BANK OF ENGLAND’S CENTRE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 73, Issue 81, 5 April 1930, Page 11

BANK OF ENGLAND’S CENTRE

IMPOSING NEW BUILDING LONDON, April 1. An imposing building is rising on the site of the old Bank of England, and a striking feature of the new bank will be the vaults, below the level of Threadneedle Street. These vaults number 50, all with steel and concrete walls eight feet thick, and arrangements have been made for their protection in the event of riot or revolution.

Despite the fact that the doors, which open by electricity, weigh eight tons each, plans have been made for flooding the vaults in an emergency. The operation would be carried out by pressing any one of three electric buttons, either from a point “somewhere in London, or from a spot ten miles outside the Metropolis. The completed building might bo captured; it could not be destroyed, for its walls are being made thick enough to withstand the most powerful guns or bombs. A large open court is to replace the old Garden Court, and around it at the new bank w<l rise in a group of pavilions and terraces, lighted by overhead windows of vita glass through which the sun’s ratural ultra-violet rays will reach the l eads of the clerks at their desks below.

The new building, which is being erected at a cost of £5,000,000, will not be completed until 1935. During the excavation work for the vaults many relics of old London were unearthed, one of them a pipeclay statuette of Venus, a very rare piece of work by a Roman artist, which has been presented to the British Museum. The old-established practice of sending a detachment of Guards each evening to the Bank was recently defended by Mr Tom Shaw, Minister of War, on the grounds that the Bank of England was the Government’s banker, responsible for the register of Government loans, and for the country’s gold reserve.