Who was the builder / whence the building materials?
Interestingly, the structure appears to have been built by a local man, Alfred Lawrence, of Pembury Villa, 123 Portland Road (a house that had been occupied in 1878 by one H. Parks, perhaps Horris Parks one of the local brickmakers of the day). One might have expected Stanley to have employed James Smith & Sons Ltd, builders, whose ornate office building complete with polished granite columns still stands nearby in Carmichael Road, and who were responsible for some of the grander late Victorian commercial buildings in George Street and High Street in central Croydon. The bricks are distinctive, hard, red, and smooth-faced, and although they do not seem to match others used locally, were probably supplied by one of the several local brickfields active at the time. They may have been supplied by Horris Parks, already mentioned, or the Collis family, both of which concerns were represented on the guest list for the opening ceremony. Curiously, that list does not include any representative
