A local's guide to Taylor Swift's Croydon

We are in a weird era. One in which the tiniest celeb photo op causes seemingly random spots to be swarmed by young folk snapping selfies for social media.

There are few tribes that can swarm like Taylor Swift’s swifties, and her latest music video, Opalite, has put an unlikely place under the spotlight.

It’s Croydon’s own Whitgift shopping centre. This place features a bunch of times in the Opalite video as a tired 1990s mall, because that’s basically what it looks like in person. In 2026.

We see Domhnall Gleeson and Taylor Swift go hand-in-hand down its (to some) iconic escalators — suggesting Swift herself may have actually set foot in the place, assuming she hasn’t simply been green screened in from America.

Taylor Swift - Opalite (Official Music Video) - YouTube

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The Whitgift centre opened up in 1970, and you could be forgiven for assuming it has been maintained in that state as a sort of open-air time capsule — semi-preserved but subjected to the elements enough to become ragged at the edges (and the middle, sides and bottom).

I haven’t yet headed back to its apparently now-iconic nested escalators to get a pic for social media yet, since the Opalite music video dropped earlier this week. But I did, as a local, end up scurrying through its increasingly empty halls in December, on an increasingly desperate hunt for Christmas presents.

There’s The Works where you can pick up £3 once-bestseller paperbacks and art kits for your niece that have a high probability of being stashed in a cupboard, never to be thought of again. Just out of sight in the Opalite shots of the centre is a surprisingly large WH Smiths, some of whose stock you would swear has been there since the shopping centre opened.

This part of the Whitgift Centre is known as the Allders Square, named after a department store that closed down well over a decade ago in 2012 — but that may still conjure a dim spark of recognition among some of our older readers.

Should Swifties pay a pilgrimage to the place? It comes with a warning that the experience may deepen your seasonal affective disorder. But at the rate things are going, you may not want to wait until the summer for this one.

As has been diligently reported by Inside Croydon, the Whitgift Centre’s long-in-progress decline has ramped up pace of late. It’s fast becoming a bit of a retail ghost town — which no doubt helps when you’re a producer looking to shoot a music video on location.

“Westfield, now part of Paris-based Unibail Rodamco Westfield, have managed to rip the heart out of Croydon, the flagship shopping mall being allowed to decay, driving away shoppers and their own tenants,” Inside Croydon wrote back in October. Yikes.

However, ailing as failing as the Whitgift Centre might be, it’s also home to one of the most unlikely must-visit spots in the whole of South London — Heart of Gaming.

This is a retro gaming arcade that lives in the spot where the UK’s first Clas Ohlson store sat until it closed in 2017 as part of cost-cutting measures. Heart of Gaming houses more than 60 legit old-school arcade machines including House of the Dead, Point Blank, an 8-player Daytona rig and Final Fight. And you can bet it wouldn't be here were more traditional shops not largely keen on abandoning the centre.

You can play retro — and current generation — consoles there too, and everything is set to “free play.” Instead of chucking in pound coins, you pay a £20 day pass for adults. Or it’s £15 for under-15s, £25 for an adult and child combo. Or 5-7pm evening passes are £10.

So, yeah, if you find the shopping centre a bit miserable after popping your Swift selfie, that’s one way to perk yourself up. Heart of Gaming is open 12pm to 7pm Friday to Sunday.

It isn’t the only beneficiary of the slow death of these legacy retail spaces either. The Whitgift Centre is twinned with another shopping centre just over the road, Centrale. It opened in 2004 and is altogether somewhat less of a relic than the Whitgift, but the poor state of high street retail conditions have led another of the most unlikely things flourishing there.

Pinball Republic opened in 2024 right at the arse-end of the shopping centre, and is a hall full of pinball machines — more than 70 of them. It’s the home of what calls itself “the UK’s biggest and best pinball club” but anyone can turn up and play, paying £15 for a 3-hour session or £25 for an all-day pass.

“The club is entirely run by volunteers using their own machines and is a non-profit operation, with the entry fees going into repairing the games and making Pinball Republic the best it can be,” reads the Pinball Republic website. It's basically a pinball museum. And we'd advise visiting this place is much more sensible than trying to own one yourself, given how liable they are to breaking down.

Pinball Republic is open on Thursdays, from 6pm to 11pm and from 10am to 5pm on Saturdays and Sundays.

And when you've taken your Swift selfie, visited Heart of Gaming and Pinball Republic, there's a Gregg's just down the road too. Day out sorted.

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