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Space is being made for plenty more: the £35 million Spa regeneration scheme is well under way, while Bermondsey Square, shabby site of the weekly New Caledonian Antiques Market and the ruins of a 10th-century abbey, is the object of a £36 million redevelopment scheme, courtesy of Southwark Council, due to start at the end of this year. Property-price-boosting plans are afoot for 45,000 sq. ft of residential space, an art-house cinema and displays of public artwork in the squares, which should go down well with the local lofters.
But despite the fiercely modern presence of Zandra Rhodes’s orange and pink fashion museum, the galleries, gastropubs and cafés, there is a lingering whiff of the area’s lawless and licentious past, the echo of a bawdy cackle as you make your way through its dank railway tunnels. Annette Kobak, who has lived in Morocco Street for four years, loves ‘the wonky mediaeval curve of the street and the fact that it was once a pilgrim’s route’.
It’s a struggle to find a downside, but green space is in shortish supply (the area once had meadows for cows and woods to provide nuts and acorns for pigs, according to the Domesday Book), although there are some small, newly revamped parks off Bermondsey Street.
This is a quibble, though, and would-be residents are obviously keeping local agents busy. During a well-earned break, Mark Williams of Williams Lynch, sounding slightly out of breath, told me, ‘Business has been brisk, even in August, which is traditionally a quiet time of year.’
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