Phipps 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[clarification needed] continued to redevelop it into the 1990s.
[citation needed] 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,[1] and was a reactivation of the pre-war slum clearance programme of the Municipal Borough of Mitcham (later called the London Borough of Merton).
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.
[5] 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.
One of these was a former sports ground at the time being used for coal storage;[10] works began after travellers and other itinerants were forcibly removed by a court order.
[8] 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.
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".
[20] There were proposals for the West Croydon to Wimbledon Line to open a stop to serve the estate, but British Rail's Board announced in September 1979 that such a station would be financially nonviable.
[citation needed] Being the only bus to serve the area, residents protested after improvement works to Mitcham town centre caused the route's curtailment.
