SAMPSON & DELILAH

 

George Sampson was a bread & butter sort of chap, a project manager cum architect with just enough flair to impress a group of hard-nosed businessmen.

 Maybe. 

We don’t really know.  But he was selected from 8 supplicants when the Bank of England decided that 40 years in rented premises was enough.  Two schemes were shortlisted and a couple of weeks later his was chosen, and promptly erected on a site they had purchased some 15 years earlier. 

 

Sampson designed a double-courtyard block, formal but not overly grandiose.  He adopted the Palladian style, introduced by William Kent a decade or so earlier and now the height of fashion. Symmetry and order on a rusticated base, symbolize the security and integrity of the Bank.  Merchants and gentlemen drive their coaches through the triple archway, make a turn in the Entrance Court and alight on the steps of the Pay Hall, a lofty volume similar in scale and proportion to the space they had used at the Grocer’s Hall for the same purpose.

 

The plan is clean and rational, divided clearly into public and private zones by the wall between the Pay Hall and the Director’s Parlours.  This executive suite overlooks the Bullion Court, home to the record keeping and access to the vaults below.  On the East side the Bullion office records the coming and going of gold and silver, brought in carts along an alleyway from Bartholomew Lane.  To the North, the large, double height that houses the accounting tables.  This must have been an improvement on the space available at Grocer’s Hall.  Also it is well separated from the Transfer Offices which are accessed almost directly from the street by way of a staircase in the entrance block.  “Stock Jobbers” are seen as rude and noisy people, distasteful to the manners of respectable merchants, but of course their activities are essential to the buoyancy of the market and the financing of government debt, so essential to the success of the bank and the merchant class it represents.

 

As mentioned previous posts, Sampson’s design was the third home for the Bank of England. Having operated briefly from the Mercers Hall, they rented the Grocers Hall for 40 years, before hiring George Sampson to build them a permanent Headquarters.  Each step in that sequence took them closer to the Royal Exchange and to the speculative trading of "change alley" directly behind.

 

The context model linked into this file has a long history.  It began as in-place extrusions in the Master file for Project Soane, representing the adjacent streets.  Later on it was fused with a much more extensive 3d map that I created for my studies of Hawksmoors 6 London churches, which has featured recently in my work on St Anne’s Limehouse.  This pieces together old maps downloaded from the web, checking alignments from open street map and similar sources. 

 

 

Much of Sampson’s work survived to Soane’s day and is incorporated into the Project Soane master which represents the bank as it was around 1830.  However the modifications executed are complex widespread and difficult to track down. Lots of detective work required.  So a couple of years ago I decided to tackle the Sampson’s design as a stand-alone model.  At that stage it was a fairly crude mapping out of the volumes with generic families, plus some pinched from the Soane model.

Over the past two weeks this has been enhanced and enriched into the work shown here.  So the host model for today’s post is Sampson’s Bank.  Linked to this are the context file, and a model of the Grocers Hall which was also started long ago and recently taken forward.  This will feature in a future post.

 

One small technical point to note.  When you have two versions of the same project linked together like this you can “copy to clipboard” and “paste aligned to same place” to transfer families from one link to the other.  I often used to get asked why the paste to same place feature existed.  This is one good example.  I also use it for splitting floors or extrusions into two parts.  Sometimes easier to delete portions than to sketch them out again, apply materials & parameters etc.

These models have been uploaded to BIM360 over the past week, but for the moment are almost entirely my own work.  As always, collaborators are welcome.  You can tackle a couple of families, or you could take on a hole area, Taylor’s screen walls perhaps or his Transfer Halls, both of which only exist in the most rudimentary form at present.

 

I’m not sure what I will tackle next. My day job has woken up from the covid hysteria for a while at least, so this work will take a back seat.  But there will still be weekends, so I may try to tie up loose ends on the main Project Soane model for a while.  Alternatively there is St Annes Limehouse to “finish off” and it would be good to reawaken Notre Dame also (after a lengthy break.)  Wherever my heart may roam the intention will be to weave these models into an interesting story about our past.

Another small detail.  The toilets (I’m calling them privies) seem to be benches with two round holes.  At first I thought this was an indication of a less prudish era when you could sit together while doing the necessary.  But then it struck me that in 1734 they could be earth privies with two chambers, one in use while they other is busy composting.  Then next year you dig the old one out and switch around.  If so it’s an interesting observation, because by Soane’s day they were definitely using septic tanks.

 

This is a labour of love, so I follow my instincts and work on whatever catches my interest from week to week.  The goal is to deepen my understanding of history: the history of building processes, the history of architectural styles and the history of the human societies behind them.  It’s a kind of “action research” … proximate goal: build a Revit model, deeper goal: uncover the story within, gain some insights into the richness of our past and hopefully put this runaway world of ours into some perspective.

The last image is from the context model with the phasing set to the end of Taylor’s period when the bullion alley had been nudged around a little to allow for his transfer halls.  It’s interesting to compare our 3d model with a survey drawing prepared by Soane’s office prior while the bank was buying up those houses at the back off Lothbury.  BIM action and archival research working together to enhance our understanding.

Thanks for listening.

 

 

 

 

 

 

EVOLUTION OF THE BANK

 

I’m going to tell a story.  It’s a history and a cartoon strip.  The main character is an institution called the Bank of England, but we are talking about the buildings that have housed this grand “Old Lady of Threadneedle Street” 

If you like the story, you can download it as a pdf at the end of the post.  The format is a cross between a graphic novel and a construction drawing.  This is all created in Revit.  The Grocers Hall is a separate, Linked File and the views are duplicates of each other with different Phase settings.  The grey buildings are in-place extrusions.  The churches and some phases of the Bank are loadable families with simplified representations of the basic massing.

This work is related to the Project Soane model on BIM360 (which recreates Soane’s Bank, as it was around 1830 just before he retired) but it does not make direct use of that model, which is still a “work in progress” although I have not had much time to progress it over the past 2 years.

 

 

 

1694 GROCERS HALL

From 1694 to 1734 the bank was located in rented premises at the Grocers' Hall.  This L-shaped building had a paved courtyard at the front, and a garden at the rear. Public business was conducted in a large double-volume Pay Hall in the main block, while the directors parlours occupied the rear wing, overlooking the garden.

 

 

 

1734 SAMPSON’S BANK

Growing in size and confidence. the bank moved to new, purpose-built premises in 1734.  This double-courtyard block was designed by George Sampson in a conventional Palladian style, and located one block down, right next to the Royal Exchange.

 

 

 

1764 TAYLOR’S TRANSFER HALLS

The rough & tumble of private trading in shares issued by the Bank had been confined to small rooms on the upper floor of the entrance block, but as this aspect of their business expanded they bought out the properties to the East and engaged the fashionable architect Sir Robert Taylor to expand their premises in a grand manner.

 

 

 

1770s TAYLOR PHASE 2

For the next two decades, the bank struggled to find additional space.  The Court Suite moved to new rooms built behind St Christopher’s churchyard, allowing Sampson's block to accommodate more clerical staff. A new records library was built at the back of the site.

 

 

 

1785 GARDEN COURT

Finally the Bank obtained permission to demolish the church and complete Taylor's West Wing, creating a grand, symmetrical palace front along Threadneedle Street.  The former churchyard remained as a garden court, so as not to disturb the graves.  This was Taylor’s final contribution.

 

 

1790 SOANE PHASE 1

When Taylor died, the governor's appointed John Soane, a young ambitious architect.  He squeezed some new accommodation in around the back of the site before persuading the Bank that Taylor's East Wing had been too hastily built. The roofs were leaking and starting to rot.  He rebuilt the rotunda and two transfer halls using masonry vaults and domes for better security from fire or theft.

 

 

 

1800       NORTH EAST EXTENSION

Business was booming and the Bank decided to buy out the rest of the city block and secure the perimeter.  This became Soane's North-East extension which includes Lothbury Court and the Consols Transfer Office, as well as a Residential wing and a new Bullion Gate with Porter’s Lodge.

 

 

 

1830      NORTH WEST EXPANSION

Soane retired in 1833 after 45 years as architect to the Bank.  He had gone on to add the North-West Extension which included Tivoli Corner, the Printing Court and a redesigned Directors Parlours.  He also completed the remodeling of the perimeter Screen Wall, unifying the whole complex and stamping it with his own distinctive style.

 

 

 

1930      BAKER’S BANK

After the first world war, the Bank continued to expand and hired Sir Herbert Baker to double the floor area within the same footprint.  The original intension was to retain as much as possible of Soane's work.  In the event very little remained except for the screen wall, and even that is a stripped-down reworking of Soane’s original.

 

 

So that's the story.  We will look more closely at the various stages in future posts.  For now, here is an animation of the sequence:  Evolution of the Bank of England over the last 300 years.

And if you want a copy of the drawing sheet, you can download it here. 

Drawing Sheet PDF

Bottom line ... this is an example of my attempts to use BIM to explore history, to conduct research and to share the insights that come from using BIM/Revit as a research tool.  

I have been studying the Bank of England off and on for 5 years now.  It's a fascinating story with Sir John Soane, the intriguing and inspiring architect at the heart of the main act.  It's high time that I tried to weave my work into a coherent narrative that can be widely shared.