Clock Tower And Surrounding Raised Pool

TL2324 Town Square

733/3/10009 Clock Tower and surrounding raised pool

II

Clock Tower and campanile 19m (60ft) high, 1957-59, Architect Leonard Vincent, Chief Architect to Stevenage Development Corporation. Four levels above ground, reinforced concrete frame, with flat roof, with black Brazilian granite cladding. Open framework with recessed infill panels at first and third (clock chamber) levels. On south face, between first and second levels, a recessed panel clad in green Westmorland slate records the visit of H M Queen Elizabeth II on 20 April 1959, to open the first phase of the town centre and to name Queensway. On the east face is a map in painted ceramic tiles showing Stevenage, and the principal occupations of its residents. On the north face a recessed green Westmorland slate panel commemorates the work of the Stevenage Development Corporation, 1946-1980. On the west face, set in front of white tiled cladding, there is a bronze relief portrait of Lewis Silkin, who as Minister of Town and Country Planning approved the designation of Stevenage as the first New Town in November 1946. The second level is open with steel mast and rung ladder to clock chamber. Soffit below clock chamber covered with patterned tiles. Third level closed in as clock chamber, with clock faces on north, west and south sides in white perspex panel, with grey and red perspex panels in bronze framing, and square windows, originally with louvres. Fourth level open, with lightwight steel railing, flagpole on east side, and patterned tiled soffit to roof. The tower stands at the east side of a shallow rectangular pool with raised sides, clad in black Brazilian granite. The pool has recently been modified to include a raised inner pool with a fountain. The Clock Tower and campanile, with its constructivist abstract style represents a monument both to Stevenage as the first New Town and to the New Towns Programme as a whole. The Town Square lies at the heart of the first extensive pedestrian-only New Town centre in Britain, the layout of which was modelled on the Lijnbaan, Rotterdam.

Listing NGR: TL2382724098