Tales of London

Now that the long-planned pavement widening has taken place at Bank Junction, the palatial surroundings can be viewed in all their glory: the imposing Portland Stone fortress of the Bank of England; the Neoclassical frontage of the Royal Exchange; and oldest of all, the official residence of the Lord Mayor of the City of London: Mansion House.

Despite the first Mayor of the City – Henry fitz Ailwin de Londonstane – being invested all the way back in the year 1189, it took almost six centuries to construct an official residence for London’s first citizen. Until this time the Mayor (known as the Lord Mayor from 1354) would lodge in a livery company hall, and carry out their official business at the Guildhall. During the Great Fire of 1666 most livery company halls were destroyed, and so it was suggested that a dedicated home be built for the Lord Mayor.

Since the year 1282, what is now Mansion House was the site of the Stocks Market. Note the plural: this was nothing to do with the stock exchange, but rather was the location of the only fixed pair of stocks in the City. The Stocks Market was initially where livestock was sold and slaughtered, with the street heading west leading onto Poultry and then Cheapside (‘cheap’ being the Saxon word for a market). By the early eighteenth century the Stocks Market mainly sold herbs, but this was now an upmarket locale with early incarnations of both the Bank of England and the Royal Exchange situated on the other side of the street. Being the financial centre of the City, it was decided in 1737 that the Stocks Market would have to up-sticks to the Fleet Market over to the west, and its site would instead become the Lord Mayor’s official home – known as Mansion House.

Designed by George Dance the Elder, the Mansion House was built in a Palladian style; in the pediment above the six Corinthian columns at the entrance is the personification of the City of London trampling her enemies. Work began with the laying of the foundation stone in 1739, and in the stone were placed coins minted that year, from a farthing up to a guinea (the location of that foundation stone has, however, been lost to the mists of time). The first Lord Mayor to occupy Mansion House was Sir Crisp Gascoyne in 1752, although work continued on the property for a further six years.

Mansion House cost £15,000 to construct – around £2.5m today – which was funded by a rather creative yet sinister method. Mark Twain describes the scheme in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court:

“It reminded me of something I had read in my youth about the ingenious way in which the aldermen of London raised the money that built the Mansion House. A person who had not taken the Sacrament according to the Anglican rite could not stand as a candidate for sheriff of London. Thus Dissenters were ineligible; they could not run if asked, they could not serve if elected. The aldermen, who without any question were Yankees in disguise, hit upon this neat device: they passed a by-law imposing a fine of £400 upon any one who should refuse to be a candidate for sheriff, and a fine of £600 upon any person who, after being elected sheriff, refused to serve. Then they went to work and elected a lot of Dissenters, one after another, and kept it up until they had collected £15,000 in fines; and there stands the stately Mansion House to this day, to keep the blushing citizen in mind of a long past and lamented day when a band of Yankees slipped into London and played games of the sort that has given their race a unique and shady reputation among all truly good and holy peoples that be in the earth.”

As the Lord Mayor also serves as the City's Chief Magistrate, the cellars beneath Mansion House once contained eleven cells for the court inside the building, one of which was for women and nicknamed ‘the birdcage’; the Magistrates’ Court now sits directly opposite Mansion House, on the other side of Walbrook. Inside the side entrance on Walbrook still sits the eighteenth-century Hallkeeper’s Chair, with a drawer beneath the seat for hot coals to warm the hallkeeper’s bum on a cold winter night. Within the building is also a gold telephone, presented to Lord Mayor Sir Percy Vincent in 1936 by the Postmaster General in celebration of London achieving one million telephone subscriptions.

Each spring at Mansion House the Foreign Secretary gives a speech at the Easter Banquet; a few months later, normally in summer, it’s the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s turn to deliver an address on the economy in the ‘Mansion House speech’. But you don’t need to be a member of the British cabinet to see inside the building, as guided tours take place every Tuesday afternoon.

For more stories about the fascinating history of London, have a look at my other articles, or scroll down and fill in the form below to subscribe to weekly updates!