This London Print featuring the Excalibur Estate in Catford, is unusual and intriguing and makes for a great gift for a lover of London architecture and history.
The Excalibur Estate is a post-war 1940s prefabricated housing estate in Catford, South London. For decades, residents of the Excalibur Estate, have been fighting against property developers and hostile local authorities to save their bungalows from demolition.
This fight has proven to be in vain. The council have proposed to demolish it and replace or “regenerate” the estate, claiming that it would be virtually impossible to bring them up to modern standards. Conservationists have fought to save the estate from demolition, which they claim is a unique surviving example of twentieth-century architecture.
For this illustration, I thought of juxtaposing a ever hungry Pac man gobbling away bit by bit.
The prefabs were commissioned by Churchill from 1945-48 to solve the 'housing crisis' after the war. They were assembled in record time—each one took between eight hours and three days to build. One set an actual Guinness World Record, having been constructed in a mere 42 minutes. They were a national success: residents immediately loved them and strong communities grew out of this successful social housing scheme, which was only temporary and supposed to last 10 to 15 years.
This poster is available in 4 different sizes A5, A4, A3 or A2 (Giclee)
Giclee prints on 300 gsm thick archival paper also available. The archival inks enhance the colours on a light texture paper.
Please note: The posters are not framed.
