Curtains drawn: the ‘grey curtains of despair’ seem to have got a life of their own, as they impinge on the Whitgift Centre’s walkways
With the shopping centre’s managers blocking off entrances and removing staircases,
Inside Croydon sent some of our intrepid contributors off on our own version of Destination X: to find MP Sarah Jones’s office armed only with the address as provided on the (unreliable) Croydon Labour website.
Next up to try to survive our ordeal is reader ANNABEL SMITH
Be careful out there: Annabel Smith followed the Whitgift Centre signs, when there were any
Nothing dampens a sunny weekend like a trip to the Whitgift Centre.
Its deserted malls carry the same atmosphere of heavy drama as an empty car park location in an apocalyptic first-person shooter game.
And yet, nothing ever happens here.
Unless you count shop closures and the steady drip-drip progression of accumulating repairs-not-done. As well as situations that require security guards, judging by their ubiquitous presence here.
As a neurotic and aimless schoolgirl in the 1990s, the Whitgift Centre’s hold on the teenaged me was absolute, and providing morsels of respect at school. I shudder at how many more hours I used to spend visiting the Whitgift Centre than with my now-passed grandparents.
Insult upon injury: even the former Superdry store in the Whitgift Centre has a leak now
Croydon West’s MP, Sarah Jones, must have a dry sense of humour. She has four kids, so that’s a given. Her constituency office is somewhere up in the rafters of this, the most morose of public buildings in Croydon. And I have been challenged to find it.
I pass metal shuttering, and empty unit after empty unit. Any businesses still operating, I stop and gape at them in astonishment. They may not be there next week. I feel like I’m watching a play, where all the actors are losing the will to keep acting, and it’s nighttime. Even though it’s actually just 10.30 in the morning.
The website’s Editor gave me the office’s address, taken from the Croydon Labour website. He was being deliberately unhelpful. The address on the website is wrong.
A Whitgift Centre map tells me I need to get to the third floor (not Level 2, as it says on the party’s website). But as I look up, it seems that the roof starts after the second floor.
Finding Suite 2150: the Whitgift Centre’s third floor does actually exist
I’m surprised to see triangles of bright blue sky. As I explore higher, I find there are stairs and escalators leading to nowhere, barricaded by gates, metal barriers and grey plastic curtains. Lots of curtains. The grey plastic curtains of despair.
These grey plastic curtains are starting to impinge on the walkways, of their own volition.
Once furled overhead, they seem now to be freeing themselves from their constraints and edging downwards into the hapless walker’s field of travel. In some half-hearted nod towards health and safety, some have signs stuck to them saying “Mind your head”. But they are hard to miss.
They make the place look like a jungle film set where animators will turn them all into low-hanging vines.
No way up: the Whitgift Centre’s third floor does actually exist. It’s just access routes seem to be all blocked off
I find myself at an entrance to a courtyard – outside, there is a man smoking. “A woman!”, he says, cheerfully. “You are the second person I’ve seen today!”. I wonder if he counted himself as the first. I hurry back inside.
I happen upon a lift, with a sign telling me the toilets are on the third floor. No mention of the Sarah Jones’s office. I take the lift up, now accompanied by a security guard, who may have found my behaviour suspicious.
He breaks the ice by showing me a security industry award he has won.
The security guard tells me he will show me Sarah Jones’s office. He lowers his voice to talk about it, like it’s a state secret.
I feel honoured that I am being allowed to know the secret location of the office of one of Croydon’s MPs. Apparently, the frequency of the MP’s own visits vary, and she only sees constituents by appointment (which is common practice these days). There is a doorbell, although I doubt very much there’s much in the way of members of the public rocking up to have a chat with their MP.
Maybe the bell is there to give her the signal to hide in the stationery cupboard?
My task completed, I feel relief, and a sense of sadness that this place has been so utterly gutted and abandoned, and all the people who still try to make their living here abandoned, too.
Suite mercy: finally, Annabel Smith’s quest is complete
I decide I will skip the toilet, it might be grim in there. I head back down in the lift, as there’s no other way down.
What if the one and only lift breaks? Imagine the headlines if a minister of state was trapped in the roof of the Whitgift Centre? A horrifying thought for us all. I note the phone signal is dodgy up here, too. So the search parties might not find her for days.
Perhaps its time for an office move, Sarah? Croydon Central Library’s third floor is entirely closed off to the public, so that could be a perfect place for you to set up shop.
And you could keep the barricade on the escalator, so no one will ever find you there either.
Read more: Johnny Dobbyn survives a Dawn of the Dead remake
Read more: Ken Towl takes a magical mystery tour around the Whitgift Centre
Read more: David Morgan delves into the Whitgift’s desolate maze
Read more: ‘Permanently closed’: Whitgift Centre works mark end of days
Read more: Westfield boss says Croydon scheme could take 15 more years
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Has anyone found Westfield and Mayor Perry’s pods which were going to open in Summer 2025 or are they just so well hidden that no one can find them too?
“No sign of them,” said one of our correspondents.
“But then, there’s little sign of anything, never mind any signs.”
… To be continued
Who is paying the electric bill for all those bright expensive spotlights blazing away?
Westfield, as the centre’s managers.
The Whitgift Centre was once a fully-occupied, thriving, diverse and useful place to shop.
In seeking to redevelop it and make even more money from tower block flat sales or rent, the opposite has happened.
It must be making little money for the landlord and it is a loss to the shopping public and Croydon’s attractiveness, economy, employment and generation of business rates.
That was an illuminating and humorous tale, in the circumstances.
A kind of inverted ‘Escape from New York’.
Westfield Croydon ltd lost £9m and had liabilities of £89m in 2023. It looks like they are just squatting on the land for the value to appreciate. Apart from that , there are no winners from this disaster. Mayor Perry is LOST with his lies.
Some questions arising, large and small…
Small questions…
1) what is the purpose of the Grey Curtains of Despair?
2) why demolish staircases?
Large questions…
3) Could the Whitgift Centre be reopened, with the necessary leak repairs, giving new tenants some kind of assurance as to minimum tenancy, eg. 25 years? (Yes I know, rational thinking does not apply to private property speculation)
4) Maybe not so large a question, but perhaps useful public service information: would another intrepid explorer be willing to revisit and report which businesses are still open, on which floor, and publish that list in Inside Croydon – perhaps as ‘Inside the Whitgift Centre (for the moment)?
I have remembered more of the plot of the film, Escape from New York, and it did involve ‘Snake’ Plissken infiltrating a dystopic New York in search of the captive US President there. So this tale was not so very different in entering and seeking out a Croydon MPs office, though no rescue was needed.
Sarah Jones’s office in Whitgift is easy to find, it’s just to the left of the disabled bathroom band clearly visible from the lift to the third floor
You miss the point entirely.
The Labour Party provides the wrong location.
There is no adequate signage in the Whitgift Centre.
And meanwhile, our correspondents have to navigate the newly created, changing maze of closed corridors, barricaded staircases and switched-off escalators. And cope with the dereliction discovered inside.
Anyone can find something if they know where it is, Paul.
In case you hadn’t realised, the point of this exercise is to demonstrate how one of our MPs is actually renting office space from developers that is tucked, out of sight and out of mind, in a development site that she has, herself, enabled to drag the town centre down a very dark worm hole of decay.
It’s really a shame they aren’t monetising the place as a movie set for zombie movies and post-apocalyptic scenarios or some type of sci-fi movie…
PS Inside Croydon seems to be blocked on mobile phones through Google. I type this through Samsung’s own browser… Can you check?
Thanks, Matthew. Of course, there was a scheme floated by Mayor Perry about turning parts of Allders into a live stage for Secret Cinema. But like most of Perry’s schemes, it came to nowt.
iC is under contract with Google, and we deliver a daily news round-up board for the search engine.
We have checked, using Google, and have not experienced any blockage at all.
Clear your cache, perhaps? Try again?
If anyone else experiences such difficulties, please email us.
Time to realise UK has fallen under labour , won’t recover it’s economy for a long time recession is only matter of time, all cities high street shops are gone business rates are high, consumer spending is all time low, UK is crushing down and may not recover again, what does UK has to offer for the world? nothing no other countries want anything from UK . we are all living in a time shell that’s stinking. can’t even invest anymore, because broke Government wants a slice in your pie . UK is cooked
The Tories spent 14 years burying the country, continuing on from the interlude of the Labour party of 1997-2010, and the bad work that started in 1979 with Maggie Thatcher. The UK was already cooked, Labour are just heating the left overs.