Work Gallery

Comptometer Room, Stratford Cooperative Society 1914 BL22762

STRATFORD CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETY, Maryland Street, Stratford, Greater London. Interior view of the Comptometer Room at Stratford Co-operative Society, showing girls and boys working on model E compometers, manual calculating machines. The comptometer, invented in 1887 by American, Dor Felt, was the first successful manual calculating machine. The children in the photograph could be employed in work, with the school leaving age only being raised to 14 in the Education Act of 1918. Photographed by Harry Bedford Lemere, 1st July 1914

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Meeting JLP01_09_820415

Sir John Laing Building, Page Street, Mill Hill, Barnet, Greater London. A meeting of the Treasury Department team at the Sir John Laing Building, Mill Hill.
The Sir John Laing Building, named in honour of the company's president who died in January 1978 at the age of 98, was built between 1977 and 1980 having been planned since 1974. The building completed a phase of development at Laing's Mill Hill headquarters complex, an area that the firm had occupied since moving from Carlisle in 1922. By 1988 however a major restructuring of the company and meant a wholesale relocation out of the Mill Hill site with just the Sir John Laing Building remaining as Group HQ. It too was subsequently demolished and housing occupies the site. The use of brick in a sculptural way was a deliberate attempt by architect Graham Barsby to distance the design from the concrete rectilinear forms of the 1960s. The building won a Certificate of Merit in the Brick Development Association Architectural Awards in 1983

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Open plan office JLP01_10_30073

COTTONS CENTRE, TOOLEY STREET, LONDON BRIDGE CITY, SOUTHWARK, GREATER LONDON. A large open plan office filled with banks of computers in the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce at the Cottons Centre in London Bridge City.
The Cottons Centre is part of a complex of offices, flats and shops on Tooley Street in London Bridge City built by Laing Management Contracting for the St Martins Group who redeveloped the former Hay's Wharf site on the south bank of the River Thames. It consisted of two symmetrical nine storey units linked by a glass atrium and incorporated extensive leisure facilities including a swimming pool, squash courts, a gymnasium and retail units. Half of the building was fitted out by Laing under a separate management contract for Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. The redevelopment of this area took place over 2 1/2 years between 1985-1988 and included No.1 London Bridge, Cottons, Hay's Galleria and 29-33 Tooley Street. At the time, it was the biggest building contract in London and was one of the largest construction projects in the country

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