exploring excalibur prefabs, south london

After way too much sitting in the studio this week, I was bouncing off the walls and needing to get out. Stuart had a bee in his bonnet to visit the Excalibur prefab estate in Catford, so we jumped on our bicycles and headed over there. He’d read a couple articles, one by Simon Jenkins in The Guardian and the other in Lewisham Life about the community, Britain’s largest surviving 1940’s prefab estate, which is under threat of demolition by the council. Prefabricated houses were a quick-fix housing solution after WW2, and were only intended to last ten years or so, but after 60 years, some residents have grown very attached to them.

As we were looping about the maze of streets and taking photos, we were lucky enough to get chatting with a guy who was taking down his Christmas decorations, Jim Blackender. Jim’s become a neighbourhood champion to save Excalibur, and he let me video him talking about it. Here’s the interview and a slide show of some of the photos I took today in this historic area:

Excalibur Prefabs YouTube link

You can find out about the community’s campaign on Jim’s website here.

Jim Blackender and his prefab

The first time I went inside a prefab was in the Imperial War Museum’s 1940’s House exhibition, and Channel 4 made a series about a family who lived there in artificially created 1940’s conditions. When I took Stuart to the museum, he was amazed by how much of the decor he recognised that had stuck around into own childhood in the sixties. Here are some photos I found of the house’s interior on YouTube, with a jolly Alma Cogan soundtrack: