What's the Time Mr Wolf? Damaged Clock Faces in Holloway Road

Directly above No.296 Holloway Road, just north of the tube station, there are two angled clock faces under a lovely old eight-sided windowed cupola. It harks back to a time in the 1890s when this area of Holloway was affectionately known as the Oxford Street of the North and lined mostly with outfitters' shops.
For over a hundred years these two clock faces have remained intact, albeit telling the wrong times but over the past few years I have watched as both have suddenly deteriorated.

Top left: the 1970s. Top right: March 2006
Bottom: two pics from November 2010

Top: March 2013. Bottom: February 2014

As you can see from the pics above, chunks started 'falling out' of the right hand one sometime after March 2013. Yet, if you assess the earlier pics you'll see that there were no cracks in that section, so how did this breakage occur? Note also how the left hand clock was still completely intact 18 months ago.
Earlier this month I noticed with sadness that the pair are now in a terrible state – all of the central white areas on both clocks have been dislodged. See pics and read about it here in the Islington Tribune.
In my view this damage can only have been caused on purpose, either by people who have got up inside the cupola and damaged the clock faces by hand, or they have been used as some kind of target practice from a vantage point somewhere across the road.
I call it vandalism.
The title of this post refers back to a post I wrote last year about children's playground games.