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Purley Way
Purley Way is a section of the A23 trunk road in the London Borough of Croydon, in the areas of Purley, Waddon and Broad Green, and has given its name to the out-of-town shopping area alongside it with a catchment area covering most of South London. It was designed as a bypass for Croydon, and opened in April 1925. It was formed from improvements to pre existing local roads: from north to south, Waddon Marsh Lane, Waddon Court Road and Coldharbour Lane. (Thornton Road, the northern section of the bypass, was not renamed.) In 1932, Purley Way became the first road in the United Kingdom to be lit with sodium lights. Industrial history The opening of Purley Way attracted industry to the area and it became the main industrial area of Croydon. Industry attracted to the area included Redwing Aircraft Ltd, Trojan Ltd (car manufacturers) and Tizer Ltd. There were also several metal companies including Standard Steel Co, Croydon Foundry Ltd, Metal Propellers Ltd and Southern Fou ...
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Croydon Colonades
The Colonnades Leisure Park (also known as Croydon Colonnades) is an out-of-town leisure park located in the Purley Way retail and industrial district of the London Borough of Croydon, South London. It opened in the late 1990s on the former site of the Croydon Water Palace, an indoor water park complex that operated from 1990 to 1996. It lies alongside the Purley Way Playing Fields, and opposite the former Croydon Airport site. The site is currently owned and operated by Croydon Council who finally completed the purchase in August 2019 at a cost of more than £50m. Tenants The Colonnades competes with the nearby Valley Park Retail Area, a main commercial area on Purley Way, but is less busy due to the lack of a notable anchor tenant - Valley Park has IKEA, while the Purley Way Centre has Sainsbury's. Although The Colonnades centres itself as more of an entertainment complex than shopping area. The retail park is the southernmost of the three on the A23 road, A23 Purley Way, and i ...
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Robert Atkinson (architect)
Robert Atkinson (1 August 1883 – 26 December 1952) was an English architect primarily working in the Art Deco style. Life Atkinson was born in Wigton in Cumberland and studied at University College Nottingham, and afterwards in Paris, Italy and America. He was a talented draughtsman and worked for C. E. Mallows from 1905. In turn he illustrated many of the town planning and garden designs of Thomas Hayton Mawson, included in the latter's books ''The Art and Craft of Garden Making'', and ''Civic Art'' (1911), to which he contributed a number of skilled perspective views. Atkinson experimented with various styles, including the American Beaux-Arts and oriental, in search of a new modern style. He is known for his cinema designs in English cities, including the 3,000 seat Regent Cinema, Brighton (built 1919–1923; demolished 1974). Described as the "first luxury cinema on the American model", it was really a recreation centre, in which one could also "take tea", eat or ...
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Sainsbury's
J Sainsbury plc, trading as Sainsbury's, is the second largest chain of supermarkets in the United Kingdom, with a 14.6% share of UK supermarket sales. Founded in 1869 by John James Sainsbury with a shop in Drury Lane, London, the company was the largest UK retailer of groceries for most of the 20th century. In 1995, Tesco became the market leader when it overtook Sainsbury's, which has since been ranked second or third: it was overtaken by Asda from 2003 to 2014, and again in 2019. In 2018, a planned merger with Asda was blocked by the Competition and Markets Authority over concerns of increased prices for consumers. The holding company, J Sainsbury plc, is split into three divisions: Sainsbury's Supermarkets Ltd ( including convenience shops), Sainsbury's Bank, and Argos. As of 2021, the largest overall shareholder is the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar, the Qatar Investment Authority, which holds 14.99% of the company. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is ...
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Do It All
Do It All was a British do it yourself and home improvement retailing company that underwent a number of changes of ownership. In 1998, the business was sold to Focus DIY, which itself entered administration in 2011, with all its stores closing later that year. History The business can trace its roots to two do it yourself chains, Big K and Calypso. These were bought by LCP (Lunt Comley & Pitt) and traded as LCP Homecentres. In 1978, the business was acquired by WHSmith and renamed W.H. Smith Do It All Limited, trading as WHSmith Do It All. Do It All sold a range of over 25,000 DIY products, including paint, wallpaper, tools and power tools, as well as construction materials such as plywood and chipboard. All stores had an inhouse timber cutting service, and all but the smallest had in-store concessions for businesses such as Harris Carpets. During the 1980s, fierce competition saw the chain struggle. In 1988, it merged with the rival chain Payless DIY, which was owned by th ...
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Payless DIY
Payless DIY was a chain of DIY stores in the United Kingdom during the 1980s. History The name was first used in 1983 to re-brand the Marley Homecare chain. The change was done under the chairmanship of Tom O'Sullivan, MD Ted Lansdowne and Merchandising Director Doug Spickernell to counter public perception of the Marley name as good, reliable but expensive. The transformation was inspired by the model adopted by Wickes in the US, i.e. larger stocks of trade-related goods, particularly timber and building lines, and a classic "pile it high, sell it cheap" approach. Not just a PR move, prices to the public were slashed across the board and attracted many jobbing builders who could buy at the same prices offered by builders' merchants. The strategy was a great success with average stores' turnover rising between 20% and 33% in the following year. By 1989, Payless was the UK's third largest DIY chain, with sales of £230m. Marley Homecare was part of the Marley Group, which included ...
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MFI Group
MFI Group Limited was a British furniture retailer, operating under the MFI brand. The company was one of the largest suppliers of kitchens and bedroom furniture in the United Kingdom, and operated mainly in retail parks in out of town locations. Anecdotally, it was said at one stage that one in three Sunday lunches in the United Kingdom were cooked in a kitchen from MFI, and 60% of British children were conceived in a bedroom from MFI. After success in its early decades, it experienced recurring financial problems accompanied by several changes of ownership, and on 26 November 2008, it was announced that the business had been placed into administration. Merchant Equity Partners, headed by Henry Jackson, was the last company to own it, before it was sold to the management in September 2008 for a "small profit". The business ceased trading by 19 December 2008, after the administrators failed to find a buyer. It struggled to make profits during the 2000s, as chains such as B&Q ...
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Queensway (retailer)
Queensway was a retailer in the United Kingdom that specialised in the sale of carpets and furniture. It was a pioneer of out of town shopping and one of the first retailers in the U.K. to sell directly to customers from a warehouse. It was founded in 1967 by Anthony Parish in Norwich with £50. Within a few months Queensway moved to a nearby disused warehouse. Parish's strategy was to sell carpets in the same way supermarkets sell food. The success of this approach enabled the company to rapidly expand to 26 branches in 1970 and by 1975, it had 38 branches across the country. In the mid-1970s it was due to float with an expected market capitalisation of around £7 million but due to a serious downturn in the economy the float was withdrawn. Managing director Anthony Parish was by now was suffering from ill health and, after a boardroom coup, the company was sold to Phillip Harris in 1977 and it became Harris Queensway plc. On 20 December 1985, Queensway opened a store at the Merr ...
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Warehouse Store
A warehouse store or warehouse supermarket is a food and grocery retailer that operates stores geared toward offering deeper discounted prices than a traditional supermarket. These stores offer a no-frills experience and warehouse shelving stocked well with merchandise intended to move at higher volumes. Unlike warehouse clubs, warehouse stores do not require a membership or membership fees. Warehouse stores can also offer a selection of merchandise sold in bulk. Typically, warehouse stores are laid out in a logical format; this leads customers in a certain way around the store to the checkout. For example, as one enters the store they are directed down an aisle of discounted products. From there the layout could then lead to the fresh produce department, followed by the deli and bakery departments at the back of the store. Often, certain customer service niceties, like the bagging of groceries, are not done by store employees; this helps reduce overall cost. Many warehouse stor ...
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Croydon Airport
Croydon Airport (former ICAO code: EGCR) was the UK's only international airport during the interwar period. Located in Croydon, South London, England, it opened in 1920, built in a Neoclassical style, and was developed as Britain's main airport, handling more cargo, mail, and passengers than any other UK airport at the time. Innovations at the site included the world's first air traffic control and the first airport terminal. During World War II the airport was named RAF Croydon as its role changed to that of a fighter airfield during the Battle of Britain; and in 1943 RAF Transport Command was founded at the site, which used the airport to transport thousands of troops into and out of Europe. After the Second World War, its role returned to civil aviation, but the role of London's primary international airport passed to London Heathrow Airport. Croydon Airport closed in 1959. It had been known under eight different names while it was active. In 1978, the terminal buildin ...
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Brazil (1985 Film)
''Brazil'' is a 1985 dystopian black comedy film directed by Terry Gilliam and written by Gilliam, Charles McKeown, and Tom Stoppard. The film stars Jonathan Pryce and features Robert De Niro, Kim Greist, Michael Palin, Katherine Helmond, Bob Hoskins, and Ian Holm. The film centres on Sam Lowry, a low-ranking bureaucrat trying to find a woman who appears in his dreams while he is working in a mind-numbing job and living in a small apartment, set in a dystopian world in which there is an over-reliance on poorly maintained (and rather whimsical) machines. ''Brazil''s satire of technocracy, bureaucracy, hyper-surveillance, corporatism and state capitalism is reminiscent of George Orwell's 1949 novel '' Nineteen Eighty-Four'' and has been called Kafkaesque and absurdist. Sarah Street's ''British National Cinema'' (1997) describes the film as a "fantasy/satire on bureaucratic society", and John Scalzi's ''Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies'' (2005) describes it as a "dystopia ...
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Terry Gilliam
Terrence Vance Gilliam (; born 22 November 1940) is an American-born British filmmaker, comedian, animator, actor and former member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. Gilliam has directed 13 feature films, including '' Time Bandits'' (1981), ''Brazil'' (1985), '' The Adventures of Baron Munchausen'' (1988), '' The Fisher King'' (1991), '' 12 Monkeys'' (1995), '' Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'' (1998), '' The Brothers Grimm'' (2005), ''Tideland'' (2005), and '' The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus'' (2009). Being the only Monty Python member not born in Britain, he became a naturalised British subject in 1968 and formally renounced his American citizenship in 2006. Gilliam was born in Minnesota, but spent his high school and college years in Los Angeles. He started his career as an animator and strip cartoonist. He joined Monty Python as the animator of their works, but eventually became a full member and was given acting roles. He became a feature film director in the 1970s. Mo ...
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Cooling Tower
A cooling tower is a device that rejects waste heat to the atmosphere through the cooling of a coolant stream, usually a water stream to a lower temperature. Cooling towers may either use the evaporation of water to remove process heat and cool the working fluid to near the wet-bulb air temperature or, in the case of ''dry cooling towers'', rely solely on air to cool the working fluid to near the dry-bulb air temperature using radiators. Common applications include cooling the circulating water used in oil refineries, petrochemical and other chemical plants, thermal power stations, nuclear power stations and HVAC systems for cooling buildings. The classification is based on the type of air induction into the tower: the main types of cooling towers are natural draft and induced draft cooling towers. Cooling towers vary in size from small roof-top units to very large hyperboloid structures (as in the adjacent image) that can be up to tall and in diameter, or rec ...
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