Ferrier Estate

Turn left out of Kidbrooke Station and follow the road round towards Sutcliffe Park. It’s a strange experience. On the right-hand side stand the huge grey concrete forms of the Ferrier Estate, with its empty homes and broken windows, waiting for the wrecking ball.

Ferrier Estate, Kidbrooke, Greenwich, SE3

Across the road, though, next to a busy construction site, are new modern apartment blocks – large windows, balconies and smart red brick – set in immaculate landscaping with lush grass, scarlet geraniums and other brightly coloured bedding plants. It feels almost manicured.

Ferrier Estate, Kidbrooke, Greenwich, SE3

This is the beginning of Kidbrooke Village, one of the most ambitious regeneration schemes in Europe. The masterplan will cost £1bn to deliver and transform 109 hectares of deprived southeast London, an area little smaller than Hyde Park, into a stunning modern community.

Ferrier Estate, Kidbrooke, Greenwich, SE3

It’s immediately obvious this is no run-of-the-mill development. The attention to detail and quality in the public realm mark it out from almost any other regeneration scheme in Britain. This quality is what will help Kidbrooke emerge from a recent troubled past and create a place where people will battle hard to buy or rent, either privately or through the housing association.

Ferrier Estate, Kidbrooke, Greenwich, SE3

Over the next 15 to 20 years, 4,800 homes of different tenures will be built – in squares, around courtyards, in apartment blocks and streets. There will be family homes, new schools, health buildings and a commercial centre at its heart with shops, hotels, restaurants and offices, as well as leisure facilities and a brand new transport interchange.

Ferrier Estate, Kidbrooke, Greenwich, SE3

A new green spine of parkland and playing fields will flow through the centre, running from Sutcliffe Park at the south end of the site to the railway line at the north.

Ferrier Estate, Kidbrooke, Greenwich, SE3

But what does the creation of Kidbrooke Village tell you about the process of regeneration and renewal? Could the ideas and approach taken here inform the way we create new places nationwide?

Ferrier Estate, Kidbrooke, Greenwich, SE3

From a Berkley Homes briefing paper titled From Ferrier Estate to Kidbrooke Village: the Making of a new London Suburb

English Journey

Southampton to Newcastle, Newcastle to Norwich: memories rose like milk coming to the boil. I had seen England. I had seen a lot of Englands. How many?

George Shaw's Scenes from The Passion: The Cop Shop, 1999-2000, Tile Hill Estate, Coventry, CV4

At once, three disengaged themselves from the shifting mass. There was first, Old England, the country of the cathedrals and minsters and manor houses and inns, of parson and Squire; guide-book and quaint highways and byways England…

Colchester Organ Society, Colchester, Essex, CO1

Then, I decided, there is the nineteenth-century England, the industrial England of coal, iron, steel, cotton, wool, railways; of thousands of rows of little houses all alike, sham Gothic churches, square-faced chapels, Town Halls, Mechanics’ Institutes, mills, foundries, warehouses, refined watering-places, Pier Pavilions, Family and Commercial Hotels…

Alan Howard's Black History Mural, London Road, Reading, Berkshire, RG1

…Literary and Philosophical Societies, back-to-back houses, detached villas with monkey-trees, Grill Rooms, railway stations, slag-heaps and ‘tips’, dock roads, Refreshment Rooms, doss-houses, Unionist or Liberal Clubs…

Narbi Price's Untitled See-Saw Painting, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, L3

…cindery waste ground, mill chimneys, slums, fried-fish shops, public-houses with red blinds, bethels in corrugated iron, good-class draper’s and confectioners’ shops, a cynically devastated countryside, sooty dismal little towns, and still sootier grim fortress-like cities.

Folkestone, Kent, CT20

This England makes up the larger part of the Midlands and the North and exists everywhere; but it is not been added to and has no new life poured into it…

Eduardo Palozzi's An Empire of Silly Statistics . . . A Fake War for Public Relations, New Art Gallery, Walsall, West Midlands, WS2

The third England, I concluded, was the new post-war England, belonging far more to the age itself than to this particular island. America, I supposed, was its real birthplace.

Fairport Convention's Unhalfbricking (1969)

This is the England of arterial and by-pass roads, of filling stations and factories that look like exhibition buildings, of giant cinemas and dance-halls and cafes, bungalows with tiny garages, cocktail bars, Woolworths, motor-coaches, wireless, hiking, factory girls looking like actresses, greyhound racing and dirt tracks, swimming pools, and everything given away for cigarette coupons.

Teignmouth, Devon, TQ14

From JB Priestley’s English Journey (1934)

Brentford

O’er all the land of Brentford

The Royal Oak, New Road, Brentford, Middlesex, TW8

I’m lord, and eke of Kew:

JCDecaux, Great West Road, Brentford, Middlesex, TW8

I’ve three-per-cents and five-per-cents;

The Butts, Brentford, Middlesex, TW8

My debts are but a few;

Brentford Boatyard, Brentford, Middlesex, TW8

And to inherit after me

HG Hampton's Brentford High Street, Brentford, Middlesex, TW8

I have but children two.

Great West Road, Brentford, Middlesex, TW8

From William Makepeace Thackeray’s The King of Brentford’s Testament