Plantation House was, possibly, my favourite office block in the City of London. I visited it regularly to inspect the boilers until it was demolished by the Vandals in Suits at the beginning of the 21st Century.
It was built in about 1935 and was inspired by the American Skyscrapers of the time, although mercifully not as high.
Entering it, it gave a feeling of warm cosiness and quietness, being heavily carpeted (red as I remember it) and had panelled walls in keeping with the period and inspiration.
There were small retail outlets to the ground floor corridors.
The building was primarily tenanted by Commodity Brokers, especially from the Tea trade.
However, down it came in the name of progress and money grubbing.
Then the fun started. The Archaeologists from the Museum of London started grubbing about and found that there was something like three layers of civilisation buried beneath the building, going back to before the Romans visited us. They found quite a treasure and thus well and truly overstayed their welcome there.
Whist passing the site on the 2nd June 2002, I found that the main gate had been left open in the high board fencing round the site. Being me, I started with the Camera, only to be very aggressively sent on my way by an excuse of a human being in a guard’s uniform whist he shut the gate.
After indicating to him that his birth certificate was not worth the paper it was printed on, I suggested that he keeps an eye on the roof tops of the surrounding buildings for an hour or two.
They were put onto the unseenlondon site at the time and are still there in the minute size which was the best which could be done then.
Click the roadsign below showing the new buiding's name to see these pictures at a more reasonable size:
