Lyon Tower, High Street Colliers Wood

Image: © Stephen Richards Taken: Unknown

Built in 1966 to the designs of Bader and Miller for property developers, Ronald Lyon Holdings. It has lain empty for some years, partly boarded up and clad in green netting to stop injury from falling debris, and all schemes for redevelopment have foundered. "Quite well-proportioned, with strongly projecting mullions, but all in a grim dark grey", wrote Pevsner, in his characteristically accurate and pithy way. It has been voted one of London's ugliest buildings and a blight on the area which I find very odd as there are far uglier shopping centres a stone's throw away, and even if this building is not beautiful it adds interest to an otherwise nondescript area. It must be said that it is somewhat out of scale with surrounding buildings, as if a plan to emulate central Croydon a few miles north had ground to a halt with only one building having been completed. The circular car park was in the process of being demolished - see here for a close-up: Image

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