St Helen's Church, Bishopsgate

St Helen's (previously known as the Aviva Tower or the Commercial Union building) is a commercial skyscraper in London, United Kingdom. It is 118 metres (387 ft) tall and has 23 floors. The postal address is No. 1, Undershaft, though the main entrance fronts onto Leadenhall Street, in the City of London financial district. The building was designed by the Gollins Melvin Ward Partnership in the international style: the stark rectilinear geometry and detailing of the building was influenced by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and is somewhat reminiscent of his Seagram Building in New York City. It was built by Taylor Woodrow Construction as one of only four high-rise buildings in London using a top-down engineering design where the lower office floors are suspended from above rather than supported from below.In 1992, the building was heavily damaged in the Baltic Exchange bombing carried out by the Provisional IRA, as a result of which it was substantially renovated. The building was sold in 2003 by the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority to property developer Simon Halabi. In 2007, it was reported that Halabi was considering plans to demolish the building and replace it with a much taller tower, but this plan was not fulfilled. In 2011, it was reported that the building had been sold to an undisclosed Far Eastern private investor for £288 million. Plans for the site submitted in February 2016 feature a 310 m-tall 72-floor tower largely given to office space. In November 2016, planning permission was granted for the Trellis Tower, which will house up to 10,000 workers and which, upon completion, will be the tallest building in the City of London and the second tallest building in the UK, after The Shard.

1 Undershaft, informally known as 'The Trellis' due to its external cross bracing, is a skyscraper planned for the City of London financial district which was given approval in November 2016. The scheme has been developed by Aroland Holdings and designed by Eric Parry Architects. It is set to replace the St Helen's tower and upon completion will become the second tallest skyscraper in London, and the United Kingdom. The building is the second design for a skyscraper at 1 Undershaft, replacing a previous proposal designed by architects Avery Associates. The approved plans are also revised, reducing the height of the tower. Construction may not begin until several years after its approval date.

St Mary Axe was a mediaeval church in the City of London. (The church that remains in the modern-day St Mary Axe is St Andrew Undershaft.) Its full name was St Mary, St Ursula and her 11,000 Virgins, and it was also sometimes referred to as St Mary Pellipar. Its common name (also St Mary [or Marie] at the Axe) derives from the sign of an axe over the east end of the church. The church's patrons were the Skinners' Company.According to John Stow in A Survey of London (1603), the name derived from "the signe of an Axe, over against the East end thereof". However, a document dated to the early reign of King Henry VIII describes a holy relic held in the church; "An axe, one of the two that the eleven thousand Virgins were beheaded with". This refers to the legend that Saint Ursula, when returning to Britain from a pilgrimage to Rome accompanied by eleven thousand handmaidens, had refused to marry a Hunnish chief and was executed along with her whole entourage on the site of modern Cologne, in about 451 AD.It was situated just north of Leadenhall Street on a site now occupied by Fitzwilliam House. First mentioned as St Mary apud Ax, it belonged for a time to the nearby Priory of St Helens. At the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries it was still extant but in decline, and in 1562 it was offered to Spanish Protestant refugees as a place of worship. Three years later, however, it was unused and in a state of disrepair. Shortly afterwards it was pulled down and its parish was united with that of the neighbouring St Andrew Undershaft.The church gave its name to a street of the same name, which links Leadenhall Street with Camomile Street and Houndsditch. No. 30 was the location of the Baltic Exchange until it was destroyed by an IRA bomb in 1992; the Exchange is now located at No. 38 just to the north of its former address. On the site of the old Baltic Exchange now stands 30 St Mary Axe, a skyscraper known colloquially as the Gherkin because of its distinctive shape.The street of St Mary Axe was also the location of the sorcerer's shop in Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta The Sorcerer, which documents the former pronunciation "Simmery Axe". The church that remains in the modern-day St Mary Axe is St Andrew Undershaft.

St Ethelburga-the-Virgin within Bishopsgate is a Church of England church in the City of London, located on Bishopsgate near Liverpool Street station. The church was severely damaged by an IRA bomb in 1993. Following rebuilding and restoration it re-opened as a Centre for Reconciliation and Peace.

The Bishopsgate bombing occurred on 24 April 1993, when the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) detonated a powerful truck bomb on Bishopsgate, a major thoroughfare in London's financial district, the City of London. Telephoned warnings were sent about an hour beforehand, but a news photographer was killed in the blast and 44 people were injured, with fatalities minimised due to it occurring on a Saturday. The blast destroyed the nearby St Ethelburga's church and wrecked Liverpool Street station and the NatWest Tower.As a result of the bombing, which happened just over a year after the bombing of the nearby Baltic Exchange, a "ring of steel" was implemented to protect the City, and many firms introduced disaster recovery plans in case of further attacks or similar disasters. £350 million was spent on repairing damage. In 1994 detectives believed they knew the identities of the IRA bombers, but lacked sufficient evidence to arrest them.

St Mary Axe was a medieval parish in the City of London whose name survives as that of the street which formerly occupied it. The Church of St Mary Axe was demolished in 1561 and its parish united with that of St Andrew Undershaft, which is situated on the corner of St Mary Axe and Leadenhall Street. The site of the former church is now occupied by Fitzwilliam House, a fact acknowledged by a blue plaque on the building's façade. Nearby parishes include the medieval Great St Helen's (1210) and St Ethelburga (14th century). The street name may derive from a combination of the church dedicated to the Virgin Mary and a neighbouring tavern which prominently displayed a sign with an image of an axe, or simply from the church name itself, which may have come from the axes used by the Worshipful Company of Skinners, who were patrons. The sign of an axe is reported to have been present over the east end of the church.The street St Mary Axe is now most notable for the Baltic Exchange at No. 38, and the "Gherkin" at No. 30, a distinctively shaped skyscraper built on the site of the former buildings of the Baltic Exchange and the UK Chamber of Shipping (destroyed by an IRA bomb in 1992). The street originates at its northern end as a turn off Houndsditch, with traffic flowing one-way southbound, and it originates at its southern end as a turn off Leadenhall Street, with traffic flowing one-way northbound. Both one-way portions of St Mary Axe converge at Bevis Marks, where traffic is forced westward into Camomile Street. Number 70 St Mary Axe appears in several novels by the British author Tom Holt as the address of a firm of sorcerers headed by J. W. Wells. This is itself a reference to Gilbert and Sullivan's The Sorcerer. In the song "My Name Is John Wellington Wells", the lyric renders his address as "Number Seventy, Simmery Axe"; this reflects the fact that some Londoners pronounce the street's name as "S'M'ry Axe" rather than enunciating it fully. The Tom Holt novels and The Sorcerer were written before the current office building at 70 St Mary Axe was constructed.

The London Millennium Tower was one of several ideas for the site of the former Baltic Exchange at 30 St Mary Axe, City of London that had been destroyed beyond repair by a Provisional IRA bomb blast.Designed by Foster & Partners, for then owner Trafalgar House, the plan was for the building to be the tallest in Europe and the sixth tallest in the world at that time, behind the twin Petronas Towers in Malaysia, the Sears Tower (now called the Willis Tower) in Chicago, and the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York. Its height was planned at 386 metres (1,265 ft), with 92 floors, which means it would have been 39th in the world today, and would be overtaken in Europe by the Federation Tower. A public viewing platform was planned for 1000 ft above ground level. The scheme featured a highly unorthodox floor layout, essentially two asymmetrical ellipses joined at one end. When the plans were first unveiled in 1996, the Guardian newspaper coined the term "erotic gherkin", a name that was quickly taken up by other media and which stuck even after the plan was superseded, eventually becoming 30 St Mary Axe, the name of a different skyscraper that stands on the site today. English Heritage had been one of the largest backers of the project until they withdrew their support, due to Heathrow Airport objecting to the disruption that such a tall building would have on their flight paths. The project was eventually cancelled and the site sold to Swiss Re, which created its headquarters, also designed by Foster & Partners.

The Baltic Exchange bombing was an attack by the Provisional IRA on the City of London, Britain's financial centre, on 10 April 1992, the day after the General Election which re-elected John Major from the Conservative Party as Prime Minister. The one-ton bomb – concealed in a large white truck and consisting of a fertilizer device wrapped with a detonation cord made from 100 lb (45 kg) of semtex – was the biggest bomb detonated on mainland Britain since World War II. The bombing killed three people, injured 91 others, and severely damaged the Baltic Exchange building and its surroundings.

122 Leadenhall Street, also known as the Leadenhall Building, is a 225-metre-tall (738 ft) skyscraper in central London. It opened in July 2014 and was designed by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners; it is known informally as The Cheesegrater because of its distinctive wedge shape similar to that of the kitchen utensil with the same name. It is one of a number of tall buildings recently completed or under construction in the City of London financial district, including 20 Fenchurch Street, 22 Bishopsgate, and The Scalpel. The site is adjacent to the Lloyd's Building, also designed by Rogers, which is the current home of the insurance market Lloyd's of London. Until 2007 the Leadenhall site was occupied by a building owned by British Land and designed by Gollins Melvin Ward Partnership, which was constructed in the 1960s. That building was demolished in preparation for redevelopment of the site. By December 2009, the site was cleared but construction had stalled. The project, initially delayed due to the financial crisis, was revived in October 2010 and Oxford Properties has co-developed the property in partnership with British Land.

The Baltic Exchange was a building located at 24–28 St Mary Axe in the City of London and occupied by Baltic Exchange Ltd, a provider of information on maritime transportation markets. A historic landmark, the Baltic Exchange building was architecturally known for its cathedral-like trading hall and its stained glass war memorial. It was damaged in a bombing in 1992. The site is now occupied by 30 St Mary Axe ("The Gherkin"); the stained glass can be seen at the National Maritime Museum.

22 Bishopsgate, also known as Twentytwo, is a commercial skyscraper in London, United Kingdom. Completed in 2020, it occupies a prominent site in Bishopsgate, in the City of London financial district, and stands at 278 m (912 ft) tall with 62 storeys. The project replaces an earlier plan for a 288 m (945 ft) tower named The Pinnacle, on which construction was started in 2008 but suspended in 2012 following the Great Recession, with only the concrete core of the first seven storeys. The structure was later subjected to a re-design, out of which it became known by its postal address, 22 Bishopsgate.Under the original plans, The Pinnacle was to become the second-tallest building in both the United Kingdom and the European Union after The Shard, also in London. The Economic Development Corporation of Saudi Arabia and its development manager, Arab Investments, which largely funded the construction, invested £500 million in it in return for a majority stake in the structure. However, the build was put on hold due to a lack of additional funding and letting commitments. In 2013 it was reported that a review of the design and construction process, undertaken by original architects Kohn Pedersen Fox, agents CBRE and the developers, had been completed, with the building's "helter skelter" style exterior set to be retained. In 2015, the site was sold to a consortium led by Axa Real Estate and a re-design with a simpler exterior, ultimately excluding the costly "helter skelter" shape, was submitted for public consultation before application for planning permission. In April 2016, it was confirmed that property company Lipton Rogers and its joint venture partner, Axa IM – Real Assets, would complete the £1bn development in 2019. At 278 metres, the building was set to be the tallest in the City of London at that time and, due to potential loss of light to surrounding buildings, there had been objections to the development from several parties. However, City of London granted permission after considering the potential benefits of developing the building including the introduction of more floorspace to the area and the creation of new jobs.In 2017, plans were approved which redesigned the building and reduced its height further to 255 m due to concerns that the cranes used for its construction could interfere with the flight paths of the nearby London City Airport. However, these plans were withdrawn after approval was granted for the previous 278-metre design.

55 Bishopsgate is an approved skyscraper in the City of London. Plans were submitted in 2022. If built, at 269 metres (883 ft) it would be the second-tallest building in the City of London, and the third-tallest in Greater London after The Shard and 22 Bishopsgate. The building will consist of 63 storeys. It was designed by architectural firm Arney Fender Katsalidis (AFK), and is being funded by the investment firm Schroeders. Despite objections from Historic England, the scheme is currently recommended for approval from city planners.Planning permission was approved on 21 July 2023. The scheme also includes an accompanying 22-storey building.