In last week’s planning application column of the Watford Observer someone has submitted an application to demolish the Sun Clock Tower and extension in Ascot Road.

I do hope Watford Borough Council’s planning department reject this application as it is part of the town’s history and heritage.

The tower and extension is all that remains visible today of a once great printing company called Sun Printers. The beautiful pagoda-like clock tower that housed water pumping machinery was designed to pump water up from the aquifer fed by the River Gade to generate the steam required for the drying process of the Sun’s giant photogravure presses. With Sun Printers’ rapid expansion in the early 1930s, it increased the need for more water to generate the steam required by its presses and therefore a site was acquired on the far side of Ascot Road for the construction of the tower and extension pumping house. A licence was obtained in 1934 to extract the necessary volume of water from the aquifer.

Are we about to see another part of the town’s history and heritage demolished and finish up as just another pile of bricks and dust like the Cassiobury Park Gatehouse?

I urge and plead with the planning department to reject this application so that future generations can remember just how Sun Printers played a huge part in the history and heritage of the town.

Ernie MacKenzie

Gammons Lane, Watford