I have now had a chance to visit the new offices in 85 Gracechurch Street, which I was interested to see are exactly opposite number 3, the temporary accommodation in which the Institute was housed post IRA bomb.

It got me wondering about how many addresses the Institute has had since it began. It seems that, for a long time after its inauguration, the Institute shared offices — and a secretary — with the Baltic Exchange secretariat.

This appears to have continued until 1931 when the effect of gaining a Royal Charter had caused such rapid expansion that the Institute outgrew its corner of the Baltic’s offices. The resultant move was not very far, just across the road to number 57 St Mary Axe. A quaint building designed by a church architect for the eccentric Chairman of (the then family company) Cory Brothers.

The decision by the new owners of Cory Brothers not to renew the lease in 1952 appeared to catch the Institute “on the hop” and a hasty move was made to some apparently gloomy offices in 44 Leadenhall Street.
Four years later, the Baltic again came to the Institute’s rescue and offered a suite of offices at 15 Bury Street which was actually the back entrance of the Baltic Exchange. There is a considerable amount of hearsay about those offices but very little to be found in black and white.

It was, I gather, the first appearance of the stained glass windows which incorporate the Institute’s armorial bearing (coat of arms) which still adorn the office to this day. But I can find no trace of who commissioned or paid for that magnificent piece of glasswork. Indeed I cannot even find who applied for and obtained the coat of arms itself; does anyone out there know? Those ground floor offices had to be vacated to accommodate the demands of a change in the refuse collection system of the City of London but fortunately the Baltic was able to accommodate us on the second floor from which the devastating IRA bomb in 1992 evicted us.

The Institute had “no fixed abode” for some while, with use of desks in Lloyd’s of London and Braemar Shipbroking’s offices tiding us over until some unused space formally the London School of Foreign Trade became available in Lambeth, just across the road from the UK’s Intelligence service.

Then to 3 Gracechurch Street for a short while and 3 St Helen’s Place in 1995 and now back to Gracechchurch Street again.

Nine addresses in almost a century — we are hardly nomads.

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