Old Kent Road Old Kent Road Old Kent Road is a major thoroughfare in South East London, England, passing through the London Borough of Southwark. It was originally part of an ancient trackway that was paved by the Romans and used by the Anglo-Saxons who named it Wæcelinga Stræt (Watling Street). It is now part of the A2, a major road from London to Dover. The road was important in Roman times linking London to the coast at Richborough and Dover via Canterbury. It was a route for pilgrims in the Middle Ages as portrayed in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, when Old Kent Road
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