The FCO: Policy, people and places - The buildings of the FCO

When the Foreign Office was created in 1782, its small staff was easily accommodated in two houses at Cleveland Row, St James's, formerly occupied by the Secretaries of State of the Northern and Southern Departments. During the rest of the eighteenth century, with increases in both staff and business, the Office was obliged to move briefly to the Cockpit, Whitehall, and eventually to Downing Street, where Lord Sheffield's house was acquired. By the late 1820s, the Foreign Office had taken over more houses in Downing Street, and in Fludyer Street which ran parallel with it, while the office of the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies was housed in the adjacent Nos 13-14 Downing Street which looked back on to St James's Park.

Downing Street and its environs was at that time far from being the select and salubrious home of central government it has since become. The narrow streets and alleys were full of public houses, such as the Cat and Bagpipes and the Rose and Crown, some of which could trace their origins back to mediaeval hostels set up for pilgrims seeking the shrine of Edward the Confessor at Westminster Abbey. These rubbed shoulders with livery stables, dressmaking establishments, cheap lodging houses for Irish and Scottish MPs, private houses and major and minor departments of state, and both ministers and clerks worked to an accompaniment of carriage wheels, horses' hooves and hawkers plying their wares. Stories abound of the FO clerks' unofficial activities - buying strawberries via baskets suspended on strings of red tape, throwing hot pennies to street singers, and signalling with mirrors to pretty dressmakers across the way - giving rise to the comment that they, like the fountains in Trafalgar Square, 'played from ten to four'. Critics forgot the long hours and weekend working imposed on the clerks, especially when Palmerston was Foreign Secretary.

Worse than this, however, was the instability of the houses themselves. An underground stream had made the area very boggy, and the foundations of some of the houses in Downing and Fludyer Streets were so poor that one had fallen down and the rest of the Foreign Office was shored up with wooden posts. Add to this the vibration from printing presses initially placed in the attic storey, and it will come as no surprise to learn that some houses were not expected to survive beyond the length of their leases, at best some twenty years. Dangerous cracks appeared in walls and ceilings, and the Librarian was especially afflicted by noxious odours wafting into his room from a faulty sewer.

There were several plans to build a new Foreign Office on the Downing Street site, but nothing came of them until the 1850s, when it was decided to centralise the major departments of state in Whitehall and to replace the warren of fine houses and tumbledown courts with purpose-built ministries. In 1856 a government competition for plans for new Foreign and War Offices on the Downing Street site was announced, and in 1858 after a protracted argument on the form of the redevelopment (the 'Battle of the Styles' between those favouring Gothic or Classical architecture) George Gilbert Scott was appointed as architect. Scott had envisaged a Gothic Foreign Office, but this was not approved by Lord Palmerston, and although a compromise Byzantine solution was offered, it too was rejected as 'a regular mongrel affair'. Palmerston refused to countenance anything other than a building in the classical style, and Scott finally succumbed and produced drawings for the building we know today. Work began on clearing the site and sinking foundations in 1861-2, obliging the Office to move to temporary accommodation in Whitehall Gardens, and the new Foreign Office eventually opened for business in July 1868.

The new War Office on the site next to the Foreign Office never materialised and the area was taken over by the newly created India Office. Scott was entrusted with 'the architectural superintendence of the building' in 1859, but the interior was designed by Matthew Digby Wyatt, Surveyor of the former East India Company and subsequently Architect to the Council of India. Wyatt could draw upon the revenues of India, as well as the proceeds from the sale of East India House, in Leadenhall Street in the City, and he could thus afford to decorate the interior courtyard of the India Office with marble, tiled friezes and a wealth of elaborate carving; and the Council Chamber and the Secretary of State for India's Oval Room with mahogany, oak and gold leaf. The courtyard was used for a great reception for the Sultan of Turkey in the summer of 1867, and the new India Office opened with an official breakfast on 29 November 1867.

Scott proceeded with plans for the new Colonial and Home Offices, which would extend the block to Whitehall. The building of the new Foreign Office had further upset the foundations of the old Colonial Office, and its height had the unexpected effect of stopping some of the CO chimneys from drawing. Officials were either almost choked in rooms filled with smoke, or frozen by keeping the windows open. As Scott had been criticised for designing such lofty and highly decorated rooms for the Foreign Office, he was given instructions to make the Colonial and Home Offices less elaborate, and he followed these strictures to such good effect that they were completed in 1875 for only very slightly more than the cost of the Foreign Office alone.

These four buildings were reasonably satisfactory offices until the First World War, when large increases in staff and business gave rise to serious shortages of space. Some relief was given by the building of another storey in the 1920s, but this gave only a temporary respite, and matters became much worse during and after the Second World War. The India Office courtyard, for example, (renamed Durbar Court in 1902, when it was the scene of some of King Edward VII's Coronation festivities) was taken over by the FO Communications Department and the marble floor disappeared under prefabricated huts and pipework. The suite of three reception rooms, magnificently decorated and designed by Scott for diplomatic entertainment, had been used as offices during the First World War, but were subsequently cleared so that the Treaty of Locarno could be signed in the largest room on 1 December 1925. The suite was then redecorated, rechristened the Locarno Suite, and returned to its original purposes until 1939. During the Second World War, the Suite provided a home for the FO Cyphering Department, and afterwards, plasterboard partitions divided the rooms into offices for the Legal Advisers and others.

After the India Office ceased to exist as a separate ministry in 1947, the Foreign Office took over the rest of its building, mainly for use by the now greatly enlarged German Department, but the shortage of space was still acute. Plans to build a new Foreign Office in Carlton House Terrace and a new Colonial Office in Broad Sanctuary came to nothing, and in 1963, Geoffrey Rippon announced that the whole of Scott's building had come to the end of its useful life and was due for demolition. As a result of the ensuing public debate on their architectural value, Scott's offices were classified as a Grade 1 Listed Building and demolition was prevented.

The merger of the Foreign and Commonwealth Offices in 1968 and the removal of the Home Office to Queen Anne's Gate in 1978, led in time to the occupation of the whole of Scott's building by the FCO. This allowed the formulation of plans to transform what had been four separate ministries into one interconnected and modernised block, while at the same time restoring historically significant areas to their original glory. A rolling programme of restoration and refurbishment was completed in January 1997.

Suggestions for further reading

Sir E. Hertslet's Recollections of the Old Foreign Office (London, 1901) is a rich source of anecdotes about early FO buildings, while FCO Buildings: A Chronology and Bibliography is a comprehensive guide for the period up to 1977 (Library Note 2(77): copies available from FCO Library and Historical Branch). The most detailed survey to date of the origins and construction of all four Old Public Offices is Ian Toplis' The Foreign Office. An Architectural History (London, 1987) although its illustrations are disappointing. Cecil Denny Highton and Partners, The Old Public Office London SW1 (revised edition, London 1985) is the fruit of research by the consultant architects responsible for the refurbishment of the FCO from 1984 onwards, whereas David Church, the PSA architect chiefly responsible for the original restoration programme, gives a brief account of achievements to date in 'Restoration of the Foreign Office Buildings in Whitehall', Construction PSA, No 74, March 1990, pp 9-11. John Martin Robinson's The Wyatts. An Architectural Dynasty (Oxford, 1979) is particularly useful for Matthew Digby Wyatt and the India Office, as is John Cornforth's well-illustrated article 'The Old India Office' in Country Life, 12 November 1987, pp 164-9. Brief histories of the Locarno Suite, the Goetze murals surrounding the Grand Staircase, Durbar Court and the bust of Ernest Bevin can be supplied by Historical Branch, LRD, together with advice on the location of the pictures, prints and photographs of the exterior and interior of the FCO. A second edition of the booklet on the history of the FCO building, illustrated throughout in full colour, was published in 1993 and is available through HMSO bookshops (ISBN 0 11 580263 0).