Decaying condemned Marble Arch Mound enters its last hours before being consigned to, er, another scrap heap

By Jacob Phillips, local democracy reporter

It was designed to leave tourists awestruck. In the end, they just came to have a giggle.

The Marble Arch Mound will soon be gone – but it did not stop visitors rushing to visit the ‘meme’ hill once more before it shuts for good.

The £6million structure is now covered in weeds and many of its plants are  brown and lifeless.

The ill-fated tourist attraction has become even more delapidated with walls inside the light exhibitions patched up with duct tape.

The mound will close to the public on Sunday January 9 before being dismantled on January 18.

But the 25-metre tall attraction is still being regularly visited by tourists and Londoners alike who clearly enjoy laughing at how terrible it is.

Ben Cooper dropped by to see the structure after seeing it being ridiculed online.

He said: “I knew it because it was a bit of a meme. That’s the whole reason I went up. They could’ve done better.

“It’s underwhelming. You get up there and it is quite bleak. It’s quite sad. If they had trimmed the trees just a bit you could have had a beautiful view of Oxford Street.

“I’d seen a Youtuber go up it and I thought ‘why not’”.

Similarly, Andrew and Helen Lane visited the structure on a day trip to London from Lincoln after hearing about the mound’s terrible reputation.

Andrew said: “What an absolute waste of money. They should have given that to the homeless.

“If they can spend £6million on that they should be ashamed of themselves. It’s just a joke.

“We could not see anything from up there. Half the landmarks they say you can see from the top you cannot actually see.”

Helen added: “It’s not a very engaging view. You can’t even see Selfridges.

“They should have known that position and view weren’t engaging for London.”

Damaris Mercante took a friend to see the mound while they were visiting from Italy.

She said: “They chose the wrong place. The view is not very beautiful and it’s too expensive.”

The mound has been dubbed everything from a “BTEC Eiffel Tower” to “London’s worst tourist attraction”.

Mound plants started to wilt and die on its opening day and the attraction was forced to close after mudslides on its grassy banks.

The project also went £4million over budget with an extra £225,000 spent on  grass, flowers and trees.

Westminster City Council also spent £1.1 million on hiring scaffolding, £1.4 million on sub-contractors, £100,000 on extra fences and railings and £983,000 on staff.

The council official in charge of the mound, Elad Eisenstein, was paid £220,000 to oversee the project – more than any other council staff member.

Mr Eisenstein resigned after an internal review into the mound found its soaring costs were “devastating” and “avoidable”.

The Tory-led council’s deputy leader Melvyn Caplan resigned in August after it was revealed that the mound would cost three times its initial £2 million budget.

The project aimed to bring people back to Central London and to encourage them to visit the quieter end of Oxford Street.

It is not all bad news because the mound has been visited by nearly a quarter of a million people.

The council set an objective in July to draw in 200,000 people to visit and climb to the top for views of treetops and traffic.

A Westminster City Council spokesperson said: “Westminster City Council is a high profile local authority with unique responsibilities at the heart of the capital.

“As such, we need to recruit the best talent for managing within a complex organisation whose work involves partnership with central Government, the multi-billion economy of the West End and 260,000 residents.

“The salaries paid reflect the skills needed to lead the authority in a post-pandemic world.

“The Mound has done what it was built to do – drawn crowds and supported the recovery in this part of London. We’re really pleased that over 242,000 people have visited to see the Mound and the terrific light exhibition inside.”