Last one out of Wellesley Road, burn it to the ground!

Two weeks ago I had the great pleasure of consuming a cup of coffee whilst discussing the present and future of Croydon with James Naylor, a local young gentlemen who has successfully imagined Croydon Tours a company where an insight into 'the most interesting town in Britain' is available. No longer will visitors simply be muscled out of East Croydon station and then left to their own devices, a genuine and insightful tour of Croydon is there for the taking.

So, like a bull to a matador I took the opportunity before I met James to visit the area of town opposite the Whitgift Centre across the Wellesley Road desert in an attempt to find more forgotten or never fully appreciated architecture. A great deal of time passed by with me walking in the company of the many corporate office buildings with their monstrous glass facades and columns in an attempt to be individual, yet I strongly began to feel the full effect of being in an area of town that is so centred on the business and financial operations of the world, that its architecture tries so desperately to escape the reality of its monotonous operations but ends up only looking less unique and more and more like each other. However,  like so much of Croydon that is now dedicated to commercial operations this slice of the urban landscape used to be a bustling residential are, so if you happen to turn down Walpole Rd you will encounter The Old House, a relic from times past.

Although the Old House is now used as office space, the story goes that an elderly woman lived at this address during the period when big business was moving in and setting up shop in this area of Croydon and having bought or bullied out all the other residents in the area the only person left was this elderly woman who successfully avoided relocating and lived in this house till her time was up. As can be seen today the new development of the area still went right ahead and the people at the top decided simply to construct their concrete children and tarmac carpets around this stubborn property, creating a remarkable contrast between the familiar human-scaled brick of the Old House and the oppressive and unimaginative human-cog architecture of the surrounding commercial development. It could be argued that right now the Old House stands predominantly as a monument to the anti-capitalist and the down-right necessity to stand up to power-hungry developers, an ideal that this humble piece of architecture achieves far more effectively than the 2011 Croydon riot ever did.

tW