Change of usage

In common with many British towns Kingston has quite a number of older buildings with attractive or interesting upper storeys and often jarringly ugly ground floor conversions.

 It would appear that all that remains of the Kingston Building Society is this slightly faded and non-functioning clock and the painted crests on the façade above Eden Street. The extras shot shows the ambitiously named Royal Fish Bar which now occupies the ground floor of the premises.

Curiously I have been unable to find any further information on the building society - Google searches have drawn a complete blank. It's hard to imagine anyone going such great lengths to set up a bogus company!

The logo of the fish bar looks suspiciously like it has been modified to remove a third fish at the bottom. This would probably be because it would have infringed the image rights of the local authority - none other than the Royal Borough of Kingston.

Of course the burning question is why did I split this into two shots? Well I could claim that each part of the building was deserving of greater attention - but the plain truth is that I only went out with my macro lens and thus couldn't get far enough away to fit the whole thing in one shot!