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Phipps Bridge is a housing estate in
Mitcham
Mitcham is an area within the London Borough of Merton in South London, England. It is centred southwest of Charing Cross. Originally a village in the county of Surrey, today it is mainly a residential suburb, and includes Mitcham Common. It ha ...
in the
London Borough of Merton
The London Borough of Merton () is a borough in Southwest London, England.
The borough was formed under the London Government Act 1963 in 1965 by the merger of the Municipal Borough of Mitcham, the Municipal Borough of Wimbledon and the Merton ...
. It was built following a need created by the end of the Second World War on the site of old slums, and is named after a nearby bridge. Although it opened in the 1960s as a show-piece estate it took less than ten years for it to become a slum again, and the council continued to redevelop it into the 1990s.
History
Phipps Bridge was built in the 1950s and 1960s on the previous site of a municipal refuse depot on Homewood Road and nearby streets of poor quality housing built in the late 19th century, and was a reactivation of the pre-war slum clearance programme of the
Municipal Borough of Mitcham
Mitcham was a local government district in north east Surrey from 1915 to 1965 around the town of Mitcham.
History
Mitcham local government district was created in 1915 as an urban district from part of the abolished Croydon Rural District. It ga ...
(later called the London Borough of Merton). It takes its name from a bridge over the nearby
River Wandle
The River Wandle is a right-bank tributary of the River Thames in south London, England. With a total length of about , the river passes through the London boroughs of London Borough of Croydon, Croydon, London Borough of Sutton, Sutton, Londo ...
, for which the first evidence documenting its existence was in the Valor Ecclesiasticus of 1535, which mentions a "Pypesbrige", which in turn probably derives its name from an association with a local family called Pipp.
The current bridge dates to the mid-1950s and replaced a
Bailey bridge
A Bailey bridge is a type of portable, pre-fabricated, truss bridge. It was developed in 1940–1941 by the British for military use during the Second World War and saw extensive use by British, Canadian and American military engineering units. A ...
from the Second World War.
After the war, new council housing was needed. All private building had been halted by the outbreak of war, and around the same time the stringent ''Rent and Mortgage Interest Restrictions Act 1939'' was enacted, making the provision of new accommodations to rent completely uneconomic for the private landlord. In addition, the Municipal Borough of Mitcham had requisitioned many private houses during the war, many of these belonging to servicemen due for demobilisation or others partaking in war work outside of Mitcham, and these would need to be returned to their owners. The building of temporary
prefabricated
Prefabrication is the practice of assembling components of a structure in a factory or other manufacturing site, and transporting complete assemblies or sub-assemblies to the construction site where the structure is to be located. The term is u ...
bungalows in the mid-1940s provided slight relief, as did the erection of houses shortly after the war, but not until the demolition of Homewood Road depot was serious building work undertaken. The first blocks of high-rise flats opened to tenants in 1965.
The estate at the time comprised 776 units ranging from terraces of houses to four-story blocks of maisonettes and five- and six-story blocks of flats, as well as a pub (which became a surgery in 1996 following a shooting).
Although Phipps Bridge was intended as a show-piece estate, with the coach tours the Civic Society organised during summer 1965 to foster a better awareness of the area by the then-newly formed London Borough of Merton including a visit to the estate, allocation of these units was based strictly on need. It took just ten years for parts of the estate to become plagued with vandalism and graffiti, degenerating back into the slum it was before the war.
Redevelopment
Although the estate had only housed tenants from the late 1960s, in the early 1970s an attempt was made by various council departments to appease residents with promises of "more than £60,000" being spent on the building of a youth centre, playing fields, and a children's playground.
Phipps Bridge was widely considered undesirable at the time. A fire and consequent explosions at a nearby gas storage depot in 1970 considerably damaged many nearby houses, and it was not until the end of the decade that the councillors agreed on what to do about the issue of having industry so close to the estate. In addition, a "cockroach invasion" took place in 1976. In 1978, the then-decade-old Phipps Bridge Primary School changed its name to Haslemere Primary School to try and rid itself of the stigma attached to the name.
Several redevelopments took place in the 1970s. One of these was a former sports ground at the time being used for coal storage; works began after travellers and other itinerants were forcibly removed by a court order. Another was a former rail siding, whose purchase from British Rail took over three years. A third renovation demanded the demolition of nearly 80 houses from the mid-19th century. These renovations continued into the 1980s, with emphasis being predominantly on houses and small blocks of maisonettes arranged in closes or quiet cul-de-sacs, as was vogue at the time.
The problem of the old Phipps Bridge estate, particularly of the high-rise flats, remained. Writing in 2005 for an article on ex-resident
M.I.A., Robert Wheaton of Popmatters.com described life in Phipps Bridge by the mid-1980s as "an experience in misery", and noted that "television cop shows used the estate to film scenes depicting the most run-down, graffiti-stained dead-end estates in the country". One resident noted that the leaders of the
National Front lived there, and as such had their offices and meetings there. Punk poet Sue Johns - who lived on the estate at the time - wrote in a poem of "the piss-filled lift", "the shells of wrecked cars", and "fifties design faults holding on / by the skin of their teeth in the eighties", picturing residents waiting for a long-promised redevelopment "behind Chubb locks and net curtains".
This redevelopment would take place in 1993, when Merton Council resolved to replace four of the five 1960s high-rise blocks with 346 new dwellings of various sizes, of which about 60% were houses, and renovate the final high-rise block as well as the low-rise properties forming the original development.
Crime
Phipps Bridge has a reputation for being a rough area, and in 2010 the chairman of the Residents' Association described the area as "out of control" after a spate of violent attacks occurring in quick succession.
In addition, a gang of seventeen were sentenced in 2013 for selling class A drugs on the children's play area.
The estate was described in an article about former resident M.I.A. as "one of south London's most notorious crime vortexes".
Notable residents
Rapper
M.I.A. (Maya Arulpragasam) and jewellery designer
Kali Arulpragasam
Kali Arulpragasam is a jewellery designer and artist based in London. She is the founder and creative director of the artistic jewellery label "Super Fertile," founded in 2006. She is the sister of musician M.I.A.
Super Fertile
Arulpragasam's ...
moved to the estate with their sibling and mother in July 1986 as refugees from the
Sri Lankan civil war. Their family was one of only two Asian families that lived on the estate at the time.
Maya Arulpragasam said about the estate in a 2004 interview that her family was "one of the two Asian families that lived there
ndI used to come home from school and see people burgling my house, just walk past with my telly. But it wasn't as horrible as being in Sri Lanka".
The 2018 documentary ''
Matangi/Maya/M.I.A.'' followed her home life on the estate.
The 19th century cricketer
John Pratt John Pratt may refer to:
*John Pratt (judge) (1657–1725), Lord Chief Justice of England and interim Chancellor of the Exchequer
*John Pratt (soldier) (1753–1824), United States Army officer
*John Pratt, 1st Marquess Camden (1759–1840), Britis ...
died in the area.
Transport
There were proposals for the
West Croydon to Wimbledon Line
West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth.
Etymology
The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some ...
to open a stop to serve the estate, but
British Rail
British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most of the overground rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the Big Four British rai ...
's Board announced in September 1979 that such a station would be financially nonviable. However, both
Phipps Bridge tram stop
Phipps Bridge tram stop is a stop on the Tramlink service in the London Borough of Merton. The stop is named after Phipps Bridge Road, an adjacent residential street.
The tram stop consists of a single island platform. Immediately to the west o ...
and
Belgrave Walk tram stop
Belgrave Walk tram stop is a stop on the Tramlink service near Mitcham in the London Borough of Merton. The stop is named after Belgrave Walk, an adjacent residential street to the north.
The tram stop consists of an island platform which is ac ...
opened when
Tramlink
London Trams, previously Tramlink and Croydon Tramlink, is a light rail tram system serving Croydon and surrounding areas in South London, England. It began operation in 2000, the first tram system in the London region since 1952. It is manage ...
began service in May 2000. The
London Buses route 200
This is a list of Transport for London (TfL) contracted bus routes in London, England, as well as commercial services that enter the Greater London area (except coaches).
Bus services in London are operated by Abellio London, Arriva London, G ...
began serving the estate in December 1966.
Being the only bus to serve the area, residents protested after improvement works to Mitcham town centre caused the route's curtailment.
References
Bibliography
*
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Housing estates in London