‘Some people think it’s a real mess’ – the wild, fantastical genius of Becontree

From golden cement lions to crazy paving facades, from Corinthian columns to pebbledash galore, a new show is celebrating 100 years of the gaudy, brilliantly surreal east London council estate‘A tour of Becontree is demanding,” wrote Nikolaus Pevsner in his Buildings of England guidebook, “even for the enthusiast.” The charms of the largest interwar council estate in the world, which celebrates its centenary this year, were not immediately apparent to the German-born arch