The Michael Faraday memorial, by Rodney Gordon

The Faraday Memorial in Elephant and Castle was designed by Rodney Gordon, more famous for his 'Get Carter' Trinity Square carpark in Gateshead and the Tricorn Centre in Portsmouth, both now pulled down. It sits on what was the larger roundabout of the complicated Elephant and Castle road system, and a young Gordon designed the stainless steel box in 1959 as part of the rebuilding of the blitzed area. The box contains an electricity substation that runs the Bakerloo and Northern tube lines beneath.

Here is a fascinating little video from 2007 of Rodney Gordon attempting to save his memorial from one of the many redevelopment plans for the area.

I lived round the corner for many years, and always enjoyed walking past the suitably futuristic and suprisingly disco memorial, or staring down at it from the bus. I hadn't realised, though, that Faraday was a local boy too, from Newington Butts, although it must have looked rather different back in 1791. But then again, without Faraday and his generation of gifted inventors perhaps the pace of change might have been rather slower, and the area might look rather more familiar to him. Thankfully the memorial is now listed, so at least the ghost of Rodney Gordon might be able to recognise that in hundreds of years, even though the rest of the area is likely to change beyond all recognition, thanks to the rise of the developers.