{"id":1141417,"date":"2026-08-10T11:02:31","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T11:02:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1141417\/"},"modified":"2026-08-10T11:02:31","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T11:02:31","slug":"office-block-developers-fight-with-heritage-campaigners-over-londons-historic-square-mile-the-art-newspaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1141417\/","title":{"rendered":"Office block developers fight with heritage campaigners over London\u2019s historic Square Mile – The Art Newspaper"},"content":{"rendered":"

Staff at the Museum of London are counting down the days to the opening of their new home in the capital\u2019s Smithfield Market on 28 November<\/a>. Quite how this erstwhile meat market has come to be reborn as London\u2019s future go-to cultural haunt is one of the capital\u2019s biggest heritage success stories.<\/p>\n

In 2014, Save Britain\u2019s Heritage<\/a> and the Victorian Society<\/a> succeeded in their ten-year campaign to stop developers replacing the market buildings with office tower blocks and retail. \u201cThat was a case that we fought and won!\u201d says Victorian Society director James Hughes. While they had no clue what would happen to the site at that point, Hughes says, \u201calways in our mind was the hope that something better could happen to it, not just for the building, but for the people of London. And that\u2019s actually what\u2019s happening now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Smithfield Market has been saved from demolition and is becoming a museum Waldemar Sikora\/Alamy<\/p>\n

The City of London is an amazing place. It will only remain so if treated the right way <\/p>\n

James Hughes, Victorian Society<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

More than 100,000 Londoners have contributed ideas to what the museum should be. It now expects to welcome two million people a year to its
Smithfield venue, thereby playing a central role in shifting the focus of the City of London proper from being the capital\u2019s central financial district to a visitor destination.<\/p>\n

Two other contested redevelopments\u20141 Silk Street, which sits opposite the Grade-II listed Barbican Centre, and London\u2019s Liverpool Street Station, also Grade-II listed\u2014underscore the extreme complexity of renewal in this oldest bit of London. At both sites, new high-rise office towers are hailed by developers as vital instruments of economic growth while critics warn of their destructive impact on listed buildings and conservation areas.<\/p>\n

Threatened by towers<\/p>\n

In May, the City of London Corporation granted planning permission for 1 Silk Street to be transformed with two skyscrapers (16 and 20 storeys high), a plaza and extensive retail space. Lipton Rogers Developments and global property company LaSalle Investment Management say the scheme will contribute 7.5% of the new office space the Corporation aims to create by 2040.<\/p>\n

Campaigners have objected to the impact of the development on the Barbican and the Brewery conservation area to the north of the site, citing \u201can oversized bulk of an office building squeezing out space and light\u201d.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Network Rail\u2019s plan to redevelop Liverpool Street Station is driven by a forecast 35% growth in the number of passengers by 2041 to 158 million annually. With bigger entrances, an expanded concourse and further retail and ticketing space, the transport hub\u2019s current capacity will be nearly doubled. To fund the project, Network Rail plans to build a 97m-tall tower complex over the concourse.<\/p>\n

Campaigners reject the demolition this will entail of substantial parts of the Bishopsgate conservation area and the Grade-II listed station\u2014albeit the newer 1980s and 90s parts, and not anything Victorian. Hughes says: \u201cIt\u2019s an extraordinary principle to accept, an extraordinary precedent to set.\u201d He also argues that the plans ignore quite how sensitive, pioneering and conservation-led the 20th-century redevelopment was.<\/p>\n

Storied cityscape<\/p>\n

The Corporation\u2019s new guidance\u2014which has been co-authored with Historic England\u2014on how developers should consider heritage assets is due to be implemented later this year.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The 85 Gracechurch Street development will integrate a Roman basilica\u2019s remains Courtesy City of London<\/p>\n

Anyone planning to build in the Square Mile has 2,000 years of history to contend with. This is where the Romans founded Londinium in the first century AD, and, 200 years later, built a temple to Mithras<\/a> beneath what is now Bloomberg\u2019s European headquarters.<\/p>\n

The district\u2019s irregular street layout remains medieval, having survived the Great Fire of London in 1666. Tom Sleigh, the Corporation\u2019s planning and transportation committee chair, has a map showing in red the ancient public lanes and alleyways that his team has succeeded in restoring to pedestrian use\u2014ten were approved in 2025. To his mind, the best way to preserve heritage is \u201cto keep it active and enabled and used\u201d, and, crucially, to foster investment in the City.<\/p>\n

The City of London contains nearly 600 listed buildings, 27 conservation areas, 48 scheduled ancient monuments and five historic parks and gardens, not to mention a rich array of living intangible heritage. Even its airspace is controlled, with towers largely confined to the north-east quadrant, around Richard Rogers\u2019s 1986 Lloyd\u2019s Building, to protect sightlines towards landmarks such as St Paul\u2019s Cathedral, the Monument and the Tower of London.<\/p>\n

And yet, planning goes on. In 2025, the Corporation approved half a million square metres of new office space, and the first six months of 2026 have been a boom time for the submission of planning applications. It is all part of a push to facilitate 1.2 million sq. m of new office floorspace by 2040, through new builds and retrofits. The Greater London Authority estimates London\u2019s office workforce will grow by nearly a third in the coming decades, and 80% must be housed right here.<\/p>\n

There is a misconception, Sleigh says, that listing\u2014or conservation area labelling\u2014prohibits change. He points out that what listing does is signal the need to treat an important building with care. Quite what \u201cconservation area\u201d means differs from council to council, he says. \u201cWhat we see it as is summarising a character of the area.\u201d<\/p>\n

This highlights the fundamental tension at work. The Square Mile\u2019s single most defining characteristic\u2014what the Corporation\u2019s guidance labels its \u201cspirit\u201d\u2014is commercial. For two millennia, it has been a place of international business. Growth and building anew are in its DNA.<\/p>\n

For campaigners, protecting the old is just as much about the future. \u201cThe city of London is an amazing place,\u201d Hughes says, \u201cbut it will only remain so if it treats what it has in the right way.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Staff at the Museum of London are counting down the days to the opening of their new home…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1141418,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7757],"tags":[4023,748,393,4884,28066,257,243517,4842,15399,16,15],"class_list":["post-1141417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-london","tag-architecture","tag-britain","tag-england","tag-great-britain","tag-heritage","tag-london","tag-museum-of-london","tag-museums-heritage","tag-redevelopment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117070881053319583","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1141417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1141417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1141417\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1141418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1141417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1141417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1141417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}