Lloyd’s of London: inside and outside the inside-out building
- London On The Ground
- 4 days ago
- 6 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
A visit to Richard Rogers’ “awe-inspiring futuristic" landmark.
When the Lloyd’s Building was completed in 1986, to designs by renowned architect Richard Rogers, there was nothing else quite like it. There still isn’t.
I recently had an opportunity to go inside the Lloyd’s Building for the first time.
Walks available for booking
For a schedule of forthcoming London On The Ground guided walks and tours, please click here.
Grade I listing
In 2011, the Lloyd’s Building became the youngest structure ever to be Grade I listed by Historic England.
Its key innovation, and most striking visual feature, is that the services infrastructure - usually hidden inside the core of a commercial building - is visible on the outside.
This includes lifts, emergency stairwells, toilet cabins and pipes and ducts for services such as air, water and electric cables.
In the official listing, Historic England described it as a “seminal late-C20 building by one of Britain’s most significant modern architects” and declared: “It exemplifies the High Tech style in Britain, with its boldly expressed services and flexibility of plan throughout the impressive exterior and interior.”
The listing also praised the building’s timelessness, noting that it “looked to Victorian as well as mid C20 buildings for inspiration", yet "firmly retains the splendour of its awe-inspiring futuristic design, 25 years (at the time of listing in 2011) after it opened.”
‘Bowellism’
The inside-out style of architecture deployed by Richard Rogers for the Lloyd’s Building has been dubbed ‘Bowellism’, since the guts of the building are visible on the outside.
Rogers developed ideas he had used on the Pompidou Centre in Paris, co-designed with Italian architect Renzo Piano in the late 1970s. He was also influenced by the work of US architect Louis Kahn.
Locating services on the outside of the building provides easier access for maintenance purposes and maximises internal space for the large atrium. The principal disadvantage is that the external infrastructure is exposed to the weather and costs a lot to maintain.
External details
Constructed on a concrete frame, the building has six perimeter towers with stainless steel services, topped by blue-painted steel cranes for cleaning and maintenance.
The central atrium, triple glazed on a steel lattice with a barrel vaulted ceiling, is a nod towards the adjacent Leadenhall Market, a 19th century City landmark.
The building is asymmetric and not all of the same height. Each elevation presents a dramatically different profile. The effect is somewhat disorientating, making it impossible (for me, at least) to have a clear mental image of the whole structure, even while looking at it.
On the Leadenhall Street side of the building, a 1925 Portland stone façade is all that is left of the previous Lloyd’s Building on this site.
A brief history of Lloyd’s
Lloyd’s is not an insurance company, but an insurance market. It brings together underwriters and brokers and traces its origins to 1688, when Edward Lloyd set up a coffee house in Tower Street.
As it was close to the docks on the River Thames, the coffee house became a meeting place for ship’s captains, ship owners and others with an interest in the maritime industry. Even after Lloyd moved his shop away from the docks to Lombard Street a few years later, it retained this clientele.
The coffee house spawned the marine insurance business, whereby underwriters would cover the loss of ships and their cargo. This helped to stimulate Britain’s development as a trading nation and as a colonial power. It also facilitated the growth of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Over time, Lloyd’s underwriters branched out into insuring all other kinds of risks. Today, it provides insurance across a very wide range of sectors and has a reputation for taking on specialist risks that other insurers are reluctant to cover.
Lloyd’s moved into the Royal Exchange in the late 18th century, before commissioning its own purpose-built offices on Leadenhall Street, designed by Sir Edwin Cooper in 1925.
It expanded into an adjacent building in 1936 and added another new building, designed by Terence Heysham across Lime Street, in 1957.
However, Lloyd’s was outgrowing its Leadenhall Street and Lime Street premises by the late 1970s. It chose the Rogers design for a new building in 1978 from a shortlist that also include Norman Foster (whose ‘Gherkin’ was later built just up the road on St Mary Axe).
Underwriters and Lloyd’s office staff squeezed into the Heysham Building until the old Edwin Cooper had been demolished and the new building was completed in May 1986.
Click on any image to enlarge
Above left: Lloyd’s Building model. Above right: part of the Lloyd’s Building seen from the roof garden at 120 Fenchurch Street.
The atrium
The atrium houses the underwriting floor (simply known as the Floor), with space for up to 6,000 underwriters and brokers to meet and write insurance contracts. Lloyd’s remains one of the few modern financial institutions where business is still mainly carried out face to face.
The atrium contains a further 12 floors, or galleries, the lower levels accessible by escalators within the central space.
Click on any image to enlarge
The majority of the internal space is occupied by the insurance market, although the market’s host – known as the Corporation of Lloyd’s – also occupies a significant part of it.
Lutine Bell
The very modern, high tech-style, Lloyd’s Building, also retains some traditional features that acknowledge the long history of the institution.
Lloyd's employs administrative/reception staff, known as waiters, who dress in a style evoking the uniform of the waiters in Edward Lloyd's coffee house.
In the atrium hangs a bell, recovered in 1858 from HMS Lutine, a ship that sank in 1799. Since 1859 the bell has hung in Lloyd’s premises at the Royal Exchange, Leadenhall Street, Lime Street and the present Lloyd’s Building.
Click on any image to enlarge
Above: the 1928 Lloyd's Building and the 1957 building, both painted by Terence Cuneo. Spot the Lutine Bell in both!
Traditionally, the Lutine Bell was rung once for bad news (including the loss of a ship insured through Lloyd’s) and twice for good news. However, it is now only rung on ceremonial occasions, including on Armistice Day. It was rung to mark the death of architect Richard Rogers in December 2021.
The manual loss ledger
Close to the Lutine Bell, a manual ledger is still maintained to record the names of ships that are lost while covered by Lloyd’s underwriters.
When I visited there was a book on display that showed the names of lost ships 100 years previously, together with the most recent one. In October 1925 seven ships and boats sank within three days. In October 2025 none had been lost since April, more than six months earlier.
Underwriting Boxes
In the basement of the building a 19th century Lloyd’s ‘underwriting box’ has been preserved. It is a desk and benches of the kind that Edward Lloyd once provided for his clientele in the emerging insurance sector.
These coffee house-style boxes were later carried into the Royal Exchange and the two previous 20th century buildings. Although the style has since been modernised, underwriters still refer to their workstations as boxes.
Old Library
The old library from the 1925 Cooper building has been reconstructed on the lower ground floor of the Rogers building. With wooden panels and painted portraits of former Lloyd’s grandees it no longer has any books, but is used as a meeting room.
Adam Room
On the 11th floor is an 18th century dining room originally designed by architect Robert Adam for the Earl of Shelbourne at Bowood House in Wiltshire in 1763.
Lloyd’s bought the room when the mansion was being demolished in the 1950s and reassembled it in the Heysham Building in 1957 for use as its Committee Room. Its design by one of the greatest 18th century architects now provides a stark contrast to its high tech surroundings in the current Lloyd’s Building.
I have often stood outside the Lloyd’s Building and told its story to my walking tour groups. It was a genuine thrill to see inside this most iconic of City of London office buildings.
Click on any image to enlarge
Click on any image to enlarge
Walks available for booking
For a schedule of forthcoming London On The Ground guided walks and tours, please click here.