County Fire Office, Piccadilly Circus W1

The County Fire Office was one of the pivotal buildings on John Nash's magnificent route from Carlton House to Regent's Park, forming a point de vue up Lower Regent Street and marking the change of direction into the Quadrant.
Nash's original was destroyed as part of the wholesale rebuilding of the route. Its 1924 replacement, by Ernest Newton, has all the bombast of the Edwardian period even though that monarch had been dead for more than a decade.
The only link with Nash's design was the inclusion of a statue of Britannia, sculpted by Yorkshireman Hermon Cawthra, a man best known for war memorials in the north. She looks rather stern...