Caroone House

Labour Party Plaque at the entrance to Caroone House (2004)

Caroone House was an office block at 14 Farringdon Street, London EC4, which was built in the early 1970s on the site of the Congregational Memorial Hall which had been demolished in 1968.[1]

The Memorial Hall and Caroone House were built on the site of the old Fleet Prison. The prison was burnt down during the Great Fire of London and while the prison was being rebuilt, the prisoners were relocated to Caron House, South Lambeth, a large mansion house which had been built by Noel de Caron the Netherlands ambassador to England in the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I. In 1685 Caron House was demolished but the name survived and in the 19th century there was a "Carroun House" on the estate. As a consequence of this rich history, "Caroone House" was adopted as an appropriate name for the new building in Farringdon Street. [2]

A Greater London Council plaque commemorating the foundation of the Labour Party at the Memorial Hall in 1900 was displayed at the main entrance to Caroone House.

The building was used by Post Office Telecommunications (from 1981 British Telecom) as the headquarters for its Post Office International Telephones division (designated as ITp) for operating their international business and for telephone tapping. Among other things it acted as the HQ for managing the operation of ITps International Control Centres (exchanges) in London, Brighton and Glasgow. [3]

It was demolished in 2004 to be replaced by the Ludgate West development and today 5 Fleet Place stands on the site of Caroone House. The Labour Party plaque has been reinstated on the wall of the redevelopment. [4]

References

  1. ↑ Clyde Binfield (2002), "Memory enstructured The case of Memorial Hall", Memory and Memorials, 1789-1914: Literary and Cultural Perspectives, Routledge, pp. 160–174, ISBN 9781134583003
  2. ↑ British History Online. Accessed 12 October 2016
  3. ↑ Patrick Fitzgerald, Mark Leopold (1987), Stranger on the Line: the secret history of phone tapping, pp. 98–99
  4. ↑ Emporis entry on 5 Fleet Place. Accessed 3 March 2016

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