City of London Coat-of-Arms - Fruit & Wool Exchange, Spitalfields, London, UK - Coats of Arms on Waymarking.com

The Heraldry of the World website tells us about the City of London coat-of-arms:

"Official blazon:
Arms: Argent a Cross Gules in the first quarter a Sword in pale point upwards of the last.
Crest: On a Wreath of the Colours a Dragon's sinister Wing Argent charged on the underside with a Cross throughout Gules.
Supporters: On either side a Dragon Argent charged on the undersides of the wings with a Cross throughout Gules.
Motto: 'DOMINE DIRIGE NOS' - Lord, direct us.

Origin/meaning:
The arms of London have never officially been granted, but have been recorded at the College of Arms, albeit without supporters and crest. The crest and helmet were granted on April 30, 1957.

The shield combines the cross of St. George with the emblem of the city's patron, St. Paul. The first cathedral dedicated to St. Paul was built in 605 in the city. The patron saint itself already appears on a 13th century seal. The arms appear for the first time on a seal from 1380.The sword has often been described or attributed to the dagger with which Sir William Walworth, Mayor of London, stabbed the rebel Wat Tyler on June 15th, 1381. The arms with the sword, however, predate this event. Another story states that the sword was granted by King Richard II as a reward for William Walworth's services to the King. There are, however, no historical evidences for either story. The dragons appear for the first time on an illustration in a book from 1633. The same book, the Survey of London, by Stow, also first mentions the motto 'Domine dirige nos' (Lord, direct us).

On a seal of the Mayoralty dating from the late 14th century the arms show two lion supporters. These are not seen elsewhere.
The origin of the dragons is not clear, it may be that they are derived from the story of St. George, the patron saint of England, in which the saint kills a dragon. The sword and the dragons thus distinguished the arms of the city from those of England.

The oldest known image of a crest dates from 1539 when they appear on the reverse of the common seal of the city. The oldest image is not very clear and looks like a fan-like object, charged with the cross of St. George. By the end of the 17th century, the crest has developed into the dragon wing. Sometimes the arms were shown with two wings, facing each other."

The London and Landscape Blog carries an interesting article about the exchange and photographs. This extract tells us:

Opening in 1929, when the volume of imported produce coming through the docks more than doubled in the ten years after the First World War, the mighty Fruit & Wool Exchange in Spitalfields was created to maintain London’s pre-eminence as a global distribution centre. The classical stone facade, closely resembling the design of Nicholas Hawksmoor’s Christ Church nearby, established it as a temple dedicated to fresh produce as fruits that were once unfamiliar, and fruits that were out of season, became available for the first time to the British people.

After sixty years as a teeming warren of brokers and distributors, the building languished when the Fruit & Vegetable Market moved out from Spitalfields in 1991 and there were no wholesalers left to cross Brushfield St and supplement their supplies of British produce from the auctions at the Exchange. Since then, around sixty small businesses operated peaceably from the building which through its shabby grandeur reminded every visitor that it had once seen better days.

Yet it was only a matter of time before the notion of redevelopment arose, and when ambitious plans were revealed over a year ago for a huge new building to replace both the Exchange and the multi-storey car park behind it – filling two entire blocks – a sense of disquiet was generated in Spitalfields, especially among those who remembered the uneasy compromises entailed in the rebuilding of the Market.
Few have been convinced by the homogeneous box that was proposed to stand in place of the Exchange and many were disappointed when the creators of such mediocrity dismissed the current structure as of negligible architectural worth. In fact, the Commercial St end of the Exchange building closely matched the window structure and red brick of the eighteenth century houses in Fournier St, while the facade mirrored Christ Church itself. Since then, a revised proposal has been forthcoming which retains the Brushfield St frontage facing the Spitalfields Market but is far from being a design worthy to face Nicholas Hawksmoor’s masterpiece of English Baroque upon the opposite side of Commercial St.

And so, before it vanishes forever, I went over to take a look around and savour the past glories of the City of London Fruit & Wool Exchange for the last time.

Ascending from the grand entrance, a double staircase worthy of a ballroom in a liner or fancy hotel leads you up to the auction rooms. Built as the largest in the country, seating nearly nine hundred people, these magnificent panelled chambers were each the height of two storeys within the building. Fitted with microphones, which were an extraordinary innovation in 1929, possessing elaborate glass roofs that promised to simulate daylight – even on dark and foggy days – to best illuminate the fruit, they were served by high-speed hydraulic lifts to whisk samples of each consignment from the basement in the blink of an eye. Too bad that a recent fire, occurring since the redevelopment was announced, meant they could never be visited again. Now the entrances to the most significant spaces which define this edifice are sealed with tape and off-limits for ever, while charred parquet flooring evidences the flames that crept out under the door.
Instead, I had to satisfy myself with a stroll around the empty top floor through centrally-heated corridors maintained at a comfortable temperature ever since the offices were all vacated two years ago. Everywhere I could see evidence of the quality of this building, from the parquet floors which extend through each storey, to the well-detailed brass fixtures and high-quality Crittall window frames that were still in good order. Within the building, hidden light-wells permit glass-ceilings to be illuminated by daylight upon each storey. Peering into these spaces reveals the paradoxical nature of this edifice which presents ne0-classicism to the street but adopts a vigorous industrial-modernism within, employing vast geometric shaped concrete girders to support the roof spans of the auction rooms below and arranging rows of narrow metal windows in close grids that evoke Bauhaus design.

From the top, I descended through floors of long windowless corridors lined with doors, where an institutional atmosphere prevailed, hushing the speech of those stepping outside their offices as they enter these strange intermediary spaces that belong to no-one any more. My special curiosity was to explore the basement which served as a refuge for the residents of Spitalfields during the Blitz. It was here that Mickey Davies, an East End optician known as “Mickey the Midget,” became a popular hero through his work in improving the quality of this shelter. It had gained the reputation as the worst in London, but later acquired the name “Mickey’s Shelter” in acknowledgment of his good work. As a shelter marshall, Mickey witnessed the overcrowding and insalubrious conditions when ten thousand people turned up at this basement which had a maximum capacity of five thousand. He organised medical care and recruited volunteers to undertake cleaning rotas. And, thanks to his initiative, beds and toilets were installed, and even musical entertainment arranged.

The vast subterranean network of chambers has been empty for twenty years now – gloomy, neglected and scattered with piles of broken furniture. Although partitions have been fitted to create storage rooms – where, mysteriously, Rupert Murdoch recently installed his archive – the Commercial St end of the building remains open and forlorn, with concrete pillars adorned by graffiti. Fruit packers marked off batches of produce in pencil on the wall here, and amused themselves by writing their names and making clumsy doodles. In this lost basement, it is still possible to imagine the world of Mickey Davies, where thousands once slept upon the floor while the city burned outside.

From Brushfields St, the City of London Fruit & Wool Exchange appears implacable – yet I discovered it contains a significant part of the hidden history of Spitalfields that will shortly be erased, to leave just an empty facade.