What a totally brilliant way to spend the summer solstice in London – a midnight walk around some of the southside’s most fascinating and psychology-steeped buildings.
It’s being hosted by CoolTan Arts – the mental health charity named after the former sun tan lotion factory that once stood on the spot where SW9’s controversial new Brixton Square complex now sits.
This Midsummer’s weekend, nature’s power is said to be at full force and so the walk – in keeping with its timing – takes in unusually designed buildings, or those with interesting pasts, that have provoked psychological reactions in people.
As such, it includes the Marshalsea on Borough High Street, the debtors’ prison where Charles Dickens’ father was incarcerated; the Heygate, Elephant and Castle’s the huge neo-Brutalist estate currently being demolished; Camberwell House, a former asylum; and Cross Bones Cemetery in Redcross Way, SE1 (left), a disused post-Medieval burial ground once on unconsecrated graveyard for sex workers.
* But donations are welcome!