Old Kent Road health centre and a number of primary and secondary schools. Officials have also suggested the development of a "green spine" of parks and green spaces along the mostly disused Surrey Canal. Old Kent Road is the first property square on the British Monopoly board, priced at £60 and forming the brown set along with the similarly working-class Whitechapel Road. It is the only square on the board in South London and south of the Thames. The road makes several appearances in literature. In Charles Dickens' "David Copperfield", the titular character runs down the road trying to escape from London to
New Kent Road side. The southern side of New Kent Road starts at the Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre, built in the 1960s and often cited as London's ugliest building. Stalls of the Elephant Market and Black Cowboy Coffee and Waffles are grouped around the ground floor entrance. The 1955 Survey of London reports that 16–18 New Kent Road, part of the current site of the Shopping Centre, was "the auction yard for horses, ponies and vehicles known as the London (Elephant and Castle) Repository." At 26 New Kent Road, the pub attached to the Shopping Centre is named after a famous local