CRL House, 9 Kings Yard, Carpenters Road, London, E15
There's a real sense in those early days of mud being flung at walls. What's going to stick? Those seven games cover three formats (16K ZX-81, 48K Spectrum, and Dragon 32) and are quickly followed by a couple of utilities. A ZX Spectrum programing language called Fifth in April 1983 and, in October 1983, a piece of software for the ZX-81 which appears to draw graphs. It's not really clear what the software does, or what it's called, but it's "easy to use", "fast", and there's "no hardware required", By the end of 1983 Computer Rentals Ltd had embraced their initials and were trading as CRL. They've also learned from Imagine Software that the brand is as important as the games and are running adverts accordingly; see this colour full page advert from SINCLAIR USER issue 19 (October 1983 page 43). CRL have adopted the slogan "The Dream sellers" and the eight Spectrum games are tucked away in the corner of the advert, as if they are the least important part of it.
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| November 2021 |
At this point CRL is operating from an address in east London, it's a Subway now, in an area that was heavily damaged in the blitz where old and new buildings sit awkwardly next to each other. Google Streetview gives you an idea of the pace of change; point Streetview to 112 Whitechapel High Street in 2008, and use the slider to whiz forwards to 2021. You'll see entire tower blocks leap out of the ground in fast forward. With all this in mind I wasn't sure if 140 Whitechapel Road would still exist in it's original form. It does, as part of a little row of Georgian buildings.
Antstream Arcade has an interview with CRL founder Clem Chambers. He talks about the founding of the company, "I started CRL in 1982
with ten grand from my father that he’d given me to start a
business.... by the time I got CRL going I
was down to £2500. I rented the cheapest office I could in London,
on Whitechapel and Vallance Road... It was above a clothes shops called Davis,
and was on a slight tilt after a bomb had blown the rear off it
during World War Two." The 1982 founding date clears up a small mystery on the Companies House website where a company called Computer Rentals Ltd is listed as being founded very late, on 1st July 1985. However another company called CRL Group PLC has a founded date of 29th April 1982. So, CRL Group PLC is founded in 1982 and trades under the name Computer Rentals Ltd, until October 1984 when it begins trading as CRL Group PLC and then seems to register a new company in its old trading name the following year; I hope that's clear.
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| June 2021 |
February 1984 must have been a confusing month for CRL. On page 56 of YOUR COMPUTER magazine (February 1984) they are still advertising programing language Fifth for sale from 140 Whitechapel Road but on page 202 of the same issue they are operating from an address even further east, towards Stratford and have become "The dream makers." There's certainly a mad dream-like logic to their release policy. CRL can't afford big licences, like Elite and Ocean, so they go for cult properties like The Rocky Horror Show. They experiment with licencing soundtracks and release (deep breath, because this might be the longest name ever) Jeff Wayne's Video Game Version of The War of the Worlds, based on the double-album. And, Blade Runner, which is not licensed from the film but "a video game interpretation of the film score by Vangelis" in which your unnamed character hunts down and retires Replicants sorry "REPLIDROIDS." Lawyers for Ridley Scott leave, thwarted. If that's not your thing, then how about spoofs of pop culture; Ninja Hamster, and Doctor What. Or spoofs of other computer games; Loads of Midnight and The Very Big Cave Adventure. And then in between all this craziness they go and quietly release incredibly innovative games by Pete Cooke; Tau Ceti and Academy. It gives CRL a charming underdog nature, selling the sizzle because they can't always afford the sausage.
The facilities at Kings Yard must have been ideal for CRL because that's where they remain until the company ceases trading in 1990. CRASH visited in 1985 (issue 19 page 30). "CRL House sounds impressive enough. Actually it is rather like a house, set apart from the other business premises in the East London industrial complex between Hackney Bow and Stratford. Kings Yard is a quiet enclave in this vast area, surrounded by high walls and protected on one side by a canal." CRL used a couple of buildings across Kings Yard, CRL House itself and a large open warehouse space which ended up being called the Zen room, a reference from The Rocky Horror Show. If this description sounds a little vague its because Kings Yard no longer exists in its original form. The Olympics were dropped on it in 2012; possibly as part of a long term revenge plot for CRLs unlicensed 1984 game Olympics. Visit the corner of Carpenters Road and Clarnico Lane now and you see the rust coloured behemoth in the photo above. The Kings Yard energy centre.
The first Google Streetview survey of London took place in 2008, plenty of time to see CRL House before it's Olympic-ed out of existence. Except there are no Streetview images of the area before 2014 because this happened. The whole Olympic site was sealed off for redevelopment before the Google cameras arrived. Kings Yard was the last remnants of a company called Clarnico, once London's largest sweet manufacturer, and for a while it looked like it might be spared because it contained some unique industrial architecture but a save Kings Yard campaign was unsuccessful. And that was it; sic transit gloria CRL House. I found one picture of the building in its heydey. A photo from CRASH issue 37 (February 1987 page 11) taken to promote an Arkanoid style game called Ballbreaker, but made ironic with time. Its a great joke picture but frustrating to have as the sole surviving example of what CRL House looked like because there's so little to see of anything beyond the immediate building. Hunting for other images on the internet I found a site called Wizwords, a supplement to a RETRO GAMER feature about CRL. It talks about the Kings Yard site, and what it was like to work in the Zen room, and has some memories from former CRL staff; including the photographer who organised the wrecking ball photoshoot. It even has a lovely photograph from the first floor of CRL House looking out onto Kings Yard. What it doesn't have, are any photos of CRL House.Fortunately CRL House didn't go the way of Blenheim House. The unlamented and unphotographed home of System 3. There was a brief period when the Olympic redevelopment site was still open to pedestrians. In 2007 Peter Marshall, the owner of a site called My London Diary explored Kings Yard and took pictures including the photo below which is copyright Peter Marshall and appears with his kind permission.
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| Copyright Peter Marshall, http://mylondondiary.co.uk/2007/02/feb11-07.htm |
That's CRL House. It's looking faded and neglected but it's unmistakably the building from the wrecking ball photo, before the wrecking balls returned for real this time. As is typical, feast follows famine and once I'd found one picture I found loads of others. This lovely picture from Flickr showing the view back down Carpenters Road and giving an idea of what the area looked like before the bulldozers rolled in. While this site, about the history of the Clarnico factory, has a very bittersweet aerial photograph showing Kings Yard demolished and cleared with not even the rubble left. And this photo from the Britain from Above website, from the days when London still had an edge, gives a much better idea of the layout of the whole yard.
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| POPULAR COMPUTING WEEKLY (19-25 April 1984 page 12) |
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