Southbank Undercroft

The Queen Elizabeth Hall went up on the South Bank in the late 1960s, and the open, sheltered ground floor beneath it was never meant for anyone in particular. Skaters found it in the 1970s. Smooth flat ground, low banks and a roof that kept the rain off made it close to perfect, and it has been skated ever since. People often call it the longest continuously used skate spot in the world and the home of British skateboarding.

Over the decades it drew in BMX riders, graffiti writers, dancers, photographers and filmers as well as skaters. Generations of London skaters came through it, from the Sidewalk magazine crowd around Ben Powell to the early-2000s regulars who went on to form Palace, including Lev Tanju, Lucien Clarke and Blondey McCoy.

It has not always been welcome. From the mid-1990s there were attempts to put skaters off, and in the early 2000s the arts centre fenced off around two-thirds of the area, losing the original small banks. Street furniture designed for skating was added in 2004 and 2006 to make up for some of what had gone.

In March 2013 the Southbank Centre published plans for a roughly £120m Festival Wing scheme. Shops and restaurants would fill the undercroft, and skaters were offered a new purpose-built space under Hungerford Bridge, a short way upriver. Most people who used the undercroft saw that as no substitute for a spot that had grown up on its own over 40 years.

The Long Live Southbank campaign started the following month. It gathered tens of thousands of petition signatures, got the space registered as an Asset of Community Value with Lambeth Council, and saw more than 27,000 objections lodged against the planning application. In January 2014 the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, said skating should stay put, and the application was paused. That September the two sides signed a legal agreement that keeps the undercroft free to use for skating, BMX and street art for the long term.

The campaign then turned to winning back the lost ground. A joint fundraising drive with the Southbank Centre began in 2017, backed by the Mayor's Good Growth Fund, Sport England, skate brands and thousands of individual donors, and raised about £1.1m in total. In July 2019 the fenced-off section, shut since the mid-2000s, opened again with the little banks, a wooden ledge and a big stretch of flat ground restored.

Today it is still free, still busy and still rough around the edges in the way regulars like it. Expect crowds, filmers and tourists watching from the railing, and some of the best flat ground in London.