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Croydon's Whitgift shopping centre was officially opened to regal fanfare in 1971, as the Duchess of Kent went on a walkabout around its shops wearing a burgundy coat and matching wide- brimmed hat, remarking, "Why doesn’t every town in the country have something like this?"
Then one of the finest malls in the south of England — and home to the largest Sainsbury's anywhere — the Whitgift's fortunes have since plummeted off a cliff face, in no small part due to Westfield's will-we-won't-we tease over whether or not it'll replace the Whitgift with a sprauncy new shopping centre. In my 2024 book, Croydonopolis: A Journey to the Greatest City That Never Was, I referred to the Whitgift as the kind of moribund mall at which you'd expect to see a pack of flesh-eating zombies pawing at the windows of WH Smith.
Right now, though, the Whitgift its undergoing an uncanny new lease of life, thanks to one of the most famous people in the world.
You might say the Whitgift's unlikely brush with superstardom started a few years back. Yes, it featured in a Derren Brown TV show, when dozens of Croydonian shoppers were hypnotised into sticking their arms in the air in sync. But in 2023, Hollywood itself came the Whitgift, when it — and one escalator in particular — featured in a key scene of the acclaimed queer ghost story All Of Us Strangers, starring Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal. What's nice is that the Whitgift also got a namecheck; the film was directed by local boy Andrew Haigh, and in it, the (80s version of the) Whitgift is referred to as 'the next best thing to Disneyland'.
Perhaps Taylor Swift saw that movie and made a note, because as of today (6 February), the Whitgift's fame went next-level, thanks to the new tongue-in-cheek, cactus-tastic music video from Swift, for Opalite. As in All Of Us Strangers, the Whitgift is revived to its retro finest — all potted palms, blaring neon and ugly knitwear. Not only is Swift there, but also A-list stars Domhnall Gleeson, Graham Norton and Lewis Capaldi. That same escalator is used again too, ridden by Swift and Gleeson... Is it about to become a must-do stop-off on the Swiftie tour of London? As a staunch Croydon advocate I'm going to say yes. Anyway, it's nice they got it working for the celebs, because in real life, it's often too knackered to function.
Back in November when the rumours started swirling, it seemed unlikely that Swift had indeed flown 3,500 miles from New Jersey to shoot in this 'derelict' [sic] Croydon shopping centre. (Indeed, not all the rumours were true: some said it was a Christmas video. Others, that it was for another 'Life of a Showgirl' album track, Elizabeth Taylor.) But let's give Croydon some credit: it's been making movies since the early 1900s, and right now, the likes of Bloomberg and the Times are calling it 'the UK's answer to Hollywood'. Take that, Shoreditch.
Meanwhile, Olivia Dean from Croydon's BRIT School won the 2026 Grammy for Best New Artist. Everything's coming up Croydon.
I didn't catch Swift's top secret filming of Opalite, although a few weeks earlier, I did spot another big shot filming in the Whitgift — Hollywood's Rebel Wilson. And when Wilson found out that Swift had come to film here soon after, she was keen to mark her territory: "I filmed at Croydon first, for my movie Girl Group, and obviously made it a hit international destination, like Big Ben, the Eye."
Now, now, no fighting please. There's plenty of Croydon to go around for everyone.
