Monday 5 July 2010

St Martin's House, 1 Gresham Street EC1

Despite its florid Flemish Renaissance all-over carving of this 1891 Victorian office block, the Gresham Street facade of St Martin's House is only the side entrance - the postal address is St Martin's le Grand.
The carvings are rather superior. Most are strapwork with fanciful beasts, but these two Renaissance heads are particularly good.
The jolly, smiling Mr Sun in the semicircular pediment above the door is particularly enjoyable.
Hilariously, the carved stone name panel below has an aberrant apostrophe. Did no-one notice when the scaffolding came down, or was it just too expensive to correct?
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2 comments:

  1. rustlem16 August 2010 at 15:39

    FYI There are more snaps of teh stone features of 1 Gresham Street here

    http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/11/13/they-dont-make-things-like-this-any-more-etc/

    ReplyDelete
  2. Stuart26 February 2017 at 05:55

    It looks as though that apostrophe has now been removed.

    ReplyDelete