Red flower

I have been seeing distinctive red flowers in verges in the roads on the Ewell by-pass anti-clockwise, although having been reminded of them this morning, the only one to follow was on the crest of the bridge over the railway line at Ewell West, not a good place to stop.

Then in our own road, a few houses down from us, two of them had what seemed to be the right red flower in their front gardens, with one of them being snapped left.

BH believes their to be common at the seaside, which fits with their having a slightly succulent look about them. But no idea as to name.

Google image search turns up phlox, which BH is sure is quite wrong. But in among the collection of similar images we have red valerian, the Wikipedia page for which seems to answer, despite the close-up of the flower not being quite right. Not to be confused with regular valerian which has interesting medicinal uses, possibly to be found in Grape Tree, certainly in Holland & Barrett.

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centranthus_ruber.