One of the first substantial buildings constructed from cast iron lives on only in the Country Life Archive
The London Coal Exchange enabled City merchants to buy and sell coal across the world. Despite this magazine's best efforts, it was destroyed in the 1960s.
On a bright, sunny autumn afternoon on October 30, 1849, Prince Albert and his two eldest children, eight-year-old Victoria, the Princess Royal and her seven-year-old brother Edward, the Prince of Wales, boarded the Royal Barge at Whitehall Landing.
Waiting for them onboard were, among others, the Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, Home Secretary Sir George Grey, and 24 Royal Watermen waiting to row the illustrious party east along the River Thames to the City of London.
Crowds jostled for position on the banks and bridges hoping to catch a glimpse of Queen Victoria’s husband and two of their children. And the reason for all this pomp and ceremony? It was to open the architectural and engineering marvel that was the London Coal Exchange—one of the first cast-iron, purpose-built office buildings in the world.
Let there be light: The magnificent glass and iron dome crowning the trailblazing building.
Situated on Lower Thames Street, opposite the-then Billingsgate Fish Market (as an aside, the smell was said to permeate the iron heart of its brand new neighbour), the spectacular building featured a central rotunda some 60 feet in diameter that rose up 74 feet to a vast iron and glass dome. Clamped onto the circular walls were three cast-iron balconies that provided access to rented offices for traders and merchants in the trading of that other driver of Victorian progress, coal.
No expense was spared when it came to decorating the unique building. The walls were festooned in encaustic depictions of jolly coal-miners by artist Frederick Sang and artworks of fossilised flora and fauna, discovered by the men toiling in dark underground pits.
Rope motifs were cast in iron to signify the way the men got down into the pits, and how they transported the 'black gold' out.
The central trading floor was designed to look like a maritime compass, and constructed from 4,000 pieces of rare wood, sourced from across the UK, including black oak from the depths of the Tyne. A dagger blade at the heart of a decorative City of London shield was carved from a mulberry tree said to have been planted by Peter the Great (1672-1725) (who spent sometime honing his craft as a shipwright at Deptford Dockyard).
Prince Albert, well known for his progressive ideas, was suitably impressed. Following the opening speeches and ceremonies, the Prince and chosen guests sat down to an impressive buffet of hot roast beef, hot roast chicken, hot roast pheasant and hot roast peahen, washed down with the same vintage sherry said to have been offered to Lord Horatio Nelson a week before the Battle of Waterloo.
Like so many other buildings across the country, the Coal Exchange suffered damage during the Second World War. It wasn’t, however, fatal. Instead, progress was to be the building's downfall.
The exterior of the London Coal Exchange as photographed for Country Life in 1958. The shield-bearing dragon City of London boundary markers can be seen in their original setting.
In the middle of the 1950s, the capital's city planners decided to build a ‘motorway’ through it, to ease the congestion on the clogged roads. However, one of the obstacles standing firmly in the way was the Coal Exchange. Country Life joined a campaign to save the historically-important structure.
Mark Girouard was permitted to photograph the building in 1958 and joined other prestigious voices such as Sir John Betjemen urging the authorities to change course. Sadly, their pleas fell on deaf ears and, in 1962, the unique, Grade II-listed structure was dismantled for scrap. A large slab of concrete and tarmacadam was laid in the building's place, though care was taken to preserve a Roman hypocaust that was first discovered at the site in 1848.
Even as the Victorian wonder was being taken down, international efforts were being made to preserve parts of it. There was talk of shipping the iron rotunda to the Melbourne Cultural Centre in Australia, supported by Russell Hitchcock, a world-leading authority on 19th-century architecture who pleaded: 'It is a monument of international importance. It can bear comparison with Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum, or the Pantheon in Rome.' Sadly, the damage had already been done.
Encaustic artworks depicting jolly miners brightened the interiors.
However, two small parts of the groundbreaking building do still exist. If you ever find yourself sitting in traffic on Victoria Embankment, look out for two, Portland stone plinths (a clue: they're placed just after the junction for Temple Place). The plinths mark the boundary of the City of London and on top of them are two dragons that once decorated the eves above the entrance to the London Coal Exchange.
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