Summary

Civic administrative building and library of 1970-1975 for the City of London Corporation to designs by Richard Gilbert Scott of Sir Giles Scott, Son and Partner.

Description

Civic administrative building and library of 1970-1975 for the City of London Corporation to designs by Richard Gilbert Scott of Sir Giles Scott, Son and Partner. The main contractor was Trollope and Colls Limited and consulting engineers were W S Atkins and Partners.

MATERIALS: the building has a concrete structure, part pre-cast, part cast in-situ, and is clad in precast concrete panels. External mullions are linked by beams to a central spine formed of in-situ concrete beams and columns, floors are precast concrete panels. The roof is formed of concrete units over an in-situ box beam. Both structural and non-structural elements are of white cement with a mix of aggregate, the surface ground and polished to give a smooth finish with exposed aggregates. Windows are held in slender bronzed anodised aluminium frames. A contemporary report at the building's completion (Concrete Quarterly) describes the internal use of polished English elm joinery; some of this joinery survives.

PLAN: above ground the building is L-shaped in plan – a long narrow range runs north to south, bordering the west side of Guildhall Yard; the polygonal Aldermen’s Court protrudes from the east elevation and is raised over the yard on four columns. A second range to the north extends eastward towards the end of the North Wing. In the corner between the two ranges is the single-storey, double-height, top-lit main reading room of the library. An ambulatory runs east/west, in front of the reading room, linking the West Wing with the side of the Dance porch and giving access into the Great Hall.

The building’s internal plan is relatively complex, with three basement levels which extend under the Guildhall Yard containing car parking, library stacks and book stores, plant rooms and back-of-house spaces. There are six stories above the ground floor level, with the top floor comprising a former flat, now print room, and plant. The principal circulation core is to the centre of the north/south range, with the stair adjacent to the east elevation. A secondary stair is located further to the north, adjacent to the west elevation. There is a service stair at the north end.

There is an undercroft beneath the second floor of the three southernmost bays; one of these bays now enclosed in glass to give added security to the building’s entry at this end. Within the building, the ground floor principally contains a reception area, refitted in the early C21, a former exhibition space and a series of three inter-connected reading rooms. The floor above is known as the mezzanine level and this contains the post room, a number of cellular offices and rooms relating to the library. Access to the Aldermen’s Court is also from this level; a short enclosed bridge links to the octagonal chamber. First and second floors contain open-plan office space and committee rooms, and the third floor provides office space, the members’ restaurant, lounge, reading room and IT suite. The fourth floor has a main kitchen and Aldermen’s dining room as well as overnight accommodation for members with a series of ensuite bedrooms; there are also two small flats for senior members of staff.

EXTERIOR: a large, unmistakably modernist building, its prevailing motif is a shallow, triangular pointed arch, a gesture towards the Gothic architecture of the Great Hall to the east. The ground floor and undercroft is treated as an arcade, with wide pointed arches carried on piers which taper inwards from bottom to top. The first floor is jettied out from the ground floor and mezzanine, and second and third floors from the first; the underside of projecting floor beams form extruded pointed arches. The fourth floor is set back from the third, its windows set beneath pointed arches in the soffit of the projecting and largely blind fifth floor above. The roof is formed of trough-like units, an inverted pointed arch in section, which cantilever out over the fifth floor. The horizontality of the long east and west elevations is countered by concrete mullions which divide the narrowly-spaced window bays; the mullions on the second and third floors are continuous, the distinction between floors expressed by recessed bronzed spandrel panels. The windows have top and bottom margin lights, the glazing pattern nodding to that found in Giles Gilbert Scott’s North Wing. The building’s south elevation is partially blind, perhaps in deference to St Lawrence Jewry which is in close proximity, and to the north is a ramped access to the basement car park. There is also a service stair at this end of the building, enclosed in frosted glass blocks. The west elevation echoes the east, but a shallow ground floor extension has been added to more closely control the entrance from Aldermanbury.

The building has three separately expressed elements which face into Guildhall Yard and break with the elevational formula of the main ranges. The Aldermen’s Court is a sculptural, polygonal form, projecting into the yard and connected to the centre of the east elevation by a bridge from the mezzanine level. Blind apart from groups of long slit windows in each corner, the walls taper inwards and the whole rests on four square columns which taper upwards to a form of geometric vaulting on the underside of the building.

In the north-west corner of Guildhall Yard is the West Ambulatory, formed of a double row of inverted pyramidal concrete shells resting on slender concrete columns. This cloister-like feature connects the new building with the Great Hall. Each shell is separated from its neighbours by a strip of glass and the south side of the ambulatory is enclosed by glass.

Behind the ambulatory, tucked into the corner of the West Wing, is the double-height library reading room. Square in plan and blind, the walls having an inwards batter, it is distinctive for the grid of pyramidal fibreglass roof lights which illuminate the galleried reading room within.

INTERIOR: areas of the building with the most interesting interior character and which are little-altered include the circulation cores, the library reading rooms, the West Ambulatory and the Aldermen’s Court. In all but the latter, the finish of the smooth, aggregate-rich concrete is extensively on show. These areas include a number of original fittings such as the bronze cylindrical wall lights and polygonal door handles cast with the Corporation crest in the Ambulatory and the trough-like cast terrazzo stairs with glass and steel balustrade and chunky timber handrail in the circulation cores. The stairs are in an open well, running along the east and west sides of the building so are naturally light by the extensively glazed elevations. The library reading rooms are defined by structural arcades, with diffuse natural light entering the main reading room from above.

The Aldermen’s Court is a compact double-height room, its inward leaning walls lined in grooved elm panelling. A suite of fixed chairs covered in blue leather are arranged around the edges of the room. A gallery over the entrance bridge has a steel balustrade and clock.

The interior of much of the building would always have been relatively simple, characterised principally by the polished finish of the concrete structure and the distinctive arched profile of the floor beams exposed in the ceilings which span east to west either side of the central spine beam and service run.

History

The Great Hall at the heart of the Guildhall site dates to the C15, subsequently heavily rebuilt and restored, but occupation of the site for administrative purposes possibly dates as far back as the early medieval period.
By the end of the C19 the site was densely packed with buildings arranged around the narrow Guildhall Yard, and bounded by Gresham Street to the south, Aldermanbury to the west and the dog-leg of Basinghall Street to the east and north. Several early-C20 plans to rationalise the site, improve accommodation and enlarge the courtyard were prepared by Sydney Perks and, from 1934, Sir Giles Gilbert Scott. Scott produced two schemes – A, and the more elaborate B, which was rejected for financial reasons. Scheme A was finally approved in 1939, but building work was immediately deferred because of the War. Scott’s services were retained after, but the destruction wrought by bombing called for yet another masterplan, which was finally approved in 1954. Immediately necessary repair works were prioritised in the early 1950s, not least the rebuilding of the Great Hall’s roof, so the first new building to be erected as part of Scott’s revised plan was the North Wing. A building licence was granted in 1954, construction began in 1955 and was completed in 1958. The North Wing replaced a council chamber and various other offices of the 1880s which had been largely destroyed by bombing.

In ailing health, Sir Giles Gilbert Scott passed the commission on to his newly qualified son, Richard Gilbert Scott, who prepared a new masterplan in 1960, finally approved in 1964. Scott rejected his father’s premise that architectural compositions had to be essentially symmetrical, in favour of a looser informality that gave greater space and emphasis to the Great Hall, itself not quite symmetrical. It was this Scott who was to have the greatest impact on the C20 reshaping of the site, responsible for the redevelopment of buildings to the east, west and far north of the Great Hall and the enlargement of the courtyard, which had been an aspiration of the Corporation for much of the C20.

The first phase of Scott’s plan was carried out in 1966-1969, creating a new piazza to the north of the North Wing and constructing 65 and 65a Basinghall Street (listed Grade II). Phase II comprised the construction of the West Wing, a long office building connecting through to Giles Scott’s North Wing, and included the reconstruction of the west crypt and the creation of the West Ambulatory linking the new building to the Great Hall. Phases III and IV, comprising the rebuilding of the Irish Chamber and Guildhall House, and the reconstruction of George Dance’s 1788-9 south porch – proposed by the Ministry of Public Building and Works but resisted by Scott and the Corporation - was never carried out. Phase V, the construction of a new art gallery on the east side of the courtyard, was delayed and subject to redesign, but was finally completed in 1999.

The first detailed drawings for the West Wing date from 1967, with some revisions made by early 1968. The main contract was let to Trollope and Colls, and work began in 1970. The building combined several functions, the upper floors containing offices, committee, dining and lounge rooms and overnight accommodation for councillors as well as access to the Aldermen’s Court, which projects out into the Guildhall Yard like a modern-day chapter house. Most of the ground floor and basement levels contained the Guildhall Library and archives. This basic arrangement continues. In the early C21 it underwent some degree of alteration and refitting in certain areas, and a small extension was added to its ground floor elevation to the west, but the plan remains broadly as built.

Reasons for Listing

The West Wing, built 1970-1975 to designs by Richard Gilbert Scott, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* as an elegant example of civic architecture in a Modernist idiom, balancing a sensitive response to historic context and setting with a strong inherent architectural identity;

* for its use of materials, in particular the polished concrete finishes and the craftsmanship of its execution;

* for its creative planning using separately expressed elements to enrich the formal and spatial interest of the composition and express civic function.

* the building is little-altered externally and a number of key internal spaces survive well.

Historic interest:

* as a major C20 component of an ancient civic complex at the centre of the capital’s governance since at least the late medieval period;

* as a key part of Richard Gilbert Scott’s most important secular commission;

* as one element of the contribution made to the site over a period of almost seventy years by England’s most celebrated architectural dynasty.

Group value:

* the building forms a group with the Grade I listed Great Hall and Church of St Lawrence Jewry, as well as several other Grade II listed buildings around the Guildhall Yard.

External Links

• Historic England Listing

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

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