The inscription below the clock reads "In memory of Barrie Collingridge OBE". I couldn't find any information on this gentleman, but I suspect he was a partner in one of the traders in the market. If anyone knows any more please let me know.
Looking from this clock, you can see the next one on our itinerary today:
This is a fairly typical "clock on the roof of a newish building", the building in question being Wendle Court at 131-137 Wandsworth Road.
Moving east onto South Lambeth Road, you can catch a glimpse of a clock tower of the sort you might find on a local town hall. .
Tracking this clock down proved difficult, until I eventually found the entrance to the gated Regents Bridge Gardens (gated communities are up there with shopping malls on my list of things not to like). This is the closet I could get.
From the style and names of the buildings I would guess that they were once a government facility, but again I would be happy if anyone could enlighten me (and perhaps the owners of the site could invite me in for a good look at the clock).
The final stop today is the bus station at Vauxhall. From a distance this has the promise of clocks at every one of its stops, until you get close and realise that none of them has any hands.
A quick trawl on the web reveals a letter from TfL last year, saying that the hands were removed as all the clocks were showing different times. However they would be replaced by a digital clock. Shame on you TfL. Come on Boris, now you have been re-elected, get some proper clocks back in place at Vauxhall.
Oh well, onwards and upwards!
Barrie Collingridge was my grandad - he was indeed a trader. My Mum remembers trips to the old Covent Garden where he used to work from and I have a spoon with a Worshipful Company of Fruiterers emblem on it that used to be his. Just in case you were still wondering!
ReplyDeleteYou must be either Lucinda or Belinda's son?!
DeleteI am Belinda's son! What funny places and ways different lives intersect...
DeleteToday I went cycling round New Covent Garden on my way to pick up a candlestick but couldn't find this clock
Hope the new-fangled mangle is getting some good use
Barrie and his wife Ann were good friends and neighbours of mine when we lived in Surrey in the 1970s/80s. I am thinking of them particularly just now as when they moved from West End to Horsley they gave me an old Victorian mangle which resided in their garden and which I had always admired. It was quite rusty and had been painted white and I always intended restoring it in some way. Now, in this enforced period of inactivity due to lockdown, my husband decided to take it apart, paint it, put it back together again and make a tiled top for it so we can use it as a table. It looks lovely! A rather nice memory to have of someone who was a lovely, generous and kind man.
ReplyDelete