Just off the Underground exit for the Tower of London is a historic building called Ten Trinity Square. In 1922, the Port of London Authority based its headquarters here. In 2008, the present tenant, the Willis Insurance Company, will vacate the property so that it can morph into a luxury hotel.
|
 |
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get inside this English Renaissance style building to see the inner rotunda, restored after the Blitz took its bite. In 1946, The interior hosted the reception at the inaugural meeting of the General Assembly of United Nations. Here's some of the fine finishing touches on the outside:
|
 |
Below is a closer-up of the front. The soldier at right marks one of the two war memorials on site.
 |
Below is the entrance and a typical plaque from the memorial honoring the Merchant Marine personnel who died during the first world war. The names of the departed are listed under the names of their ships; a cross reference is available by seaman name at a nearby location.
 |
 |
A sunken garden in front of Ten Trinity Square building serves as the World War II Merchant Marine memorial with plaques on the wall listing the seamen. The World Wars cost over 40,000 Merchant Navy and fishing fleet lives, about 20% of this "civilian" manpower. Since most bodies were never recovered, these plaques serve as their tombstones.
 |
Bas-reliefs of ample mermaids and other mythical aquatic creatures are interspersed among the names of the fallen (or sunken) -- again in alphabetical order of ship, with the seamen attached to their vessels.
 |
Below is an interesting gate just outside Ten Trinity Square.
 |
This
work is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.