Foreword
It’s hard not to look at Steel House and imagine “sixties office block”. But that Portland stone façade was laid all the way back in 1937, and since then has had a diverse array of tenants.
It probably doesn’t come as a surprise that Steel House has a background of steel. Actual steel works were deemed unfeasible for Westminster, unfortunately (though the basement was built with a boiler and pump room). The building was, however, the headquarters of the British Iron and Steel Federation, an industry cabal that eventually merged into the government-owned British Steel. Its archives are at the University of Warwick and I don’t really have an excuse, beyond this, to spend £40 on a return ticket.
The '30s and '40s were a period of rapid change for Westminster, especially Tothill Street. Planning laws were just being introduced, so razing the existing building at 11 Tothill Steet to the ground – seemingly some small offices, shops and a pub – was a seemingly uncontested action.
Yet for a nine-storey building, in one of the most sought-after areas of London, there is surprisingly little coverage on its history. Westminster’s archives have nothing but a drainage plan—compulsory for all buildings—and the London Metropolitan Archives, host of all historic Building Act files, has nothing.
Following Thatcher’s dissolution of the Greater London Council, only 40% of such files, effectively the precursor to modern planning permission, were retained. Unfortunately, Steel House’s file seems to have been part of the 60% that was destroyed. Thankfully, Westminster City Council’s planning department still retains its records. They only cost £600.
As a result, the only real source of information on the building’s construction is architecture journals. Three of the major ones devoted multi-page features to Steel House, with descriptions, contributing firms and very niche construction details. Beyond that, all information I could find has been assimilated from books, newspapers and government records.
Perhaps its information gap is a side-effect of poor cataloguing or archiving, or perhaps its somewhat drab façade has simply blended into the fabric of Westminster.
Steel House, 11 Tothill Street, 1937 by Sir John Burnet, Tait & Lorne. Steel-framed Portland stone cast façade with distinct horizontal lining and continuous window rows. Sculpted reliefs protrude of various mythological figures related to industry: Vulcan, god of fire; Atlas whom “carried the world” and Hercules killing Lados.
Originally built with seven storeys, an additional floor was added in 1954. Plans for an office block here date back to the 1920s, when the British Iron and Steel Federation (BISF) sought new premises following rapid growth in the steel industry. For many years Steel House was owned by a little-known company, “Tothill Estates Limited”, which was eventually bought by property giant MEPC. Construction was approved by the Greater London Council in 1936, and the building was opened on 1 March 1937. Such “monuments”, constructed by industry cartels, are known as “cartel seats”.
The BISF’s tenancy here was cut short following reorganisation in steel-related industries, being merged into British Steel, and rent bids began cropping up. A 1969 advertisement for a rent review noted that, at the time, it was being let to the Ministry of Works. Little beyond this about when such an occupation begun is unknown.
Land potential was maximised in construction, if not at the cost of a more “satisfactory” appearance, with some attempts to mask such problems. Windows, for example, were cast inwards to hide the steel frame, unintentionally stunting ventilation, a problem we are all too aware of today. Post 1950s tenants varied greatly, with many different organisations being located to Steel House—it is likely that multiple entities were occupying the building simultaneously.
It only became associated with government usage following the construction of Caxton House across the street, originally for the Department of the Environment and now the Department for Work and Pensions. Following the Department for Works’s tenancy in Steel House, there is some evidence that the Department of the Environment also was a tenant, though what is not in question is that the Ministry of Justice held the leasehold from 1987.
The explanation as to why the BISF left is locked in correspondence at the University of Warwick. Their catalogues record one document, rather ominously titled “Surrender of Steel House”. It shifted around many different owners before eventually being bought by the Harris Federation in March 2014 for £45 million, a highly controversial purchase within the sixth form community:
“So it is entirely unjust that £45m has been found to establish an institution that will educate less than a fifth of the number of students currently enrolled at some of the existing sixth form colleges in London. The total capital budget for all 93 sixth form colleges in England last year was less than £60m.”
Whether their response will differ now, a decade later, is unknown. At the very least, HWSF seems to have made up for its investment.
Back to the Steel House, however. Little of the interior has remained from construction. One of the few permanent features, the staircase, does seem to be original, though heavily modified (and painted) from its original steel foundation. Much of the original fabric has been lost, including one of the most apt materials for “Steel House”—steel. The original building had entirely steel framed doors and windows, all of metal furnishing company Sankey-Sheldon. The basement had actual coke-fired boilers, justifying its very beautiful, you guessed it, steel ventilation grilles along the ground floor elevation.
Apparently, there was even a pneumatic tube system, as was the standard in office buildings of the time. So much of the identity has been stripped over time, including a stunning Portland stone entrance canopy with bent metal “Steel House” lettering mounted above.
An oft-underappreciated component of Steel House is the back. Look out any rear window and you will notice that each floor is progressively “stepped”, carefully designed to preserve light rights (yes, they exist) as not to overshadow neighbouring buildings. If only modern planners considered that more today.
Arguably the building’s biggest challenge was converting it to a school. 600 students fitting in a building designed for office workers brought considerable challenge for Nicholas Hare Architects and ultimately involved redrawing plans multiple times. Like its intended purpose, the eight floor in the original refurbishment plans was marked as plant. To the endless dismay of geography and economics students, it was deemed that classrooms would be needed on that floor.
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