Segas Offices

Segas Offices is a gas company showroom and office built between 1939 and 1941 by William Newton, the youngest son of Ernest Newton. The building is constructed in an L-shape and designed in the Moderne style. The ground floor is built of “Empire stone,” a reconstituted stone that resembles oolitic limestone. The upper floors are notable for their use of permanent shuttering shockcrete slabs as a covering material, a relatively rare feature.

The building is five storeys high, featuring six windows facing Park Lane and five storeys with nine windows on Katharine Street. Bronze casement windows are a prominent feature. The Park Lane elevation has projecting four-storey, curved bays at each end, containing triple windows and a bronze balcony above. The fifth floor is set back with three casement windows behind the end bays, and a continuous bronze window behind a flat canopy with glazed roof lights supported on six concrete pillars. A horizontal, grooved decoration is above the fourth floor, and end bays feature a plaque with the date 1940 and the letters "C G C" for Croydon Gas and Coke Company. The central section has five five-light bronze casements with horizontal glazing bars. The ground floor includes two round-headed windows with scrolled keystones, four original gas showroom windows extending across the width of the five central bays with a flat canopy above, and a central marble door surround, now disused. The Katharine Street elevation also has a set-back fifth floor with five casement windows and plaques at either end. A similar horizontal, grooved parapet is found above the fourth storey, along with nine bronze, horizontally-banded, pivoting casements. The ground floor has eight round-headed casements with wedge-shaped keystones, and a central opening with a door-case featuring a round-headed fanlight, moulded architrave, cornice, and a six-panelled door. The right-hand elevation is blank except for a full-height staircase window. The rear elevation has similar windows, including a tall staircase window.

The interior includes a semicircular ceramic panel in the former entrance hall depicting shells, lotus flowers, and Carboniferous period vegetation. A bronze plaque commemorating the company's war dead has been resited. Internal features include oak doors, walnut panelling, and a black marble bolection fireplace in the Board Room.

The building was originally part of a planned group of civic buildings around the Town Hall, the construction of which was interrupted by the Second World War. It represents a rare example of a twentieth-century gas company headquarters, as most companies had previously built offices during the 19th century.