Where there's brass
Rash iconoclasm sweeps the City. From the Government broker to the senior bill-workers, no monument can be counted secure. Worst of all, vandalous Pick- hammers have fallen upon Gunton's Grotto
— the City's noblest, most spacious, most i convenient convenience. All roads led to t
— Lombard, Threadneedle, Poultry, Corn- hill. Its splendours of brass and marble and mahogany were inaugurated in 1881, as polished plaque recorded, by Alderman Josiah Gunton. What a ceremony that must have been! What an assemblage of furred gowns, and silk hats, and chains! Now it, stands desolate, like a partially excavated tomb — a wooden palisade surrounding 3 dismal cavity, a heffalump-trap for the equestrian statue of the Duke of Well ington. Who foresaw, or rather failed .to foresee, what would happen when the CitY became, as it has, the stage for demonstra; tions? The protestors assemble in great numbers, bringing a day's supply in tins and bottles. Then they find themselves repulsed at the palisades and, turning in their tracks, ascend the broad steps of the, Royal Exchange. There the lately-installe° market in financial futures has found itselt overwhelmed by unauthorised and irregular transactions on the spot. Turn again' Aldermen! Commission a structure equal to the site and the need (preferably not bY Mies van de Rohe) and aspire to Ilea posterity bless your names along with with ton's! I offer, on being suitably primed , champagne at the Greenhouse bar around the corner, to re-inaugurate the Place myself.
Christopher Films
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