Corporation Of London Research Articles

Movable Feasts on the River Thames

The eloquent cover of this issue, reproduced opposite, was supplied by Paul Christianson to illustrate this essay on the City of London and its feasts by the River Thames. So, too, was our frontispiece of the Lord Mayor’s barge. These two illustrations are courtesy of Guildhall Library, Corporation of London; the third, a copy of the account for a dinner cooked in 1754, is courtesy of the Corporation of London Records Office.

Financial Developments in London in the Seventeenth Century: The Financial Revolution Revisited

A novel series of interest rates paid by the Corporation of London shows that interest rates in London declined by 350 basis points during the seventeenth century. The decline followed a similar pattern in Europe. Records from the Corporation’s archive provide evidence for financial development: an increase in the number and volume of debt instruments, an increase in the number of lenders, and the development of a secondary market. Econometric analysis establishes that increasing the debt instruments’ liquidity contributed to the convergence of interest rates between London and Amsterdam.

Uncovering the City of London Corporation: Territory and temporalities in the new state capitalism

The heterogenous literature on the ‘new state capitalism’ has provoked considerable academic and popular interest in recent years, but also critique regarding how to analytically bolster the concept and enhance empirical understanding. This paper responds to Alami and Dixon’s (2020a , 2020b ) call for a fresh interrogation of the new state capitalism through an examination of the governance of the City of London. As the largest exporter of financial services in the world, the City plays a crucial role in the reproduction of financial capitalism. However, one major deficiency in debates on the political governance of the City surrounds the role of sub-state institutions. Remarkably, with limited exceptions, we know comparatively little about the main municipal authority: the City of London Corporation. As a local governing body, it conducts all the ordinary work of a public authority. But the Corporation also has many peculiar features which distinguish it from other public institutions, including vigorous support of financial services through planning law, lobbying and other promotion. This paper argues that thinking on the new state capitalism offers a vehicle for dissecting how the Corporation operates in the service of transnational financial interests. By unpacking how the Corporation is tied into a web of relations with private finance and other historically developed networks of power, the discussion problematises two macro themes on the new state capitalism: the spatial complexity of multi-scalar state governance and the temporal fluidity of legacies of the past interpenetrating with the present definition of ‘now’.

Financing the rebuilding of the City of London after the Great Fire of 1666

AbstractThis article presents archival data on rebuilding costs and interest rates from the Corporation of London, 1666–83, to analyse how, in the absence of banking or capital market finance, the London Corporation funded the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire. The City borrowed from its citizens and outside investors at rates much lower than previously thought to replace vital services and to support large improvement works. Lenders were reassured by the Corporation's reputation, and its borrowing was partly secured by future coal tax receipts. The records show that funding from these sources was forthcoming and would have covered the costs. Most of the rebuilding was completed in less than a decade; but having invested in public goods without generating the expected flows of income in the form of improved fees, fines, and rents, the City defaulted in 1683.

Social endurance at the Barbican Estate (1968–2020)

The Barbican Estate is a high-density, mixed-use residential estate built between 1964 and 1982 in London, following a 1951 competition launched by the City of London Corporation. The aim was to develop a high-quality housing scheme on the northern edge of the London Wall, in order to encourage people to move to the City, which lay deserted after the destruction of the Second World War. Regarded as one of the most ambitious experiments of postwar architecture, the Barbican Estate was Grade II listed in 2001, the largest built object to be listed in the British Isles. The Barbican Listed Building Management Guidelines (LBMG), first published in 2005 and revised in 2012, were created to guide the implementation and management of change in the estate, while preserving its character. Furthermore, the exceptional number of resident-led initiatives and events that have taken place on the estate — from its inauguration to the present day — are symptomatic of its occupants’ remarkable sense of belonging, and their prevailing sense of concern, care, and pleasure to live there. This article shows how this strong community engagement, endorsed by the LMBG, promotes an ongoing process of maintenance of the Barbican Estate, as it foregrounds a symbiotic relationship between community and heritage.

Mobile Monitoring for the Spatial and Temporal Assessment of Local Air Quality (NO2) in the City of London

This paper reports on the analysis and findings of the data collected during a mobile air quality campaign commissioned by the City of London Corporation (CoL). This was done using an equipped vehicle capable of taking continuous precision measurements of local air quality while travelling within the City. Several comparative analyses on measured Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) data have been performed between Smogmobile data and those available from CoL precision systems as well as with indicative systems, namely Diffusion Tubes, distributed across the City. Key findings highlight that data collected from the Smogmobile, in terms of average concentration of NO2 across the City (62 µg/m3), are very similar to those obtained by averaging the values from the 48 indicative systems (59.5 µg/m3), with an error of just 4%. Overall, this study demonstrates significant potential and value in using mobile air quality measurements to support assessment of air quality over large areas by Local authorities.

IMPACT OF FINANCIAL TECHNOLOGY IN INDIA ON BANKING SECTOR

Technology has, to some degree, always been part of the financial world. The term fintech refers to the synergy between finance and technology, which is used to enhance business operations and delivery of financial services. Financial technology is the application of new technological advancements to products and services in the financial industry. It includes B2C (Business to Client), Crowdfunding Platforms, Block chain and Cryptocurrency, Mobile Payments, Insurance, Robo-Advising, Stock-Trading Apps, Budgeting Apps, Fintech Stocks. Fintech market in India is likely to expand to $31 billion in 2020," India is a dominant force in the financial technology sector globally with 29 per cent annual returns on investments, a report released by the City of London Corporation. The study is important to analyse the impact of fintech in banking sector through analyzing its performance and growth pattern. Implementation of new business models driven by technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Wide middle-class expansion by 2030, India will add 140 million middle-income and 21 million high-income households which will drive the demand and growth on the Indian Fin Tech space. KEY WORDS: Fintech, Financial services, banking sector, India, technology

The Combination Laws and the Struggle for Supremacy in the Early Engineering Trades: The London Society of Journeymen Millwrights

The activities of the London Journeymen Millwrights Society were the catalyst for the first general Combination Act of 1799. Though a tiny local trades club, its reach throughout the major industries and services of the metropolis at that time made it a target for suppression by major commercial and political forces of those war times – the City of London Corporation and the government of William Pitt. Covering the last decades of the eighteenth and early decades of the nineteenth centuries, the study is set against the background of the technological and economic developments of the early industrial revolution. The disputes between masters and journeymen millwrights over the removal of traditional craft practices and lengthy, time-served apprenticeship laws, led to the emergence of a new breed of capitalist engineering employers in the London area. It involved side-lining the traditional ‘all-round’ time-served millwrights and their replacement by specialist engineers (fitters, filers, turners), in what was called an ‘engineering economy’. By contrast, the legacy of the journeymen millwrights’ trade club is found to be their sophisticated democratic constitution, large parts of which would be adopted by future generations of engineering and other trade unions.

The offshore city, Chinese finance, and British capitalism: Geo-economic rebalancing under the Coalition government

This article examines the embrace of Chinese finance under the United Kingdom’s 2010–2015 Coalition government. The article argues that the City of London’s centrality within British capitalism has been reinforced, not displaced, since the Global Financial Crisis. Geo-economic rebalancing towards China, not the Coalition’s professed spatial and sectoral ‘rebalancing’ ambitions, prevailed. To explain the City’s renewed pre-eminence in the wake of the crisis, the article draws upon a modified version of the ‘City–Bank–Treasury nexus’ theory of British capitalism. Breaking from structuralist approaches that underplay the City of London Corporation’s role within economic policy-making, the article illuminates the Corporation’s agency as a key parastate institution that reoriented the City–Bank–Treasury nexus towards Chinese finance under the Coalition.

The royal entries of Henry VI in a London civic manuscript

ABSTRACTLondon Metropolitan Archives, Archives of the Corporation of London, MS Letter Book K, contains descriptions of Henry VI's royal entries into both Paris (1431) and London (1432). Their placement one after the other in a London Letter Book was likely the work of the city's common clerk, John Carpenter, who was the author of the description of the London entry. The royal entry descriptions' textual contents and manuscript context demonstrate a conscious effort to compare the two events and the king's two capitals, and to promote the city of London over Paris.

The changing nature of the workplace and the future of office space

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to outline key changes happening within occupier businesses that will have a medium- to long-term impact upon the demand for office space and, ultimately, the property investment market. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on survey work undertaken for the City of London Corporation as well as direct experience in advising corporate occupiers on their accommodation needs. Findings – The findings suggest major changes taking place in the demand profile of office occupiers, in terms of both quantitative and qualitative demand for space. Practical implications – There are a number of practical implications arising from the findings, not the least being the need for investors to consider the appropriateness of current standards for base building design and fit-out in contemporary offices. Originality/value – The paper presents the output of primary research and consulting and is therefore of an original nature. Its value lies in the fact that the findings reflect the actual experiences and plans of corporate occupiers and can be taken as reliable indicators of future demand for office space.

‘The Great Refusal’: Why Does the City of London Corporation Only Govern the Square Mile?

This article asks why the City of London Corporation only governs the Square Mile. It looks first at the initial decision, in the 1630s, and agrees with previous commentators that caution was the key. It then jumps to the 1830s onwards and concludes that, by then, the chance of voluntary expansion was gone. The article therefore focuses on the period in-between. Why did the City not expand in the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the circumstances were outwardly much more propitious? The answers are found variously in the City's role as a member-based corporation, contemporary attitudes to ‘local government’, the way in which the City enforced the ‘freedom’, its financial difficulties, a focus on national not local issues and the simple absence of pressure to expand (or ‘reform’).

Looking for Africa: Sources in London Archives at London Metropolitan Archives (LMA)

This paper is based on a talk given to SCOLMA on the 3 November 2014 by Maureen Roberts, Senior Development Officer and Richard Wiltshire, Senior Archivist Business Archives at London Metropolitan Archives.This article explores sources on Africa in the collections at London Metropolitan Archives and highlights the strong links London had with the African continent and its people. Particular focus is given to the archives of Standard Chartered Bank, and of Eric and Jessica Huntley, Black publishers and to associated cataloguing and outreach projects the repository has been involved in.Based in Clerkenwell, London Metropolitan Archives is the largest local authority archive in the United Kingdom and holds over 105 linear shelf kilometres of archives. Managed by the City of London Corporation, London Metropolitan Archives collects records relating to pan-Greater London and the City of London Square mile. London Metropolitan Archives is open to the public as a free service for all including family historians, academics, school children, community and other user groups.

Short monetary systems: take a risk, create money

PurposeThe purpose of this editorial is to examine fiat currencies and common tenders (trade‐based money) from a risk perspective. The editorial encourages risk managers to consider the distributive benefits of a multiplicity of currencies and urges them to examine common tenders both old, such as the Swiss WIR, and novel, such as capacity exchange monies, as risk management tools.Design/methodology/approachThe editorial is based on research conducted for the City of London Corporation in 2011 into capacity, trade and credit which examined new architectures for commerce and money.FindingsThe editorial links Freiwirtschaft movement ideas with some characteristics of common tenders. Further, it considers whether some simple regulatory approaches might make such common tenders more useful.Originality/valueOf note, the author suggests that a modern alternative to government regulation might be an audited ISO accreditation standard for “good currency” or “good common tender”.

‘A Most Exquisite Dilemma’: Conscience, Dissent and the Limits of Civic Authority in London’s Sheriffs Case

In 1754, the City of London Corporation began legal proceedings against Allen Evans and Alexander Sheafe to enforce payment of their fines for failing to act as the City’s sheriffs. This article argues that this was not a simple case of debt collection, or even of the City’s need to enforce the performance of such roles. Rather, it explores contemporary accusations that the City authorities were exploiting the legal and moral dilemmas faced by its dissenting liverymen to raise the necessary capital for the construction of the Lord Mayor’s Mansion House. More broadly, it argues that the matter offers a specific London context for understanding eighteenth-century discord concerning the validity — and indeed the existence — of England’s ancient constitution. London, whose cherished semi-autonomy from the fiat of the monarch relied on the performance of its own ancient liberties in its civic, commercial and municipal domains, proved a compelling arena for this debate.

From oligarchy to a ‘rate payer's democracy’: the evolution of the Corporation of London, 1680s–1750s

ABSTRACT:Between the Glorious Revolution and the mid-eighteenth century the governance of the Corporation of London was transformed from an oligarchy of aldermen to a ‘rate payer's democracy’. Previous analyses of this transformation have produced a contradictory picture of how and why this shift in governance occurred. By analysing the Corporation's progress to democracy from an administrative perspective, this article argues that this process was more evolutionary in nature than has previously been suggested.

Architecture and crisis: re-inventing the icon, re-imag(in)ing London and re-branding the City

Over the last decade, London�€™s skyline is changing significantly with a new generation of iconic buildings, of which the Swiss-Re Tower is the most well known. Despite the fact that most of these buildings are located in the City (London�€™s financial heart) little attention has been paid to the relationship between the transformation of London�€™s skyline and the recent institutional reconfiguration of the Corporation of London, the authority that runs the City. Focusing empirically on the City�€™s iconic architecture, and foregrounding a period of institutional crisis for the Corporation (1970-1990), the paper: first, departs from the standard analysis of iconic buildings as signifiers of economic success, and sketches a framework for examining the role of iconic architecture during moments of crisis; second, it offers a new approach to understanding the City�€™s iconic commissions: not as signifiers of London�€™s international economic power, but as symptoms of changes in the institutions and elites that promote the City�€™s new urbanity. The article details how the internationalisation of London�€™s economy after the 1970s challenged the Corporation�€™s insular character. The Corporation�€™s resistance to the �€˜invasion�€™ of foreign companies, people and architectural styles in the City in the midst of a rapid expansion of London�€™s economy and growing inter-urban competition, led to open threats from the government for the abolition of the Corporation. Responding to these threats, the Corporation reinvented itself with an institutional reform and re-branded its identity in the early 2000s as an outward looking institution, open to London�€™s new transnational elites. The 2002 Unitary Development Plan that introduced a new architectural language in the City, corresponds to the same need to construct a new imaginary identity for a re-branded Corporation. Towering over the City�€™s traditional signifiers, the City�€™s new buildings constitute an ode to the Corporation�€™s new identity and a visual Coup d�€™�‰tat against its time-old heritage oriented planning.

The Death of London's 'Living Bridge': Financial Crisis, Property Crash and the Modernization of London Bridge in the Mid-Eighteenth Century

The removal of the houses from London Bridge in the mid-eighteenth century was a highly symbolic moment in the capital's progress towards modernity. This article examines the causes behind this transformation of one of London's most iconic structures, and demonstrates that it was a series of crises in the finances of the Corporation of London that eventually drove the City of London to administer the last rites to its 'living bridge'. In pursuing such an argument, this article demonstrates that the state of London's local government finances could be an influential factor in determining the characteristics of the capital's built environment.

Navigability and the improvement of the river Thames, 1605–1815

Through ‘improvement’ the Thames was subjected to a bureaucratic regime of engineered discipline that was brought into effect by the early nineteenth century. Over recent years, rivers have been explained with reference to their materiality and their social identity, and the Thames of the past can perhaps best be understood as a discursively produced materiality. In the medieval and early‐modern periods, the Thames was perceived as a gift or as a burden by those who used it, its socioecology administered by a series of overlapping administrations. From the seventeenth century it was administered and re‐engineered by regulating organisations – in particular by the Corporation of London, the Oxford Authority, and the Commissioners of the Thames – that established a comprehensive system of locks as part of creating an improved river. The new socioecological order of the Thames provided an engineered resolution to the conflicting uses of the river by the milling and barging industries, and enabled an accommodation to be reached with the new canals. It represented the work of the ‘hidden geography’ that had expressed itself in the remaking of the river in accordance with the requirements of capital.

The extraordinary tale of Dartford, the hospital town

Between 1877 and 1903 something extraordinary in the history of health services happened in a small north Kent town. The number of hospital beds in Dartford increased a staggering 60-fold to reach almost 10,000, this in a local population of just over 20,000. The earlier history of the town offers no clues as to why this happened. Tracing the developments of the 11 hospitals over the 26-year period reveals the role of three powerful bodies establishing facilities to meet the needs of Londoners: the City of London Corporation, the Metropolitan Asylums Board and London County Council. It is also apparent that there was no careful strategic plan but a series of opportunistic and pragmatic decisions, facilitated by the lack of any effective local opposition as occurred within London. The staggering increase in hospital beds in Dartford in the late 19th century is just an exceptional example of the way health services so often develop.