Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Riots, but never sacked thanks to the bank's clerks, who melted down their inkwells
into bullets. Subsequently a detachment of the Foot Guards, known as the Bank
Picquet, was stationed overnight here until 1973. Security remains pretty tight at the
bank, which still acts as a giant safe-deposit box, storing the of cial gold reserves of
many of the world's central banks, as well the UK's, in its basement vaults.
The windowless, outer curtain wall, which wraps itself round the 3.5-acre island site,
is pretty much all that remains of John Soane's late eighteenth-century design.
However, you can view a reconstruction of Soane's Bank Stock O ce, with its
characteristic domed skylight, in the museum , whose entrance is on Bartholomew
Lane. The exhibition traces the history of the bank, banknotes and banking in general.
Beyond, beneath a reconstruction of Herbert Baker's interwar rotunda (wrecked in the
Blitz), you can caress a 13kg gold bar, worth over £250,000, and, elsewhere, view
specimens of every note issued by the Royal Mint over the centuries (including a
million pound note).
11
St Mary Woolnoth
King William St • Mon-Fri 9.30am-4.30pm • Free • ! Bank
Hidden from the bustle of Bank itself, a short distance down King William Street,
stands St Mary Woolnoth , one of Nicholas Hawksmoor's six idiosyncratic London
churches. The main facade is very imposing, with its twin turrets, Doric pillars
and heavy rustication. Inside, in a cramped but lofty space, Hawksmoor manages
to cram in a cluster of three big Corinthian columns at each corner, which support
an ingenious lantern lit by semicircular clerestory windows. The most striking
furnishing is the altar canopy, held up by barley-sugar columns and studded with
seven golden cherubic faces. The church's projecting clock gets a brief mention in
T.S. Eliot's he Waste Land , and the quote is commemorated in the southeast corner
of the church.
St Stephen Walbrook
39 Walbrook • Mon-Fri 10am-4pm • Free • W ststephenwalbrook.net • ! Bank
Named after the nearby shallow stream which provided Roman London with its
fresh water, the church of St Stephen Walbrook is the Lord Mayor's of cial church
and Wren's most spectacular after St Paul's. Faced with a fairly cramped site, Wren
created a church of great space and light, with sixteen Corinthian columns arranged
in clusters around a central coffered dome, which many regard as a practice run for
his cathedral. The furnishings are mostly original, but the modern beech-wood
pews jar, as does Henry Moore's altar, an amorphous blob of Travertine stone -
nicknamed The Camembert”. The Samaritans were founded here by the local
rector in 1953, and their first helpline telephone serves as a memorial in the
church's southwest corner.
FROM COFFEE HOUSE TO BOARDROOM
Several of the City's most important institutions have their origins in the coffee houses which
sprung up in the second half of the seventeenth century. The first coffee house in London was
established in St Michael's Alley, off Cornhill, in 1652 by Pasqua Rosée , the Armenian servant
of a merchant who traded in Turkey. It was an instant success and in less than a century, there
were literally hundreds of rival establishments, as the coffee house became the place the City's
wheelers and dealers preferred to conduct their business. Richard Lloyd's coffee house -
perhaps the best known - was where London's sailors, merchants and ship owners went for
the latest maritime news, eventually evolving into Lloyd's Register of Shipping and Lloyd's of
London insurance market. Meanwhile, Jonathan's , in Exchange Alley, posted up the price of
stocks and commodities, attracting dealers who'd been ejected from the nearby Royal
Exchange for rowdiness, and eventually became the London Stock Exchange.
 
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