No 1 Poultry

No 1 Poultry stands at the sharp corner where Poultry, Queen Victoria Street and Mansion House Street meet in the City of London. Its pink and yellow limestone stripes catch the light, and the tall apex holds a two-sided clock above a pointed set of thirty window panes. Bucklersbury Passage cuts through the building, linking the north side on Poultry with the south side on Queen Victoria Street. Inside, the atrium courtyard shows Stirling’s acidulous colour play on walls and floors. The keyhole-shaped opening behind the apex leads to the Scala Regia, a ramped corridor with gold-leafed walls and an Egyptian feel. The building replaced a neo-Gothic Mappin & Webb store designed by John Belcher in 1870. In the 1980s a modernist tower by Mies van der Rohe was proposed but Prince Charles criticised it in his ‘carbuncle’ speech, and the plan was dropped. Archaeologists found a Roman wooden drain dated 47 CE, proving Londinium had reached this spot early. After James Stirling’s death, his team finished the postmodern design in 1997. In 2016 experts listed the building at grade II*, making it England’s youngest protected structure at the time. Visitors walk through Bucklersbury Passage into the atrium, where pink and yellow bands frame views upward. The Scala Regia’s gold-leafed end and ramped floor give a sense of arrival. Above, the rooftop restaurant terrace offers formal gardens and wide views across the City. The terrace has seen six fatal jumps, drawing notice, while the Bond sequence in the 2012 Olympics showed the terrace to millions. The turret above the clock is sometimes compared to a submarine conning tower, adding to the building’s layered references.