Southend Victoria Plaza aka The Windy City

Construction began in the late 60s, and the first phase of the development was completed in 1970. It consisted of a mainly concrete structure, with walkways, set around a central area. This shopping centre was open to the elements, and had a mix of major retails such as C&A, and a smaller independent stores. The developer was Hammerson, who later designed the covered, Brent Cross shopping centre. Not much about their early work is online however, so it takes some digging, and digging is what I like to do!

As children in the early eighties, we would visit Southend - it was our nearest shopping centre, and a free bus would operate to take people from nearby towns into Southend. My sister and I would always enjoy this trip, and we would look forward to seeing the large lobster on the ground floor, near C&A. We have fond memories of climbing on his back, crawling through his mouth - as the younger of us, I was slightly scared to climb in at first, but soon grew excited to go to the Plaza, knowing we would be able to play on Lobbie. 

We searched but could not find a photo - and it got me thinking about how much has disappeared from our past - I already have an interest in cinema and music hall buildings, and open air pools, and so this was an inevitable project. Most of us carry a camera phone and take photos as second nature now - we snap pictures of our children playing, and have hundreds on our phones and computers. In the 1970s and 1980s, such photos of our childhood memories are rare. We want to recapture those memories and take you back to your childhood.

We were thrilled, therefore, when Frances Redding shared this picture of her sitting on "Lobbie the Lobster" circa 1986. Take a look, does he bring back memories for you too?

On the top floor lived a crab, at some point one of his pincers was removed, possibly due to damage. Hilary Scott posted this image to our Facebook page. What a brilliant close up shot of the crab! Circa 1976.

Finally, there were the shells. These were also referred to as the shell maze. We believe these were removed prior to the crab, with the shrimp/lobster remaining until the late eighties. These are the shells, photo posted by Jaqui Parrin. 

We would love to find more images of these three installations, please let us know if you have any. If you are on Facebook, come along and post them to our page. 

We are very pleased to have talked to the creator of these warmly remembered play sculptures, and can now share a bit more information about them. They were designed by Peter Hand and were made of fibreglass - taking between 2-6 months  to create - the majority of his sculptures were made of wood or steel, but the Southend sculptures were situated outdoors and needed to be constructed differently. A total of 35 play sculptures were made, and as this blog develops, we will explore each centre - if you have photos you would like to share, please email us.

Next, we turn our attention to Friars Square, Aylesbury and the Turkey and ducks, one of which still survives today!

Do you remember that big lobster we used to climb on ?

The Fibreglass Creatures Rescue Squad.

Within the windy, grey, concrete walkways of Southend Victoria Plaza shopping centre in the 70s and 80s, there once lived some large fibreglass creatures. A crab on the upper level, a shell maze, and on the ground floor - a lobster. 

Lobbie - as the lobster will be referred as throughout this blog, is often the most well remembered - he remained at the centre for the longest, and was there into the late eighties.

We are two sisters who began our search for Lobbie one afternoon while talking about our childhood memories.

"Do you remember that big lobster we used to climb on?"

A Facebook page Find Lobbie the Southend Lobster was born. Through that page, a photo of each of the three were discovered. We learnt that they were part of a Hammerson development of the shopping center, and to our great excitement, discovered that another town centre developed by Hammerson, also had unusual fibreglass creatures. Once we realised there may be more out there, our search took a new direction, to find out where they were all located and get photographs out of photo albums and online, so the memories can be shared.

Our search for these creatures began on the discovery of the Aylesbury duck, saved and residing in a front garden.

How many of these creatures were there? Join us as we research this, beginning where it started for us - Southend Victoria.