Better known to me as the Post Office Tower…but that probably shows my age.
The tower itself isn’t a brutalist structure at all, designed by the architects of the Ministry of Public Building and Works led by G.R. Yeats and built/completed between 1961 and 1964, officially opened by PM Harold Wilson in 1965 this is very much a modernist building. At 177 m (581 ft), it was the tallest building in the UK until the construction of the NatWest Tower in 1980.
So why is it here on this site…well, I liked the (pretty brutalist) base and felt I could just about stretch the definition to include it…plus I like the slightly more unusual shot angle for this.
The tower, built by principal building contractors Peter Lind & Co., is made from 13,000-tonnes of concrete, steel and glass. The foundations are sunk through 53 m of clay, with a concrete raft 27 sq. m, reinforced with six layers of steel cable beneath a reinforced concrete pyramid…so penty of concrete to go at there 😉
