation as the cleanest and best value accommodation in London.

Thirty years after Jack London, George Orwell was making the journeys that would emerge in his book Down and Out in Paris and London. Orwell didn’t have much good to say about the East End. Though the poverty wasn’t as grim as that of Paris, he found the streets lifeless, empty and dull. He was rather complimentary about Tower House though, observing: ‘The best lodging houses are the Rowton Houses, where the charge is a shilling, for which you get a cubicle to yourself, and the use of excellent bathrooms.

‘You can also pay half a crown for a special, which is practically hotel accommodation. The Rowton Houses are splendid buildings, and the only objection to them is the strict discipline, with rules against cooking, card playing, etc.’ Lord Rowton may have been a godly man (and he declared Tower House ‘fit for an archbishop’) but Orwell found the moralistic regime distasteful, denying the East End men one of their few pleasures


http://www.eastlondonhistory.com/stalin%20in%20east%20end.htm

[lang rabbie]

See also this from the Vauxhall Society (http://www.vauxhallsociety.org.uk/Rowton.html) - pictures of typical interior

In 1897 Parkview House at NEWINGTON BUTTS was opened with 800 beds at 7d per night.

[boohoo]

no idea. only lived round here since the early 90s..

sarf-london newbie!

I remembered the big sign on the building when I was a kid. There was prefabs around the streets be the swimming pool. Actually that area can be seen in the early eighties in the Dexy's Midnight Runner's video for Come on Eileen. The water tower from Lambeth hospital can be seen in the back ground and is also on the derlict London website, cos I emailed the bloke about it.

....enough of my useless information... :o

[boohoo]

IIRC it was built as a Rowton House

Yup...

http://www.eastlondonhistory.com/stalin%20in%20east%20end.htm

You might know this.... in the film Blow Up, there is a doss house he takes photos in. The postcode of the street is in Peckham and I remember there being a huge building like the London Park Hotel, down a side road by a railway line about 13/14 yrs ago. I'm trying to find out if this is the same building in the film.

[lang rabbie]

You might know this.... in the film Blow Up, there is a doss house he takes photos in. The postcode of the street is in Peckham and I remember there being a huge building like the London Park Hotel, down a side road by a railway line about 13/14 yrs ago. I'm trying to find out if this is the same building in the film.

Would that have been the Camberwell Spike (http://briandeer.com/social/london-homeless.htm), where Orwell also stayed during his Down and Out... researches

IIRC that was somewhere off Gordon Road

Edited to add: You just need to Google for Antonioni + "Blow Up" + Camberwell

http://www.reelstreets.com/blow_up/blow_up_1.jpg
http://www.reelstreets.com/blow_up.htm

[boohoo]

Would that have been the Camberwell Spike (http://briandeer.com/social/london-homeless.htm), where Orwell also stayed during his Down and Out... researches

IIRC that was somewhere off Gordon Road

I'm gonna have to have a nose down that way. I will recognise the location even if the building is gone. The old doss house in Whitechapel is another great looking building - now being done up into posh flats.

There was also some nice prefabs down that way, now gone. :(

[poster342002]

All interesting stuff, but I'm still left wondering what London Park Hotel was used for in the 1980s? :confused:

[lang rabbie]

All interesting stuff, but I'm stillleft wondering what London Park Hotel was used for in the 1980s? :confused:

As an hotel AFAIK from when I worked near the Elephant 1988-1990.

You could still get rooms well into the 1990s that were advertised in backpackers' handbooks.

I also have a very vague idea that South Bank Poly used to block book some space for overseas students. :confused: