A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, Old Dive sat happily on the top floor of our old office, gazing out across the river to the Cathedral. Then we got booted out and cast screaming into temporary accommodation while the profiteering powers-that-be converted the upper floors of our office into luxury apartments while the old ground floor was being re-purposed as our new office.
We’ve moved back in now and admittedly it is pretty spiffy and ultra-modern, with rise and fall workstations we can stand or sit at and all manner of whizzy virtual stuff that’s bound to go wrong.
I’ll post some piccies later but at the moment the builders are still in and it’s a fucking mess, soundtracked by power tools and the view over Pull’s Ferry to the Cathedral is obscured by site offices and lorries.
Yes, I know it's off-centre but it's not fixed yet.
This week, however, saw the welcome return of our capital capital. This used to stand in the rear courtyard but is now positioned at the office entrance and is currently being used as the workmen’s lunch table.
I am happy to report that Old Dive saved it from destruction due to some dogged detective work.
The Partners had always considered it a modern, reconstituted stone reproduction and it was due for demolition as part of the building works. Old Dive had his doubts and snuck out to examine it, only to discover that it was hand-carved Portland Stone and probably Eighteenth-Century, though the design was one I’d never seen.
The Partners postponed the demolition and tasked me with presenting a case for its preservation. I canvassed the old ex. members of staff, but nobody could recall where it came from except that it had moved with us from Sir Bernard’s old office in Cathedral Close when the new office was built in 1969.
Some suggested it might have been “looted” when we did work at St.Paul’s Cathedral in London; others that it had come from York Minster when Sir Bernard was restoring it. The style and the type of stone were wrong for York, however, and St.Paul’s had straight, Greek Corinthian capitals.
After much digging around in my old books, I found the weirdly erotic flower design was copied from an original in the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli (illustration from Antoine Desgodetz’ “Edifices Antiques de Rome” of 1682).
Alan (retired from the London office) told me he was sure there was a plaster cast of that in the Soane Museum, which then suggested it might have been from Soane’s remodelling of the 1730s Bank of England, started in 1788.
A delve in the archives found photographs of the column capitals in situ prior to the Twentieth Century virtual rebuild. A match! Turns out Sir Bernard had somehow snaffled a couple of these during the works and one ended up in his old garden at Stiffkey Hall (pronounced Stewkey – this is Norfolk) and the other in our old office.
At which, the Partners ponied up many groats to have it carefully removed, stored and plonked back at the entrance to our new office. Huzzah!
