BANK OF ENGLAND.

Hokitika Guardian, 25 November 1924, Page 4

BANK OF ENGLAND.

REBUILDING OPERATIONS. GREAT OUTER WALL TO BE RETAINED. LONDON. November i>2. The List ofiicinl of the Rank of Englaml will leave the building to-day, when rebuilding operations will he begun. Those niav last from live to ten years.

Opposition to interferenee with the old building has keen eoneiliated by the retention oi (lie great outer wall familiar throughout the world. A gigantic new building will he erected within the old houndaries. The announcement that the Hank of England is to lie rebuilt is not the result of the restless desire for change having seized the extremely conservative body of husines men who govern this extremely conservative institution (wrote the London correspondent of the “ .Melbourne Ace ” recently). As a mat ter of fact, the accommodation for the stall' of the hank has long been inadequate, and the question of rebuilding the institution hits been under the considerai ion of the governor and the hoard of twenty-four directors for the past thirty years. Therefore it cannot he contended that in finally deciding to rebuild the hank the directors have proceeded with reckless haste. Ihe stall has been more than doubled since the war began, partly as the result nl tiie issue of numerous Government loans to finance the war, and at the present time less than one-third of the staff is accommodated in the premises of the brink. During the rebuilding operations, which will last about two years the main business oi the haul: will be transferred to a nowly-coii.true-led building of seven storeys fating Finsbury Circus. Strong rooms are being constructed in the new premises in accommodate the vast stock oi scorn lljos held hv the bank, and also the bank’s hoard of gold and silver, amounting to over 120,000,000. There is no building in London whose outward appearance is more familiar to visitors than the Rank of England, but even when the rebuilding is finished there will be very little change in this outward appearance. All that the average visitor to Loudon st t s ot the bank, is the great outside wall, thirty feet high, which surrounds the island site of nearly four acres on which the bank is built, in the heart nl the business pari of London. The mam ~-t (1 f the wall, which was built over a hundred years ago. was to protect the bank from attack by looters, and. though this danger has still to be taken into consideration, it is much more

remote than it was a hundred years ago. l’.ttl during the Vdtl years the bank has occupied its present site it has had to withstand only one spirited attack. This was in I7SO. at the time of the Gordon riots. Incendiary tires were started in many quarters ot the oily by the rioters, and a number of them marched on the hank. Soldi* is guarded the entrance, and armed clerks and volunteers manned the roof of the building. The rioters were driven back after several had been killed and wounded. It was after this attack that the diroctors of the bank decided to purchase 111,, adjoining properties in the satin block of ground, and build a proteclion wall round the isolated site. Ihe safely of the bank from attack at night is provided by the presence oi a

squad of guardsmen. Every evening, for over a hundred vents past, a lilt e band of twenty-four soldiers has march (o the bank to guard its gold and securities until the morning.