Elephant and Castle is an area of south London, England, in the London Borough of Southwark. The name also informally refers to much of Walworth and Newington, due to the proximity of the London Underground station of the same name. The name is derived from a local coaching inn.
The major traffic junctions here are connected by a short road called Elephant and Castle, which is part of the A3. Traffic runs to and from Kent along the A2 (New Kent Road and Old Kent Road), much of the south of England on the A3, to the West End via St George's Road, and to the City of London via London Road and Newington Causeway at the northern junction. Newington Butts and Walworth Road adjoin the southern junction. It forms part of the London Inner Ring Road and the boundary of the London congestion charge zone.
The subterranean River Neckinger, which originates in Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park, flows east under the area towards St Saviour's Dock where it enters the Thames. The area was significantly remodelled in the 1960s as part of post-war reconstruction. A new wave of redevelopment began in the late 2000s with the demolition of the brutalist Heygate Estate. The various phases of the project are due to last until the late 2020s. The demolition of the shopping centre and The Coronet took place in 2021.
The Elephant has two linked London Underground stations, on the Northern and Bakerloo lines, and a National Rail station served by limited Southeastern services and Thameslink suburban loop line services to Mitcham, Sutton and Wimbledon, and services to Kentish Town and St. Albans to Orpington or Sevenoaks via Catford.
Notable buildings and institutions Skipton House, home of Public Health England; a large part of the London South Bank University campus; the London College of Communication (part of UAL), home to the Stanley Kubrick Archive; the Ministry of Sound nightclub; the Imperial War Museum, which sits in Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park; the Michael Faraday Memorial in Elephant Square; the Siobhan Davies Studios, an award-winning Victorian school conversion by Sarah Wigglesworth; West Square; the original Bakerloo Line depot; the Inner London Crown Court; the Revolving Doors Agency; the London School of Musical Theatre; the Baitul Aziz Islamic Cultural Centre, the Cinema Museum; and the Metropolitan Tabernacle. The Cuming Museum is nearby on Walworth Road. A K2 model phone box from 1927, designed by Giles Gilbert Scott and located on the southern side of New Kent Road, which was moved a few metres and reinstalled at the entrance of Ash Avenue in 2021, is a Grade II listed structure since 1986.
Name
The name "Elephant and Castle" is derived from the name of a pub/coaching inn located at this major crossroad. The earliest surviving record of this name in relation to this area appears in the Court Leet Book of the Manor of Walworth, which met at "Elephant and Castle, Newington" on 21 March 1765.
The inn was rebuilt in 1816 and again in 1898, and the present Elephant & Castle pub, at the junction of New Kent Road and Newington Causeway, was part of 1960s comprehensive redevelopment. The Victorian pub was demolished.
Newington, which was the name of the village forming the basis to the neighbourhood before the inn's name took over, is a common place name in England. London quickly expanded into the northern parts of the parish from 1750 to 1830. By the end of the 19th century ten daughter parishes had arisen in Newington including its secondary manor, Walworth. No notable upper, lower, or hill parts of the ancient parish nor compass points have been used, so to locate businesses and homes without reference to traditional saints divisions, many people popularised the informal name, of the notable public house. Other instances in Inner London are 'Angel' at Islington and Bricklayers Arms at the east end of New Kent Road.
The myths of the Infanta and the Cutlers' Company The popular and enduring idea that the inn itself derives its name from an English corruption of the phrase , as a reference to Eleanor of Castile, has been debunked by local historian Stephen Humphrey in his 2013 book Elephant and Castle, a History. However, still under dispute is a connection with another Princess of Castilla, Catherine d'Aragon, first wife of Henry VIII, who when first arrived into London in 1502, took lodging into a house on South Bank, which would later become the residence of the architect Christopher Wren. This building is about a mile and a half from where Elephant and Castle roundabout stands today.
According to Stephen Humphrey, after examining how the image of an elephant with a castle on its back has been popular for centuries and throughout Europe (the earliest example predating Queen Eleanor by 1,500 years), and pointing out the fact that the sign only begins to be used in the area about 500 years after Eleanor was alive, he states:
The story of Queen Eleanor in relation to the Elephant and Castle is therefore a myth. It is wildly anachronistic both in respect of the sign in general and in its specific use in Newington, and she has no connection with the sign or with the place.
The author also refutes the claim that the pub name derives from the Cutlers' Company. First he notes:
The sign was adopted by the Cutlers' Company of the City of London, because of the use of ivory in the handles of cutlery. The Royal African Company of 1672 likewise used the sign due to the ivory trade.
Prior to the public house's appearance in the records in 1765, John Flaxman had been allowed to build a workshop on the site around 1642. Stephen Humphrey describes him as a smith or farrier. Thirty years later another farrier is cited as lessee of the site, which is now known as the White Horse. The building is first described as a public house called the Elephant and Castle with a licensee called George Frost in 1765, although this may not have been the year of opening. The author adds:
We can only say that the Elephant and Castle pub existed without doubt from 1765 and may have been founded under that name by George Frost as early as 1754.
Stephen Humphrey explains that George Frost's name appears in other manor and vestry records but he made no appearance in the records of the Farriers' Company and was not included among the apprentices of the Cutlers' Company. There is no evidence to connect him with the shoeing of horses, the cutlery trade or with another pub elsewhere before he arrived at Newington. The sudden appearance of the ancient sign under his proprietorship cannot be explained by his career. As with the vast majority of pub names, the choice in this case was probably a random one.
History
Medieval and early modern Known previously as Newington (Newington Butts and Newington Causeway are two of the principal roads of the area), in the medieval period it was part of rural Surrey, in the manor of Walworth. This is listed in the Domesday Book as belonging to the Archbishop of Canterbury; the income from its rents and tithes supplied the monks at Christ Church Canterbury with their clothing, and a 'church' is mentioned. The parish was called St Mary, Newington, which church occupied the southwest side of today's southern roundabout, near the Tabernacle, and was first recorded by name in 1222.
In May 1557, William Morant, Stephen Gratwick and a man named King, known as the Southwark Martyrs, were burnt at the stake in St George's Field on the site of the present Tabernacle during the Marian Persecutions.
St Mary's Church was rebuilt in 1720 and completely replaced in 1790, to a design of Francis Hurlbatt. Within another hundred years this too was to be demolished, with its replacement on Kennington Park Road ready in 1876. It was destroyed by bombing in 1940 during the Second World War. The remains of the tower and an arch were incorporated into its replacement of 1958. The open space is still known as St Mary's Churchyard, and the narrow pedestrian walk at its south end is Churchyard Row.
There is record of a 'hospital' before the Reformation. In 1601 the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers erected St Peter's Hospital on the site of the present London College of Communication. This expanded and survived until 1850, when it was removed to Wandsworth. The Drapers' livery company created Walters' Almshouses on a site now at the southern junction island in 1640, giving the tower block opposite the name Draper House. The almshouses were relocated to Brandon Street in the 1960s as part of the major redevelopment.
Rise to metropolitan prominence (1750–1900)
The neighbourhood became urbanised and somewhat commercial after the building of Westminster Bridge in 1751 and the improvements to London Bridge in the same period. These required 'by-pass' roads across the south side approaches to each other and also to the main routes to the south and southeast coasts. These road improvements – Great Dover Street, Westminster Bridge, New Kent Road, St George's Road and Borough Road – connect to the older Kennington and Old Kent Roads to facilitate this traffic. In 1769 the new Blackfriars Bridge was connected to this system at what is now St George's Circus and Blackfriars Road (originally Great Surrey Road) and to the Elephant junction with the new London Road. As a result of these improvements, the area became a built-up part of the metropolis during the late Georgian and Victorian periods.
The railway arrived here in 1863 and the first deep-level tube line, now part of the Northern line's City Branch, in 1890. The Bakerloo line terminus was created in 1906. The middle-class and working-class populations increased, the first settling on the major roads, the latter on the streets behind these. The area declined socio-economically in much of the Walworth (south-east) side as work in London Docklands shifted further east and became more mechanised, and the regional-level railway yard work decreased (see Bricklayers Arms railway station).
In the 19th century the nationally famed Baptist preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon built the Metropolitan Tabernacle here. The building, designed by William Willmer Pocock, was finished in 1861 and dedicated on 18 March. It was bombed in the bombing of London but the portico and basement survived. In 1957 the tabernacle was rebuilt to a new, much smaller design, accommodating surviving original features.
The Theatre Royal was built in 1872 and destroyed by fire only six years later. Renovations were initiated by Jethro Thomas Robinson after the fire, and completed by Frank Matcham, to what became the Elephant and Castle Theatre in 1879. The Theater was converted to an ABC cinema in 1928, and became The Coronet Cinema in 1981.
During the late 19th century there was a cemetery in the vicinity, but it was built over during London's rapid expansion. A few gravestones remain in St. Mary's Churchyard. At the north side of the churchyard, the church of St Gabriel's Newington was built in 1874 before being demolished in 1937 on what is now a walkway called St Gabriel Walk.
20th century Peak years: 1900–1939 The area became the location for a thriving shopping area, known as "the Piccadilly (Circus) of South London", with its own department store (William Tarn and Co) and many smaller outlets. Also featured were a shoe factory, a branch of Burton and a renowned hatter.
In 1930, the Trocadero, a monumental neo-Renaissance style picture house seating over 3000 and fitted with the largest Wurlitzer organ imported to the United Kingdom, was built at the northern corner of the New Kent Road (a plaque commemorating the building was unveiled in 2008 by Denis Norden, who had worked there in his youth). This was replaced in 1966 by a smaller cinema (the Odeon, known for a time after closure as an Odeon in 1982 as the Coronet, not to be confused with the Coronet below) which was demolished in 1988.