Almost all of the tower blocks on the Gascoigne estate will be demolished and some have already been flattened.
But, as regeneration plans steam ahead and are expected to last a decade, some residents know that this isn’t the first time the estate has witnessed dramatic change.
The first wave of redevelopment took place in the 1950s when very basic houses were replaced with high-rise flats.
Many of the older properties were demolished and replaced with homes which had “mod con” facilities like indoor baths, showers and toilets.
Verity-Jane Keefe, a visual artist who has worked on a number of projects in the borough, including The Mobile Museum, believes that the estate is “superbly interesting because it’s undergoing renovation again”.
“[The regeneration] will have a large effect, not just on residents but the borough too,” she added.
“The community will change again and it will evolve over a long period of time.”
She said residents from the demolished Gascoigne houses moved into the Lintons when it was built in 1962.
“There’s this interesting circle,” Verity-Jane said. “There’s a fluidity of residents moving from one estate to another. It shows the strength of the borough because it has a really good track record of council homes.”
The Civic Street Survey is a photographic strand of The Mobile Museum which Verity is leading on council estates in the borough. She explains how her research found Sir Crisp Gascoyne was the lord of the manor and first Lord Mayor of London in 1753 and the land was named after him.
Talking about the estate the 35-year-old artist added: “It’s incredibly iconic and undeniably important because of its location and scale.”
In the past it’s had a reputation for being rough, with drug lord Delroy Lewis claiming it as the heart of his territory. But since police closed in on him in 2002, there has been a major fall in crime in the area.
This month a museum exploring the history of the estate has opened which looks at the lives of the people who grew up there in the past.
Studio 3 Arts, which runs the The Open Estate’s Living Museum, is building a mock 1960s living room and urge anyone with memories of the estate to pop in to the museum in St Mary’s Parade.
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