The Marsham Towers were three government buildings at the corner of

Marsham Street Marsham Street is a street in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is approximately one mile in length and runs south from Great Peter Street near Victoria Street, London, Victoria Street and Parliament Square. Description Marsham Str ...

and Great Peter Street in

Westminster Westminster is the main settlement of the City of Westminster in Central London, Central London, England. It extends from the River Thames to Oxford Street and has many famous landmarks, including the Palace of Westminster, Buckingham Palace, ...

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

. They served as the headquarters of the

Department of the Environment An environmental ministry is a national or subnational government agency politically responsible for the environment and/or natural resources. Various other names are commonly used to identify such agencies, such as Ministry of the Environment, ...

Redevelopment

The redevelopment of the site was long planned. The site was originally a gas works and had first included two gas holders (built 1875), renovated in

World War 2 World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated, with many nations mobilisin ...

for use as bomb shelter 'citadels'—the North Rotunda and the South Rotunda. A new '

steel-framed building Steel frame is a building technique with a "skeleton frame" of vertical steel columns and horizontal I-beams, constructed in a rectangular grid to support the floors, roof and walls of a building which are all attached to the frame. The develop ...

' was also added in 1940/41. Both rotundas were designed to survive the impact of a 500 lb bomb and had concrete roofs. In 1943 the lowest level of the North Rotunda (codenamed ''Anson'') was kitted out as the reserve to the Cabinet War Rooms. The previous reserve

Paddock A paddock is a small enclosure for horses. In the United Kingdom, this term also applies to a field for a general automobile racing competition, particularly Formula 1. Description The most common design provides an area for exercise and is ofte ...

in Dollis Hill was seen to be unsatisfactory and too far from

Whitehall Whitehall is a road and area in the City of Westminster, Central London, England. The road forms the first part of the A roads in Zone 3 of the Great Britain numbering scheme, A3212 road from Trafalgar Square to Chelsea, London, Chelsea. It ...

. By the early 1960s, the increasing numbers of civil servants led to the commissioning of

Eric Bedford Eric Lance Bedford (18 February 1928 – 8 July 2006) was an Australian politician, affiliated with the Labor Party and elected as a member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly. Bedford was born at Concord, NSW, and attended Fort Stre ...

(1909–2001), chief architect for the Ministry of Public Building and Works, to design a headquarters building for three separate ministries, the

Ministry of Housing and Local Government The Ministry of Housing and Local Government was a United Kingdom government department formed following the Second World War, covering the areas of housing and local government. It was formed, as the Ministry of Local Government and Planning, ...

, the

Ministry of Transport A ministry of transport or transportation is a ministry responsible for transportation within a country. It usually is administered by the ''minister for transport''. The term is also sometimes applied to the departments or other government a ...

and the Ministry of Public Building and Works. His design, published in 1963, placed three twenty-storey slab blocks parallel north to south on top of a three-storey podium slab raised on stilts. Each tower had exposed concrete framing, being built in a new 'box-shell' system which mixed pre-cast concrete and on-site construction. They were tall. The towers incorporated the rotundas in the base and were completed in 1971. The rotundas were used as a communications centre and a civil service sports club, amongst other things. By the time the towers were complete, the three separate ministries had merged into the Department of the Environment, and having separate towers proved inefficient. The bland frontage of the blocks, described in

Nikolaus Pevsner Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner (30 January 1902 – 18 August 1983) was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, ''The Buildings of England'' (195 ...

's architectural guides as "the very image of faceless bureaucracy", was much criticised and local people nicknamed them "the three ugly sisters". Marshamtowerdemolition

Michael Heseltine Michael Ray Dibdin Heseltine, Baron Heseltine, (; born 21 March 1933) is a British politician. Having begun his career as a property developer, he became one of the founders of the publishing house Haymarket Media Group in 1957. Heseltine se ...

announced on 6 February 1992 that he proposed to knock the building down. In 1996 an architectural competition was held for a mixed-use replacement but did not produce a clear outcome. Eventually it was decided to build a replacement for the

Home Office The Home Office (HO), also known (especially in official papers and when referred to in Parliament) as the Home Department, is the United Kingdom's interior ministry. It is responsible for public safety and policing, border security, immigr ...

on the site and the towers were taken down in 2002/03. The site is now occupied by Sir Terry Farrell's new building at

2 Marsham Street 2 Marsham Street is an office building on Marsham Street in the City of Westminster, London, and headquarters of the Home Office and Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (and its predecessor bodies), departments of the Brit ...

, which the Home Office first occupied in February 2005 and a housing development containing just over 100 apartments called New Palace Place.

References

External links

Subterranea Britannica on the Rotundas
{{coord, 51.495911, -0.129913 , display=title, format=dms Government buildings completed in 1971 National government buildings in London Former buildings and structures in the City of Westminster Buildings and structures demolished in 2003 1971 establishments in England 2003 disestablishments in England Former skyscrapers Demolished buildings and structures in London Headquarters in the United Kingdom