700,000 properties are standing empty across England.Councils will be given new powers to buy up boarded up houses under plans bythe government to tackle homelessness and to have 25,000 empty homes occupied by 2011.

A spokesman said: "Poorly maintained empty properties are magnets for vandals, drug users, squatters and even arsonists.Boarding them up simply helps to identify them as empty. Bringing empty homes back into use reduces opportunities for such low-level anti-social behaviour."

Councils would have the power to impose and enforce Empty Dwelling Management Orders."They will effectively replace compulsory purchase orders. We will grant local authorities the powers to obtain property that has stood empty for six months. The new orders would only apply to private homes and not include property owned by

Perhaps not the safest building to go climbing around in........It is an example of a 19th century concrete house, believed to be the only surviving example in England. Built in 1873 by Charles Drakeof the Patent Concrete Building Company and is listed on Ernglish Heritage's Buildings at Risk register Southwark Council have refused permission for its demolition hence its appearance. Compulsory emergency works under Health & Safety to stop the building collapsing into the road carried out by Southwark Council - their invoice is stuck to the outside wall for the attention of the owner whose whereabouts is unknown.

Carole writes: "I'm sure I can remember a family living in it during the late '70's though a friend disputes this. I have been inside it and there's no stairs, one of the front room floors has collapsed and there doesn't appear to have been any electricity in it. It is huge inside.I have the impression that the local residents would like it demolished - one woman on the bus sitting behind me called it an 'eyesore'. It looks even worse next to the new building being constructed beside it."

Richard writes: "I grew up in East Dulwich and the house on the corner of Lordship Lane and Underhill Roadwas a childrens home in the 70's - definitely. I was about 10 at the time I think so would've been around 77/78. It was run by a woman known as Auntie Lena and I had a few friends at the time who lived in there, so I used to be round there quite a bit! I cant remember any of the kids there being much older than me and I think there were only about 8 kids there at any one time. Every time I go past there I have fond memories!"

This late 15th century thatched timber-framed house was ravaged by fire in 2003.and has decayed considerably since then.The timber frame survives but the he building is unstable, and protective covering is now deteriorating. The council is monitoring the site and has taken several actions against the current owners to make them keep the site tidy and secure.A stalemate has developed between the building's owner and Hounslow Council, which has rejected several planning applications including one for a 55-bed nursing home on the site.The owner, who is now proposing turning the site into a hotel, claims that the building is now beyond repair and would have to be rebuilt from scratch to be restored to its original glory. This building is extremely unsafe and I wouldnt recommend that any Derelict London readers attempt to enter it.

A majority of this street is derelict. Anyone know why? Must be worth a fortune......Apparently belongs to the local Mawdsley Hospital and was used as living quarters for nurses. Looks like they have been empty for years.

Until recently these derelict buildings sat uneasliy dwarfed by the modern skyscrapers of Canary Wharf. Since the Docklands regeneration there are very few of these old dock worker houses left on the Isle of Dogs. These poor old houses unfortunately did not survive the JCB and were recently demolished presumably as part of the expansion of the affluent financial area of London.

Why is the area called the Isle of Dogs?.... one version : The Isle of Dogs was named for the royal kennels which were once housed there. The other version : sailors on boats coming up the Thames River heard strange sounds emanating from that landmass. It may have been the whistling wind, or the shouts of men, but many superstitious sailors thought it was the howling of wild dogs. Or dog ghosts! They were frightened of the area.

About 400 squatters were living in flats on the condemned Coopers Road Estate off the Old Kent Road. They came out in force to confront contractors sent by Southwark council to turn off the water supply in two blocks. Police were called and a stand-off ensued before the contractors went ahead with their work. The council said the move was aimed at forcing the squatters out so it could continue the regeneration of the area.The flats were then made uninhabitable by the outer wall being destroyed.

In the 1920's this was a tree lined boulevard on the outskirts of London, with farmers fields all around. The houses were large semi-detached villas with tudor features on the gables above the many bay windows. In those days, the roadway was one lane in either direction, and the pavements were wide, the front gardens pretty and traffic was not too busy.

Now the scene is sadder, the pavements are narrow, the roadway is at least 3 lanes in either direction withtraffic mostly ground to a halt and carbon monoxide fumes everywhere. Firstly the gardens were shortened by compulsory purchase as the road was widened. Then in the late 90's was a scheme to widen the road by so much that it would be neccessary to demolish the houses either side.

After compulsory purchase, the old houses are brutally smashed up by bailiffs, and made uninhabitable to stop squatters from taking them over. All internal fittings, toilets and sinks, are smashed to smithereens, and floorboards are ripped up, leaving sharp stakes pointing up and precarious gaping holes below. The irony is that despite failed attempts by residents and owners to hang on to their homes, and most of them being eventually demolished, the road scheme is eventually scrapped and much of the site is now left as vacant open land and the few buildings remaining are left to decay in their overgrown (once cared for) gardens.

There is a great book called "Leadville: A Biography of the A40" by Edward Platt. The Times said 'Platt has created a drama that is not only Orwellian in its attention to what you might call the state of the nation ...but almost Dickensian in the recording of the colour and pathos of its inhabitants'

Over the years there have been various proposed schemes to widen the North Circular, which links west and east London via the northern suburbs. Three hundred properties have at some time or other been scheduled for demolition. There is no doubt that there are serious bottle-necks on the North Circular, but many local people argue that widening the road would only attract more traffic, making one of Britain’s most polluted roads even more hazardous to health.

The decades of uncertainty over this stretch of road have given the homes and businesses on either side of it a forlorn air. Transport for London owns these buildings and is buying up more houses as residents move out. Many homes have been left to vandals, others boarded up to escape the attentions of arsonists and squatters.

The huge Ferrier Estate in Kidbrooke has had a fairly unsavoury reputation ever since its construction on a disused military site by the Greater London Council in 1972. Built out of forbidding pre-fabricated blocks, it became notorious for crime, neglect and vandalism.

Over the last few years households have been moved out as the council prepares to demolish the estate to make way for a new housing development planned for 2018. Some homeowners, however, have refused to leave as they feel the money that they are being offered to move is insufficient to buy a property on the open market.

Blocks have become derelict, with dark metal steel sheets covering landing windows and stairwells. Outward-facing windows have been ripped out to make them uninhabitable. While I was there, one remaining resident told me that the estate is infested with ants and rats.

Many of the more brutal concrete monstrosities constructed throughout London since the Second World War are now disappearing before the bulldozer. The 1960s Wood Dene Estate, which was designed in large, concrete, six-storey blocks with long walkways, is just one of those scheduled for destruction. Once demolition had been decided upon, whole floors of the flats were covered with metal shutters and tenants gradually moved elsewhere – a process that took five years.

As people left, Wood Dene became a magnet for drug dealers, vandalism and shootings. It acquired national notoriety in 2005 when Zainab Kalokoh was shot in the head at her niece’s christening party in the community centre on the estate. The council says it has plans to build more than 300 homes for sale and rent on the cleared site.

Tenants were recently decanted elsewhere and the estate flattened already to make way for a new social housing development. Ive no interesting stories for you on this estate....

This place is in the process of being bought by The House of Favour Church. Locals are worried about the possible parking problems. Someone on TESE23 forum writes: "I fully respect peoples wish to worship, but so sad that the days of walking to the local church are long gone, and people insist on travelling to different areas, and no caring about the locals who they cause issues for."

Poor old St Mary’s Lodge. Designed and constructed in 1843 by one of the leading architects of the day, John Young (who also designed the Royal Marsden Hospital), it was built for himself, his wife, their nine children and two servants and incorporates some wonderful architectural flourishes, such as arched windows and terracotta brickwork details. Young enlarged the house in the 1860s and also added an elegant garden at the rear. The Youngs remained at St Mary’s Lodge until John Young’s death in 1877, after which it remained a family home until 1959.

From the early 1960s, the local authority used St Mary’s Lodge as a women’s hostel, offering refuge to up to nine women at a time. The hostel was closed in the mid-1990s and the building and grounds were left unmaintained and unsecured. Vandals, squatters and the elements have left the house and grounds in a poor state, particularly following a major fire in 2005, and St Mary’s Lodge’s future is uncertain.

www.stmaryslodge.co.uk The information and photographs of the derelict interior and 1993 picture of St Marys are reproduced by kind permission of the stmaryslodge website.

Kate Williams writes: "Thank you for inadvertently acknowledging 20 years of my past - seeing that picture is a great reminder of how far I've come in life. I was a 4yr old living with my parents and younger sister in a cramped 1st floor, 3-bedroom flat in Matthews House, Bramhope Lane, Charlton. 20 years all in all. In the early 1990s, there was talk of demolition/modernisation and a long consultation stage ensued between residents and the Council. The options were to either modernise the properties (because the internal walls were of concrete construction, they needed new roofs, cast iron guttering etc), or to demolish them and build new, more energy efficient, cost-effective housing in their place.

To cut a long story short, the latter was chosen, and Greenwich Council signed over the properties a housing association: Charlton Triangle. That association then assisted in the decanting of us residents. Mum and I were the only ones who remained in Matthews House.

As residents moved out when properties became available, the likes of Matthews House and other neighbouring blocks became a mecca for all that is horrid, and the police were constantly called out to our lane to shoo off the undesirables who'd hang out in gangs in the stairways (the communal halls/entrance ways were never secure with entry phones etc - just open) and it was something that we just had to put up with. We lived in fear constantly. Salvage came in the winter of 2002, when the housing association gave Mum and I the opportunity to move to a place in New Eltham. Mum chose not to move back to Charlton.

The image of Matthews House, especially, haunts me. And though it no longer exists, the picture of it on your website serves as a stark reminder of what my life and my family's life used to be like. That "Council Estate Girl" is still inside my head somewhere, in the memory banks of a bygone era. It was cathartic to show my husband where I lived, just before Matthews House etc got ripped down. It was like that acknowledgement needed to be made in order to justify my existence. 20 years of one's life just bulldozed down in the space of ... however long.

I do hope that we can give our children-to-be a better start in life than I had, but I am grateful for the experiences life taught me, including my time spent in Charlton."

Epsom	Dalston	Ealing
Bermondsey	Hackney	Clapham
Islington	Shoreditch	Morden
Turnpike Lane	Brent Cross	Tufnell Park
Ealing	Colindale	South Tottenham
South Tottenham	Finsbury Park	Mile End
Penge	Barnsbury	Limehouse
Gipsy Hill	Collier Row	Park Royal
Shoreditch	Highbury (next to old stadium)	Kings Cross
Shadwell	Blackwall	Brentford
Kings Cross	Shoreditch	South Croydon
Dagenham	Bermondsey	Silvertown
Bloomsbury	Peckham	St Giles Circus
Mayfair	Dalston	Muswell Hill

The Heygate has been part of a major redevelopment plan since 2004, with tenants gradually being rehoused over the past few years. While most of the flats are empty and boarded up a few residents are still left awaiting rehousing or are releuctant to move at all.

Southwark’s Executive Member for Housing Kim Humphreys warned residents in November 2008 that as the estate emptied and became more unsafe, people were vulnerable to violence and even murder if they continued living on the estate and resisting a move into existing council accommodation. The remaining residents argue they would leave if the council would give them the new homes they were promised

This is all part of a masterplan for the regeneration of Elephant and Castle. The plan proposes a major new town centre for south London, containing new commercial and leisure facilities, an updated transport interchange and 5,300 new homes.

Tregunter Road was named from a Gunter family home in Breconshire. It is lined principally with large houses built between 1851 and 1867, mostly by the Godwin brothers, having brick with straightforward Italianate stucco dressings to their façades. Madonna bought a house in Tregunter Road, but never moved in.

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