Residents delighted to be rid of notorious Market Estate namenlnews@archant.co.uk07 October 2009Islington Gazette - Residents delighted to be rid of notorious Market Estate name
“The Market Estate name is going to fade away. The residents were fed up of the stigma,” said Stephen Ross, Southern Housing’s project director for the Market Estate“The Market Estate name is going to fade away. The residents were fed up of the stigma,” said Stephen Ross, Southern Housing’s project director for the Market EstateTHE HISTORIC Market Estate name, which has become synonymous with drugs, prostitution and anti-social behaviour in recent years, will soon be gone for ever.Only three of the decaying 1960s towers on the Holloway estate remain, with the last long-suffering tenants due to be rehoused in new blocks by the end of January.The area's notable past will live on through the clocktower and new street names such as Drovers Way, but the Market Estate name will be ditched - to the delight of residents.Sharon Jobe, chairwoman of the Market Estate Tenants' and Residents' Association (Metra), said: "We wanted rid of the name because this place was a hellhole. Christopher Pullen died aged 12 when a door fell on him and we lived in terror for years with all the problems. When you'd tell people where you lived, they'd say 'oh God, do you?'"I'm convinced I didn't get a job with Islington Council because of the estate's reputation. I went to the interview and every-thing was going well until I said where lived. That was almost 20 years ago. We don't want to live with that stigma anymore."The estate is being demolished and rebuilt in a street pattern by Southern Housing, with every Market Estate tenant getting a new home. Last week Southern began showing potential buyers around some of the 61 flats for sale under the temporary name Parkside Place, but eventually new street names will be all that are used."There will be Jim Veal Drive, after the chairman of Metra who died before he saw the estate come down, and Christopher Pullen Way," said Ms Jobe. "The history will never die but we want to move on."Even now we still get the kids coming down from other estates because they know they can get into the three blocks that are still standing. They hang around in the corridors making noise and when they broke into one of the empty flats in the Clocktower block the caretakers found 16 of them in there."The old blocks are supposed to come down by next summer and we can't wait."Stephen Ross, Southern Housing's project director for the Market Estate, said: "The Market Estate name is going to fade away. The residents were fed up of the stigma and told us they wanted to live on an anonymous street in Islington."The history of the market still lives on through the clocktower and the railings and the signs in Cally Park refer to it. There's a plaque to mark the spot where 100,000 people attended a rally in support of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, which we unveiled this year on the 175th anniversary, and there's another spot to mark Copenhagen House, which was the London home of the Danish Ambassador."We also hope that one day the park will be home to a café and a education centre for kids to learn about the history of the area, which was the final stop off point outside the city wall for famers coming to London to sell their cattle at Smithfield.
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