Thamesmead
Thamesmead has been used as a filming location for several films. The best known is Stanley Kubrick's 1971 A Clockwork Orange, which filmed several scenes in the area's estates and streets.
The video for Aphex Twin's Come to Daddy, directed by Chris Cunningham, and the TV series Misfits were filmed there too. As obvious as it sounds, I had to visit.
The area was developed in the 1960s and 1970s in south-east London as part of a large-scale urban renewal project, designed as a self-contained town with a mix of residential, commercial and community facilities.
I went on a cloudy summer day, and what struck me first was the vast scale of the place, the emptiness of the streets, the astonishing silence.
Sadly, I realised that a significant part of the estate, the one featured in A Clockwork Orange, had been demolished to make way for a new housing development.
Even so, it was a really striking experience.
External Links
What happened to the cockney riviera? The botched regeneration of brutalist utopia Thamesmead
