Report - Bank of England House, Bristol - November 2020

[Jane Doe]

Awesome... Love that

 

[tumbles]

Anyone watch the outlaws on BBC this week.. about 4 minutes in

 

[AtomBurna]

Almost as old as Bristol itself, St Mary Le Port Street was an important thoroughfare of the City, linking the area around St Peter’s Church, in and around Wine Street, Corn Street, High Street and Broad Street.

It originated as a pre-Conquest hollow way (or sunken lane) and was filled in and paved in the 13th Century. The road was built up and developed around St Mary Le Port Church and was a key part of the city centre for centuries, but on the night of 24 November 1940 was heavily bombed and almost completely destroyed.

The Dutch house on the corner before and after WW2

It's difficult to even visualise any remains of before the bombing. The beautiful Dutch House that the Bank of England House now resides on was, perhaps, the most noticeable architectural casualty to Bristol in the entire WW2 bombing campaign.

Following the war, the site was used temporarily as a car park before land being leased to the Bank of England and Norwich Union Insurance company for office buildings in 1962/63. Bank of England house featured deep level vaults and front of house services for customers.

Bank of England House just after completion in 1963

At a later date (Mid 1970s)`an additional building, Bank House, was built alongside the Bank of England House and initially served as an extended administration building. In-between security controlled everything including access at street level to the underground loading bays.

Bristol City Council maintained the leasehold of the site through the entity of the sites operational use.

Norwich Union House - behind it the remains of St Mary Le Port

The area today is somewhat of an eyesore. The Norwich Union buildings and Bank of England House have been vacated for some 25 years (at least). The NU buildings have been subjected to multiple arson attempts and the grand frontier to the BoE House repeatedly smashed during anti capitalist marches over the years.

Since the Bank of England vacated in the mid 1990's there have been various plans and ideas drawn up to regenerate this corner of Castle Park but none have come to fruition. Developers have bought and sold on the leasehold of each building in this period. The St Mary Le Port church behind these buildings is a scheduled ancient monument and most plans had this as a centre point for any redevelopment scheme.

The Explore

As a group we've been watching the BoE for as long as I can remember. The first time I every met @Seffy and @WhoDaresWins we wondered over from the Spoons in what was our first ever recce together. It's another one of those epic Bristol waits that sits up there on the top perch with the War Rooms. The difficulty has always been the fact that given what was stored inside of the building it's pretty hard to penetrate from the outside and to make things more complicated it the 'Bank House' administration block next door is still used by Lloyds Banking Group.

At one point a few years ago we started measuring the gap between the roof of the NU building and the BoE House.

A 3.4m gap but some 15m up in the air. While it was feasible it was also one that might result in death should we not get it right. Quietly we waited checking in every now and again to see if anything changed. With everything else going on in the world this year Castle Park became a good outside location to congregate as a group and we noticed that the Lloyds Building becoming significantly more run down towards the end of the Summer.

Were they getting ready to vacate? Fast forward a few months and sure enough the signs were removed from the front of the building. We always thought there might be a chance they'd go and perhaps this would be our best moment. The next recce looked at a potential weak spot in the buildings armoury. Being that it was in the now vacated Lloyds/Bank House part we hoped that it would lead through to the attached Bank of England buildings.

Yes these building names start to get confusing.

The Recce that night suddenly took on a rather unusual twist. As we watched @Seffy check out potential access myself and @WhoDaresWins got an unexpected friend. A strange Mexican man started grunting at us. He then ran down towards Seth. It got weirder as he kept dropping his trousers in the park and beckoning us over.

It wasn't quite what we were hoping to smash that night. In the end we ended up being chased by him across the park. We called it quits for the night and headed to the nearest mind bleach store.

So a day before lockdown no 2 and we met once again. More with social intentions than anything else. Cans in the park has been the highlight of a crap year so it was good to see the gang before lockdown ensued once more. After a few cloudy lemons and letting off some fireworks in the park that seemed to echo across half of Bristol we felt it only fair we have a look at the entrance again. Once the pubs closed and Bristol became a ghost town for the night we finally found our way in.

As we walked through the corridors of Bank House into Bank of England House (I did say it gets confusing) the overpowering smell of varnished wood and parquet flooring was absolutely glorious. The offices and foyer were just pure retro topped off with the gorgeous atrium dome window in the foyer.

For the next 25 minutes we got around the foyer, vaults, awesome control room and decided we'd go for the roof shot. Just then we realised it was time to bail. The bank job was done. Shout out to @Seffy @WhoDaresWins @rigsby and @END-PROC as this was definitely a team effort over many years, many cans, many spoons and one strange Mexican.

Fair play, what an awesome report. I've scoped this out a few times and always wondered what was inside, perhaps an opportunity will present itself soon.

 

[princethorpe]

Brilliant post a real treat. Really well done with the then and now photos

 

[tumbles]

Fair play, what an awesome report. I've scoped this out a few times and always wondered what was inside, perhaps an opportunity will present itself soon.

Unfortunately it did have a period last year (or maybe year before that) where it was open for a week or so and it got smashed up inside.

 

[NZurbex]

Almost as old as Bristol itself, St Mary Le Port Street was an important thoroughfare of the City, linking the area around St Peter’s Church, in and around Wine Street, Corn Street, High Street and Broad Street.

It originated as a pre-Conquest hollow way (or sunken lane) and was filled in and paved in the 13th Century. The road was built up and developed around St Mary Le Port Church and was a key part of the city centre for centuries, but on the night of 24 November 1940 was heavily bombed and almost completely destroyed.

The Dutch house on the corner before and after WW2

It's difficult to even visualise any remains of before the bombing. The beautiful Dutch House that the Bank of England House now resides on was, perhaps, the most noticeable architectural casualty to Bristol in the entire WW2 bombing campaign.

Following the war, the site was used temporarily as a car park before land being leased to the Bank of England and Norwich Union Insurance company for office buildings in 1962/63. Bank of England house featured deep level vaults and front of house services for customers.

Bank of England House just after completion in 1963

At a later date (Mid 1970s)`an additional building, Bank House, was built alongside the Bank of England House and initially served as an extended administration building. In-between security controlled everything including access at street level to the underground loading bays.

Bristol City Council maintained the leasehold of the site through the entity of the sites operational use.

Norwich Union House - behind it the remains of St Mary Le Port

The area today is somewhat of an eyesore. The Norwich Union buildings and Bank of England House have been vacated for some 25 years (at least). The NU buildings have been subjected to multiple arson attempts and the grand frontier to the BoE House repeatedly smashed during anti capitalist marches over the years.

Since the Bank of England vacated in the mid 1990's there have been various plans and ideas drawn up to regenerate this corner of Castle Park but none have come to fruition. Developers have bought and sold on the leasehold of each building in this period. The St Mary Le Port church behind these buildings is a scheduled ancient monument and most plans had this as a centre point for any redevelopment scheme.

The Explore

As a group we've been watching the BoE for as long as I can remember. The first time I every met @Seffy and @WhoDaresWins we wondered over from the Spoons in what was our first ever recce together. It's another one of those epic Bristol waits that sits up there on the top perch with the War Rooms. The difficulty has always been the fact that given what was stored inside of the building it's pretty hard to penetrate from the outside and to make things more complicated it the 'Bank House' administration block next door is still used by Lloyds Banking Group.

At one point a few years ago we started measuring the gap between the roof of the NU building and the BoE House.

A 3.4m gap but some 15m up in the air. While it was feasible it was also one that might result in death should we not get it right. Quietly we waited checking in every now and again to see if anything changed. With everything else going on in the world this year Castle Park became a good outside location to congregate as a group and we noticed that the Lloyds Building becoming significantly more run down towards the end of the Summer.

Were they getting ready to vacate? Fast forward a few months and sure enough the signs were removed from the front of the building. We always thought there might be a chance they'd go and perhaps this would be our best moment. The next recce looked at a potential weak spot in the buildings armoury. Being that it was in the now vacated Lloyds/Bank House part we hoped that it would lead through to the attached Bank of England buildings.

Yes these building names start to get confusing.

The Recce that night suddenly took on a rather unusual twist. As we watched @Seffy check out potential access myself and @WhoDaresWins got an unexpected friend. A strange Mexican man started grunting at us. He then ran down towards Seth. It got weirder as he kept dropping his trousers in the park and beckoning us over.

It wasn't quite what we were hoping to smash that night. In the end we ended up being chased by him across the park. We called it quits for the night and headed to the nearest mind bleach store.

So a day before lockdown no 2 and we met once again. More with social intentions than anything else. Cans in the park has been the highlight of a crap year so it was good to see the gang before lockdown ensued once more. After a few cloudy lemons and letting off some fireworks in the park that seemed to echo across half of Bristol we felt it only fair we have a look at the entrance again. Once the pubs closed and Bristol became a ghost town for the night we finally found our way in.

As we walked through the corridors of Bank House into Bank of England House (I did say it gets confusing) the overpowering smell of varnished wood and parquet flooring was absolutely glorious. The offices and foyer were just pure retro topped off with the gorgeous atrium dome window in the foyer.

For the next 25 minutes we got around the foyer, vaults, awesome control room and decided we'd go for the roof shot. Just then we realised it was time to bail. The bank job was done. Shout out to @Seffy @WhoDaresWins @rigsby and @END-PROC as this was definitely a team effort over many years, many cans, many spoons and one strange Mexican.

Wow... just wow. Epic!