July Challenge - J - Jansel House......

.....or the leaning tower of Stopsley.

I can remember that when I was in primary school this building was being built. The Christmas before I had been given a building set, with girders, windows etc. I was so disappointed at the speed of the building works, I could finish my copy in a matter of minutes, but the builders at the end of the road took months.

It was built as the prestige headquarters of a local building firm (H.C.Janes), it was also built on the site of the old village pond. Within a matter of years it was found to be leaning backwards, the piles had not been driven deep enough, hence it became the leaning tower of Stopsley. The ground floor housed one of the first supermarkets in the area (Bishops if anyone remembers them) and some other shops.

It's located right on the roundabout where I claim to live if you believe the locations I put on the maps for any blips that I do at home, the roundabout that, when this was being built, had a 'Tardis' style police box on it. It has featured in a couple of blips before - sunset, and I had my back to Jansel House for The Way We Were during Musical May.

Nowadays its main tenant (other than the ground floor shops) are the VAT people. I have to say that as someone who is VAT registered I have always found the VAT people much more reasonable, approachable and tolerant in their dealings with me, than the other tax people, and they certainly don't live up to their reputation.

Note for Annie and Chris - I had to make a couple more mentions of the maps - my statistics for mentions of maps had fallen well below 2000% more than average, so it needed topping up.