A century ago the wrecking ball demolished the halls, courtyards, arches and domes of one of London’s best-loved buildings in what the architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner would decry as “the greatest architectural crime” to befall the capital in the 20th century.
The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street (as the Bank of England was nicknamed after a satirical 1797 cartoon of William Pitt the Younger, prime minister from 1783 to 1801, wooing an old lady dressed in pound notes) has been the heart of the City since 1734.
