Tolworth Tower

I was interested to read this morning about the planning people refusing permission for Tolworth Tower to be converted into flats, for two shorter blocks of flats to be built adjacent and the whole area to be generally smartened up - presently a bit dowdy despite the presence of M&S at the bottom of the tower. Their argument seems to be that despite the tower having been empty for a year or so now, it should be retained to provide much needed office accommodation in the outer limits of South London.

Which seems to echo the Epsom planners, who often make it difficult for developers to return struggling commercial property to residential use - this despite the trend for town centres to shrink in our Internet and working from home age and the continued shortage of affordable accommodation for young families, amongst others.

Tolworth Tower, at 22 floors one of the tallest buildings in outer London, has a very large Internet footprint, with lots of stuff about Colonel Seifert, the chap who built it, about the proposed redevelopment and about the shenanigans of the planners, the council and their friends.

But both Bing and Google have failed to provide me with any information about the original construction of the tower back in the 1960's. Which I am sure I was once told was on the umbrella principle. That is to say you build a core containing lift shafts and service shafts. You build the top floor out of reinforced concrete. You then hang the rest of the building off that top floor. To be contrasted with the reversed method, whereby every floor is cast at ground level, with the growing tower block gradually being jacked up into the sky. Can't think now why the umbrella might have been a good idea, but something I am sure I have noticed in the past, but I cannot turn up that notice today.

Not helped by Microsoft Word now running into regular difficulties with my blog archive files, created in Word by copy and paste from Chrome. Maybe there has been some under the cover update which disagrees with the wrong sort of old file.

References

Reference 1: https://tolworthtowerconsultation.co.uk/. The wannabee redeveloper. The source of the snap above.

Reference 2: https://www.modernism-in-metroland.co.uk/blog/richard-seifert. The original architect.

Reference 3: https://kts.org.uk/tolworth-tower/. The heritage team.