Hi Tom P The structure houses a Zoetrope, a cylinder that has images on the inside and slits on the outside. It was installed by The Peckham Partnership (which became the Peckham Programme which has now thankfully vanished) and was supposed to rotate and show a moving image. Sadly, like a lot of things planned by the Project Managers of the Peckham Partnership / Programme, they failed to establish a maintenance policy for it, and even more bizarely they failed to gain access rights to the tower. This caused a problem when it was installed as their was a fault with the design which neeeded correcting (I think from memory that it was electrical) and it hever really got switched on as a result. I asked a Mr Strabens from the council a few years ago if it could be corrected and he appeared rather negative about it, told me that it would cost too much and by now the mechanism would more then likely not work due to age and lack of use. Pity as it would have been a lovely thing to see in action. Regarding the prosperity of Rye Lane, up until the early 70's Peckham was the place to be for shops, Rye Lane was called the golden Mile, it rivaled places like oxford Street and sadly, due to the council investing in (what we now call 'Social Housing') in the Peckham area and inviting Single parent families to come to Southwark (Again as I understand it, this was down to Government Grants at the time for Councils who did this) that the economic prosperity of the area was reduced by a lack of people in work, spending less in the vicinity and as a result the bigger stores moved out due to a reduction in income. Sad really, but I hope my information helps