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rental - indeed, the latest application
from a well-known banker was, ‘for a
nineteenth floor, if you have got one.
How absurd they thought, a 19th
floor! Oh how they laughed.
The 1901 rate book listing permanent
residents includes seven MPs,
a countess, five ‘Sirs’, one ‘Lady’,
one bishop, two other reverends,
a general, two majors, three colonels
and a lieutenant. But despite such
illustrious tenants including Edward
Elgar, in the time honoured fashion
of the property developer, (as The
Shard developer Irvine Sellars had
early in his career) Hankey went bust.
As a direct result of Hankey’s
Mansions the London Building Act
passed in 1894 prohibited buildings
above a height of 80 feet and it stayed
in force until it was repealed and all
hell broke loose in the 1960s. Queen
Anne Mansions survived as an
architectural dinosaur, taken over by
the Admiralty in 1940 but were
eventually demolished and replaced
by another ‘monstrous’ building, Basil
Spence’s Home Office at Number 50
Queen Anne’s Gate in the 1970s.
It had lasted for just about 100 years,
25 years longer than is predicted for
The Shard.
See Page 28 for practical information
about taking your group to The Shard.
The first tallest and the current tallest buildings in London