I used to cycle past it every day to go to school across the river. For all the suggestions about how bad it is the current flats on the site are, remarkably, much more ugly. Somewhere I have photographs of the site where I walked around it and the nearby disused industrial surroundings of Battersea power station, just after this was demolished.

I never knew I would want to know so much about a concrete box that held some butter and cheese.

Lived in London since '96, knew nothing about this. I am ashamed of my ignorance but now delighted by this weird entity and its fascinating history.

What an eyesore, I would hate to have lived in a town where that monstrosity was the one thing dominating the skyline.

The houses of parliament (aka big ben) are visible too, if that makes the place more appealing. You can hear the chimes if it's quiet (and the bell is not silenced as at the moment).

Some of the more recently built stuff around there also is not particularly nice looking either, including an (apparently mostly empty) tower block for the superrich that as won several awards for being ugly.

> Quite how it took two decades to knock the Cold Store down isn’t clear but one factor seems to have been the cost of demolition.

With their 3m thick walls, several Nazi towers have yet to be demolished: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flak_tower