‘Live From the Heygate is a blog I kept from the fall, 2007 through the summer of 2009, based on my experiences living on the Heygate Estate in London’s Elephant and Castle neighborhood. I actually only lived on the estate for six months, from the fall of 2007 to April 2008. It was a pivotal time in the Heygate’s history. The tennants were being moved out, and you could literally watch the estate being walled off level by level from the window, while construction for the new luxury towers that will one day take over the Elephant was taking place just across the tracks.
By the next summer, the Heygate was 90% empty and walking through the empty gangways was akin to walking through a ghost town. It was thought the Heygate would be demolished within the year but by the time I left the UK in December, 2008 it was still standing, and over four years on, it remains.
I haven’t been back to the UK since I left in 2008, but whenever I make it back, the Heygate will surely be one of my first stops.
I’ve included both an article I wrote and (unsuccessfully) tried to sell to a British newspaper, and a selection of posts from the blog. Most of these posts are written by me, but I also included any notable video or photo essays or written accounts of the Heygate in the blog stream.