In the 1960s, Croydon High School for Girls also sold its site and moved to a new building outside the town centre. It was replaced by Apollo and Lunar House which were speculative developments by Harry Hyams, the reclusive property tycoon. Their names reflect the era’s NASA Apollo programme of missions to the Moon, and Hyams liked to give his high-rise buildings space-age names, such as Astronaut, Space, Orbit, Planet and Telstar House.

Apollo and Lunar are twin towers built between 1967 and 1970 by Denis Crump and Partners on either side of Sydenham Road. They are 20 storeys high, facing Wellesley Road, each with a hexagonal satellite extending out, mirror images of each other.

Lunar House is considerably larger than Apollo House. Its extra rear slab has a distinctive skeletal superstructure in precast concrete on its roof, which can be spotted from miles around.

After completion, the blocks stood empty for over a year before being occupied by government departments, notably the Home Office Immigration and Nationality Directorate (now known as UK Visas and Immigration) in Lunar House.