London’s Alleys: Founders’ Court, EC2

This alley behind the Bank of England is likely one of the oldest alleys in the City of London, with an alignment that can be traced back to at least medieval times, when it was a gap between rows of houses.

By the 1670s, the area was sufficiently developed that the alley had become the short dead end alley that it is today.

The alley is marked as Founders Hall in William Morgan’s map of 1682 and is named after the Livery Hall that used to stand on the corner. The Worshipful Company of Founders is the livery company that once regulated the brass and bronze workers’ trades. As with most livery companies, it is now mainly a charitable organisation.

The Founders were founded around 1365, and bought the land for their first hall on Lothbury in 1531, and opened it in 1547. By 1587, the company had secured the rights to regulate the quality of brass weights used by merchants within the City to ensure their accuracy and had been granted its first Royal Charter in 1614.

Their hall was destroyed in the Great Fire of London and rebuilt on the same site, which was then rebuilt in 1845-53. That hall was damaged during WWII, and the company decided to sell it in 1964, and after a temporary move to St Swithin’s Lane, they’re now in an alley in Farringdon.

The old hall building was demolished, and construction of the replacement, the current building, started in 1973, when the Prime Minister, Ted Heath, laid the foundation stone — which can be seen down the far end of the alley.

Although the grand door at the far end looks older, and is old, the building it sits in front of is modern, as part of that 1973 rebuild. The frontage of the old building was taken down, stored and the put back when the new offices were completed – so it’s just a facade now.

Another interesting occupant of the alley at one time was the Electric Telegraph Company, founded in 1846 as the world’s first public telegraph company.

Electric telegraphs were already being used by railway companies for early signalling and communications, but this was the first telegraph company to offer a service to the public. Well, mainly for businesses, as it was still exceptionally expensive to use.

Although growth was initially slow, the company swiftly expanded its private network of cables across the UK, and by 1855, it had over 5,200 miles of lines and was sending close to 750,000 messages a year. By then costs had fallen to just 4 shillings per message.

The company expanded into laying cables across oceans to other countries but was nationalised by the government in 1870 — and was to form the core of the General Post Office’s telegraph service.

Over the decades, telegraphs were replaced with telecoms, and in 1984, the company was privatised — as British Telecom.

So, the origins of BT can be found down this alley.

To be frank, the rest of the alley is fairly unexciting—a short, narrow passage lined with stern stone walls and a couple of signs about its heritage.

A curiousity though is the paving. It’s not surprising that what was once a road has long been pedestrianised, but if you zoom in on this photo, look at the road — it’s tiled in a style more usually expected to be seen on indoor corridors than a road. And yet, there’s a car down here, so it’s a road. Most odd.