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This month marks the 117th anniversary of the opening of the current home of the IMechE at One Birdcage Walk. The institution began not in London but in Birmingham, in 1847. However, it had been holding meetings in London since 1851 – the year of the Great Exhibition – and in the 1870s decided it was time to move south, specifically to London. It would be closer to parliament for lobbying, and near engineers such as Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
Prime site
From 1877 to 1899, the institution was renting space at 10 Victoria Chambers in Westminster. But it became clear that it needed a permanent headquarters, so the then president, Alexander Kennedy, found a potential site on Storey’s Gate, facing St James’s Park. A row of houses was due to be pulled down, leaving a prime piece of land.
It was a perfect location for the institution, which paid £9,974.7s.6d for the 5,775ft3 (536.5m3) plot. It also bought the land on which the Storey’s Gate tavern stood, and some members proposed that the pub should be kept on for use by the institution – but it was then decided that engineers had no business running a pub.
The architect appointed to design the building was Basil Slade. However, his first designs were not for an engineering headquarters. The building had originally been intended by a Major J A S Cuninghame as a block of luxury flats. Slade reworked a lot of the features from these original flat plans to suit the building’s new purpose – which could be one of the reasons for the grandeur of the marble hall. The building is in Portland stone – a style popular at the time, and known as ‘Queen Anne’ or ‘streaky bacon’ because of the juxtaposition of red and white brick.
The internal design and features of the building, which was opened in May 1899, were also impressive. The lecture hall, with custom-made furnishing designed by William Henry Maw, featured seating that could be adjusted to the size and shape of an event, natural light supplied by a ceiling dome – this is still visible in the library – and electric lamps. The lecture theatre also featured a 54in (137.2cm) fan for ventilation.
State of the art
Along with the fan and electric lamps, the building was also home to other innovations that were state of the art for their time. Firstly, it had an electric passenger lift, provided by the Otis Elevator Company. This particular model had the added bonus of containing a box beneath for moving coals to fireplaces on the higher floors. A Synchronome master clock controlled all the house timepieces – ensuring they were all correct and in sync. Along with these technological developments, the institution also had one of the first telephones – they were not commonplace for most offices at the time.
In the early 1910s, the institution was rapidly expanding and needed extra office space, so it bought up more land to create a new wing. One Birdcage Walk is actually both numbers One and Three Birdcage Walk. This new wing was designed by James Miller, who also remodelled the inside of the building at the same time. Miller remained the architect to the IMechE for more than 30 years and, decades later, One Birdcage Walk is still home to the institution.
You can view Slade’s architectural drawings for the building, and other images from the institution’s early history, on our new virtual archive at archives.imeche.org/
Did you know? One Birdcage Walk
The lecture hall, with furnishings designed by William Henry Maw, featured seating that could be adjusted to the size and shape of an event, natural light from a ceiling dome, electric lamps and a 54in fan for ventilation.
Basil Slade’s design showing the elevation with an adjoining building. The block had been intended as luxury flats.