‘We didn’t want it named after a person’: how residents of Cecil Rhodes House feel about its new name

In the 1980s, there was an attempt to rename the block after Robert Mugabe, but now it will simply be Park View House. It reflects changes being made across the country

Sometime in the next few weeks, a team of council maintenance staff will be dispatched to a nine-storey block of flats behind St Pancras station in central London. They will unscrew the panels that bear the name Cecil Rhodes House, and affix newly made replacement signs, making it clear that the building should now be known as Park View House.

As the Rhodes Must Fall campaign in Oxford drags on into a fifth year, with 150 dons announcing this month that they refuse to teach at Oriel College because of its decision not to remove a statue of the former Cape Colony prime minister, Britain's other Rhodes controversy has been dealt with relatively swiftly.