Clock Tower And Surrounding Raised Pool

The clock tower and surrounding raised pool were built between 1957 and 1959, designed by Leonard Vincent, who was Chief Architect to the Stevenage Development Corporation. The tower is 19 metres (60 feet) high and has four levels above ground. It’s constructed with a reinforced concrete frame and clad in black Brazilian granite, featuring an open framework with recessed infill panels on the first and third levels (the clock chamber).

A recessed panel of green Westmorland slate on the south face commemorates a visit by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on 20 April 1959, when she opened the first phase of the town centre and named Queensway. On the east face, a map is depicted in painted ceramic tiles, showing Stevenage and the principal occupations of its residents. A recessed green Westmorland slate panel on the north face commemorates the work of the Stevenage Development Corporation, 1946-1980. A bronze relief portrait of Lewis Silkin, who approved Stevenage’s designation as the first New Town in November 1946, is set into white-tiled cladding on the west face.

The second level is open, with a steel mast and rung ladder leading to the clock chamber. The soffit below the clock chamber is covered with patterned tiles. The third level is enclosed as the clock chamber, with clock faces on the north, west and south sides in a white perspex panel bordered by grey and red perspex panels, framed in bronze, and featuring original square windows with louvres. The fourth level is open, with a lightweight steel railing, a flagpole on the east side, and a patterned tiled soffit to the roof.

The tower stands at the east side of a shallow rectangular pool with raised sides, also clad in black Brazilian granite. The pool has been recently altered to include a raised inner pool with a fountain. The clock tower and campanile are built in a constructivist abstract style and serve as a monument to Stevenage as the first New Town and to the larger New Towns Programme. The town square itself, at the heart of the first major pedestrianised New Town centre in Britain, was inspired by the Lijnbaan in Rotterdam.