Turn-around for LASSCO Water-Tower
At LASSCO Three Pigeons, we are very pleased to announce, after protracted planning debates and repeated delays, that the purchase of the Milton Common Water Tower at the rear of our Oxfordshire shop is now proceeding. To date, the purchase has been held up while the potential Change of Use considerations were considered and various Health and Safety risk assessments signed-off. Only now can we forge ahead with the plans to convert this Brutalist Monolith, dating to 1952, into a REVOLVING RESTAURANT and let the world know our exciting plans.
With the recent improvements to the water mains in Oxfordshire, the Milton Common Tower, and other water towers in the Thames Valley, have only been used to supplement the water supply in times of drought or low pressure. Now they have been declared redundant. Thames Water has reduced the volumes held at OX9 in recent months and, just after Christmas, we got to view the empty tank for the first time.
Structural engineers have resolved the means by which the internal reservoir can be converted, a continuous viewing window introduced to the outer concrete wall, and the gearing apparatus applied to the central cam-shaft. Remarkably, the panelled zinc-lined steel tank will float on olive-oil, principally powered by solar energy.
A double lift-shaft and fire-escape will be introduced within the eight support posts with a small glass Maitre d’ lobby at ground level. LASSCO will continue to house the lucrative phone masts on the roof which will, for the time being, prevent the development of the planned top viewing platform and BBQ deck.
Sited on what is quite a steep escarpment opposing the Chilterns range to the South East the views from the Water Tower are dramatic: Aylesbury Vale spreads out to the East whilst spinning round to the South West, the Haseley Windmill punctuates the view towards Didcot Power Station, the Vale of the White Horse and on North West towards the dreaming spires of Oxford.
Rotating at an optimum of two revolutions per hour we anticipate that the diner will, in a three course sitting, take in the view at least twice. This is faster than the Water Tower Belvedere Restaurant in Aachen Germany that rotates every 56minutes. With London’s BT Tower long closed to the public (and seldom rotating) and St John’s Beacon (Radio City Tower) in Liverpool now locked in place, the LASSCO Three Pigeons Tower will join Lakeview Restaurant at Elveden Forest as the only example of a rotating tower restaurant in the UK (Worldwide there are around two hundred).
True to our architectural salvage origins we will be utilising the mahogany and wrought-iron lift-cars we extracted from Fortnum and Mason a few years ago and will press the curved oak panelling from The Oval Office into use in the restaurant, salvaged and imported in recent weeks, as the notorious White House refit gets underway.*
In order to emulate the Magdalen College Choir atop Magdalen Tower for their dawn chorus - a 500year old May Day tradition in Oxford - we are to have our own tower-top celebration at dawn on 1st May. We are pleased to have booked “Dead or Alive” who will perform their 1984 smash hit “You Spin me Round (Like A Record)” as dawn breaks.
There are a limited number of tickets for the tower-top “Pete Burns May Day Champagne Gig Breakfast” still available ... please apply on 1st April to our Press Officer Ms Avril Furlsdi for more information on +44 (0)1844 277184
(Above) Dead or Alive, as they were in ‘84 - booked to spin us round at dawn on May Day.
***
… and so ran the LASSCO eNewsletter 15years ago to-the-day (2011) in an April Fool that hoodwinked some. Even a few years later we had visitors drawing us to one side and saying …”didn’t I read somewhere that you were converting the water tower…?”. To confirm: it isn’t our tower and it is still in use by Thames Water - it puts the pressure in the taps.
(*This was retrieved from a Web Archive: I’ve edited the pictures, that had dropped-out, and changed the president from Obama.)