Baynard House, London

Baynard House, Blackfriars. Seen from Queen Victoria Street.
The Seven Ages of Man by Richard Kindersley

Baynard House is a brutalist office block in Queen Victoria Street in the Blackfriars area of London, occupied by BT Group. It was built on the former site of Baynard's Castle.[1] Most of the site under Baynard House is a Scheduled Ancient Monument.[2]

The building was designed by the architect William Holford.[3] It incorporates Holford's ideas on the separation of pedestrians from vehicle traffic, with a first floor level public walkway along Victoria Street that connects to Blackfriars station. The entrance foyer to Baynard House remains off this first floor level. A plaque in the building foyer reads:

"BAYNARD HOUSE handed over on 5th July 1979 to PETER BENTON Esq., Managing Director Telecommunications, Architects: Holford/ PSA; Construction: John Laing"[4]

Legislation protecting the views of St Paul's restricted the overall height of the building to just three levels above ground.[5]

Baynard House was formerly a telephone exchange, and housed the first operational System X telephone exchange, which went live in 1980.[6][7] The Faraday Building, one of the first major telephone exchanges in the UK, is nearby.

From 1982 to 1997, Baynard House housed the BT Museum.

It is the site of an unusual cast aluminium public sculpture by Richard Kindersley, entitled The Seven Ages of Man.[8][9] The sculpture, consisting of a column made up of sculptural heads resembling a totem pole, was commissioned by Post Office Telecommunications and unveiled in April 1980.

As of 2012 it had the largest solar panel area of any building in the City of London and the second largest of a corporate building in the UK.[10]

References

  1. ↑ "BT Museum". London Online. Retrieved 2010-11-24.
  2. ↑ Jackson (2009ii) p42 Figure 16 shows the extent of the Scheduled Ancient Monument; see Baynard's Castle article for source
  3. ↑ Baynard House, Esoteric London, February , 2012
  4. ↑ Plaque located in the entrance foyer of Baynard House, Observed May 2012
  5. ↑ Faraday House, Ornamental Passions, February 2009
  6. ↑ "Digital switching". Connected Earth. Archived from the original on 29 April 2011. Retrieved 2010-11-24.
  7. ↑ "BT Archives: Events in Telecommunications History: 1980". BT Archives. Retrieved 2010-11-24.
  8. ↑ "Public Monument and Sculpture Association National Recording Project: The Seven Ages of Man (sculpture), Baynard House". Archived from the original on 2 August 2011. Retrieved 2010-11-24.
  9. ↑ "The Seven Ages of Man, Queen Victoria Street". Retrieved 2010-11-24.
  10. ↑ BT to build UK's second largest solar-powered roof Archived 24 March 2014 at the Wayback Machine. BT Today, 11 April 2011

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Coordinates: 51°30.7151′N 0°6.0734′W / 51.5119183°N 0.1012233°W / 51.5119183; -0.1012233

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