The Bank of England was a masterpiece by one of Britain's greatest architects, Sir John Soane, which was scandalously destroyed in the 1930s.
The fact that Soane's fortress-like wall round the old building was preserved as a platform for the new only rubs salt into the wound. But Sir Herbert Baker's pompous neo-Georgian monstrosity is adorned with some of Sir Charles Wheeler's best work.
The pediment at the top frames the Lady of the Bank, the successor to a statue of Britannia that had inspired the Bank of England's nickname 'the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street'.
Charles Wheeler's dynamic figure of girl seated on the globe with her cape billowing behind and a shower of gold coins to one side emphasises the world-wide reach of the Bank. She holds a model of the Bank itself, like those medieval statues of bishops holding models of their cathedrals.
The statue was the subject of attacks from all quarters from the moment it was unveiled in 1930. The Evening Standard wrote:
"Miss Threadneedle Street is wearing a permanent wave and not a great deal else...[she] appears in the act of removing her bath-robe; but in place of the cake of soap that she should by rights be fondling she is dandling on her knee what looks like a small Greek temple. This may be her bath salts - they are put up very elaborately these days - or again it may be a toy savings bank...For the rest, the lady has a very hard eye, a disagreeable mouth, and hands only a shade less elephantiasic than Rima's own."