Blasterz loved walking around in London, looking at all the details of the buildings.
This gorgeous red stone building with its interesting rooflines and terra-cotta relief frieze is now home to professional offices and an EAT. restaurant on the street level.
According to the British Listed Building website, it is a Grade II listed building:
"123-127, Cannon Street Ec4 (See Details for Further Address Information), City of London
Grade: II
Date Listed: 28 July 1977
English Heritage Building ID: 199349
OS Grid Reference: TQ3273480899
OS Grid Coordinates: 532734, 180899
Latitude/Longitude: 51.5114, -0.0886"
As we have dug into this building looking for more information, we see it had several tenants over the last 100 years: Lawyers, Mechanical Engineers, Manufacturers, and the Government of New South Wales, Australia, who had an Agent-General's office in the building at the turn of the 20th century. Do these reliefs refer to building up Australia, or something else?
In the first panel, we see cherubs unloading wrapped boxed cargo from a sailing ship in heavy seas, bringing it ashore. These reliefs are interspersed with cherubs in what looking like a construction or architects meeting, with one cherub standing and speaking to another cherub, who is seated at a table with rolled-up papers -- Maritime route maps? Architectural plans?
In the second relief, Cherubs are similarly busy building, reading, and making music, handling boxed things. The frieze is so high, it's hard to see exactly what they are doing. But it is clear that they are still all naked --
St Mary Abchurch is a Wren church, is this a snippet from Christopher Wren as he rebuilt London? It is building New South Wales? Is it figuring out new trade routes? And why are they in the nude? SO MANY QUESTIONS!!!
More and more digging, and we find a snippet reference in the Estates Gazette (1979) to St Mary Abchurch House at 123-127 cannon Street: (
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"MEPC want £12 in Cannon St MEPC's refurbishment of St Mary Abchurch House at 123 Cannon Street, London EC4, is being marketed at £12 ... Formerly known as Reliance House, the building with a listed Grade II frontage totals over 9,000 sq ft..."
FINALLY we get a few answers about this building in a Transport for London survey of damage from constriction of the new Bank London Underground line: (
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"2 The Building
2.1 General Information
No. 123-127 Cannon Street is located opposite the entrance to Laurence Pountney Hill lane.
Construction Age: 1895
2.2 Building Description
Completed in 1895, 123-127 Cannon Street is six storeys high and assumed to be of load bearing masonry construction supported on strip footings as cited by Alan Baxter’s gazette. There is an off centre inserted column within the ground floor extended arch that supports an internal cross wall. The building uses bright red brick and terracotta on the facades with either timber or filler joist floors and a timber roof, and has an asymmetrical composition with Flemish Renaissance and Art Nouveau details to the elevation, and a variety of window types. The rear Abchurch Yard elevation is similar in style but of less complex execution.
It is assumed this building has a single level basement."
Today (2016) it is clearly known as St. Mary Abchurch House, and has several banking-related and professional tenants. (
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None of which explains the motif of the reliefs. :/ Such is waymarking. At least we have the name of the building, and tis date of construction.