History

To the west of the site lies Monument Square and the Grade I Listed Monument, a designated scheduled ancient monument designed by Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke in memory of The Great Fire of London of 1666. Faryners House is named after Thomas Farriner, whose bakery was the start of the Great Fire just to the south of the site on Pudding Lane. Pudding Lane was one of the world’s first one-way streets, one of seventeen in the City designated in 1617, although it has since converted back to two-way traffic. Monument Street was rearranged and widened in 1886 to improve views towards the Monument from Lowe Thames Street. A new visitor centre within the redevelopment will tell the story of the Great Fire.

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The church of St George Botolph Lane stood in the north-east of the site from as early as the twelfth century. It was destroyed in the Great Fire but was one of 51 rebuilt by the office of Sir Christopher Wren. It fell out of use in 1890 and was demolished in 1904, with many bodies disinterred and moved to Brookwood Cemetery.

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Prior to the current building, the site, which slopes by over a storey, was occupied by several buildings. These were demolished to make way for a single building in the early 1970s, Faryners House, designed by Richard Seifert, designer of the Natwest Tower and Centrepoint, with Arup as structural engineers. The current building is a six-storey office building with a central courtyard that does not maximise the use of the space.

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