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Bank of England Lost splendours of Threadneedle Street revealed
The Guardian
|August 29, 2025
A century ago the wrecking ball demolished the halls, courtyards, arches and domes of one of London's best-loved buildings in what the architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner would decry as "the greatest architectural crime" to befall the capital in the 20th century.
The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street (as the Bank of England was nicknamed after a satirical 1797 cartoon of the then prime minister William Pitt the Younger, wooing an old lady dressed in pound notes) has been the heart of the City since 1734.
Refashioned and expanded over the decades, after the 1780 Gordon Riots, when rioters scaled the neighbouring church of St Christopher le Stocks to throw projectiles at the bank, the church was demolished to allow the bank's expansion westwards along Threadneedle Street.
In 1788 the bank appointed Sir John Soane as architect and surveyor. His redesign, which he continued until 1833, resulted in "the pride and boast" of his life. And so it remained, a beloved neoclassical masterpiece, until the 1920s.
This story is from the August 29, 2025 edition of The Guardian.
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