'Bank' Junction: Heart of the City

Blog

Kat Harrington

Did you know the area immediately outside the Bank of England is referred to as Bank junction, and it’s the meeting point of nine streets? They are Threadneedle Street (home of the Bank’s main entrance), Cornhill, Lombard Street, Mansion House Place, Walbrook, Queen Victoria Street, Poultry, Mansion House Street and Prince's Street. Buildings facing the junction include the former London Stock Exchange and Mansion House, the office of the Lord Mayor of the City of London.

This area has certainly seen its fair share of changes over the years. It all seems relatively calm and tranquil in this 1845 engraving by T A Prior after A L Thomas. The Bank of England, to the left of the picture, is a much lower building than it is today. Designed in the early 1800s by John Soane, it was only a few stories tall. 

There is rather more hustle and bustle, and some commercial advertising present in this postcard scene from around the turn of the nineteenth century.

Bank Underground station, at the centre of the City of London, opened in 1900. In 1925, architect Herbert Baker was commissioned to completely rebuild the Bank of England’s premises, a project that took until 1939. As part of the project, there was much debate at the Bank around opening further subways into the tube system. The station, at the centre of the City of London, opened in 1900. New entrances would mean cutting into the imposing, windowless wall that Soane had designed to fully enclose and protect the Bank site.

The result of the debate was what is now Exit 2 at Bank tube station, but several different plans were suggested, some of which had a poor reception. In the letter below, from November 1938, Baker scathingly describes one proposal as looking like “two rabbit holes in the great solid wall". 

Today, that solid wall is the only piece of Soane’s work for the Bank that remains in situ. It continued to protect the Bank even after Baker had completely remodelled the building within it. 

On 11 January 1941 a German bomb hit the centre of Bank junction. It penetrated the roadway and exploded in Bank station booking hall, resulting in many casualties and the loss of 56 lives, commemorated today by a plaque inside the station. The sketch below by War Artist Feliks Topolski (1907–1989) vividly captures the devastation.

A staff member’s diary recalls that soldiers stationed in the Bank that night "say the Bank shuddered". Remarkably the Bank building itself escaped relatively unscathed. After removal of swathes of debris, a temporary bridge was constructed over the giant bomb crater to carry traffic across the junction. Bank station re-opened two months later. 

The scene below is captured from Mansion House. It looks across the junction to show the Bank decorated with flags and banners, likely to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee (1977). 

In the 1990s the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) was extended to Bank station, further increasing footfall through the junction and into the City square mile. The station itself often topped the 'best of the worst' lists due to the volume of commuters that jostled through its entrances and exits each day, especially at rush hour.

In recent years, the area has transformed once again with the City of London’s 'All Change at Bank' project. This has aimed to make the junction above ground a safer and more welcoming place to travel through and visit, by simplifying and narrowing the traffic ways, and creating a more inviting environment for pedestrians. The walkways are certainly much calmer although I must admit that I would love to see the occasional horse-drawn omnibus passing by instead of a rental e-bike at top speed!