Strologo gave about 80 bus shelters to Surrey. Researching Strologo we found that someone was ahead of us: John Slatford, who has very kindly allowed us to re-present his findings here:
"Charles Dello Strologo was born about 1865, believed to be in Italy, but he lived and worked for much of his life in Egypt where he was later chairman and managing director of a major cotton pressing company 'Presseo Libres Egyptienners'. How he first came to England is not clear but he was married in London in 1894 to an Irish girl Ellen O’Neill. There were at least two children, a son Reginald and a daughter Marjorie born a few years later in London but I have found no further records in England before Charles came to Shamley Green. His wife is said to have preferred to live in England which Charles later completely adopted by becoming a British citizen.
After retiring and coming to live permanently in England at the house Woodhill in Shamley Green, probably in the early 1930s, Charles displayed his royalist leanings by announcing in 1935 that he intended to donate a bus shelter to every village in Surrey to commemorate George V’s Silver Jubilee. Coming from warmer climates, he felt pity for those he saw waiting for buses in the wet and cold. The shelters were all made by the Astolat company in Peasmarsh, Guildford. Sadly, this company declined and finally closed in the late 1900s.
The shelters, said to have cost about £300 each, were of solid oak construction with roofs of cedar shingles. Every one had a bronze commemorative plaque with similar wording. At the outbreak of the war in 1939, it seems that, in common with all other road and name signs, these plaques were removed to make identifications more difficult for enemy agents.
Charles Dello Strologo died in 1938 in Shamley Green. His home ‘Woodhill’, said to have once featured in Country Life as ‘one of Britain’s great ‘lower country houses‘ was requisitioned during the war for use by the Canadian military and was sold when the war ended."
Strologo bus shelters include:
* Woldingham. Our photographed shelter,
* Shamley Green itself. Originally had, very early, electric lighting. Shelter not in its original location,
* Ripley. May have been unveiled on Coronation Day 1937 (George VI). Plaque removed and held by the Parish Clerk. The shelter is not the original which was damaged by a lorry in 1956,
* Esher. Retains plaque,
* Walton-on-Thames,
* Farncombe. With plaque reading 'for the convenience of the people of Godalming',
* Tatsfield coach terminal point. 1937,
* Greenwich Park near Blackheath Gate entrance. Possibly the last, offered to the Royal Parks in 1937, erected in 1938, without plaque as that would have been against Park rules.
If you know more about these shelters (where exactly are they?) or know of others please tell us: John Slatford, john@jslatford1.wanadoo.co.uk, and London Remembers via Comments or the Contact Us button.
2012 - Philip Barralet tells us there is another one in Pirbright Surrey “which we are about to restore and possibly re-site as there is no longer a bus stop at its current position.”
April 2014: We were contacted by Stephanie Stacey telling us there's a Strologo bus shelter in Haslemere, but the email address she entered got returned. If anyone knows Stephanie please ask her to contact us so we can say thank you, yes, would would like the photos.
April 2020: We were contacted by Dr. G. R. Middleton to tell us that he has a similar plaque on his WW2 house that used to be a shelter - not a bus shelter, but an air raid shelter. The inscription is identical except that it ends with "Woking". He also pointed out that John Slatford's email address is no longer active.
