St Mary Axe

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

30 St Mary Axe (previously known as the Swiss Re Building and informally known as the Gherkin) is a commercial skyscraper in London's primary financial district, the City of London. It was completed in December 2003 and opened in April 2004. With 41 floors, it is 180 metres (591 ft) tall and stands on the sites of the former Baltic Exchange and Chamber of Shipping, which were extensively damaged in 1992 in the Baltic Exchange bombing by a device placed by the Provisional IRA in St Mary Axe, a narrow street leading north from Leadenhall Street.After plans to build the 92-storey Millennium Tower were dropped, 30 St Mary Axe was designed by Norman Foster and the Arup Group. It was erected by Skanska; construction started in 2001.The building has become a recognisable landmark of London, and it is one of the city's most widely recognised examples of contemporary architecture. It won the 2003 Emporis Skyscraper Award.

St Andrew Undershaft is a Church of England church in the City of London, the historic nucleus and modern financial centre of London. It is located on St Mary Axe, within the Aldgate ward, and is a rare example of a City church that survived both the Great Fire of London and the Blitz.The present building was constructed in 1532 but a church has existed on the site since the 12th century. Today, St Andrew Undershaft is administered from the nearby St Helen's Bishopsgate church.

St Helen's Bishopsgate is an Anglican church in London. It is located in Great St Helen's, off Bishopsgate. It is the largest surviving parish church in the City of London. Several notable figures are buried there, and it contains more monuments than any other church in Greater London except Westminster Abbey, hence it is sometimes referred to as the "Westminster Abbey of the City". It was the parish church of William Shakespeare when he lived in the area in the 1590s. It was one of only a few churches in the City of London to survive both the Great Fire of 1666 and the Blitz. Owing to parish consolidation over the years, the parish is now named "St Helen's Bishopsgate with St Andrew Undershaft and St Ethelburga Bishopsgate and St Martin Outwich and St Mary Axe". The Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors are the patrons of the benefice.Today, it is home to a large congregation in the conservative evangelical tradition with a ministry to city workers, families, students and young professionals. Three English-speaking church services take place each Sunday, as well as a number of midweek talks and small group Bible studies. The nearby churches St Andrew Undershaft and St Peter upon Cornhill are also administered by St Helen's.

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.

Leadenhall Street () is a street in the City of London. It is about 1⁄3-mile-long (0.54 km) and links Cornhill in the west to Aldgate in the east. It was formerly the start of the A11 road from London to Norwich, but that route now starts further east at Aldgate. Leadenhall Street has always been a centre of commerce. It connected the medieval market of Leaden Hall with Aldgate, the eastern gate in the Roman city wall. The East India Company had its headquarters there, as later did the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O). By the mid 20th century, grand stone-faced offices lined the street. Today it is closely associated with the insurance industry and particularly the Lloyd's insurance market, with its dramatic building in the adjacent Lime Street. It forms part of a cluster of tall buildings including the 48-storey “Cheesegrater” and the 38-storey “Scalpel”. Other buildings planned for the street include the 57-storey “Diamond”, the 50-storey “Prussian Blue” and the 34-storey “Gotham City”. Older buildings like the medieval church of St Katherine Cree seem incongruous among these towers, but the medieval heritage is preserved in the narrow slightly curving street and dense commercial activity.

The Tulip was a 305-metre observation tower proposed to be constructed on 20 Bury Street in the City of London. The Tulip is a proposal by Brazilian billionaire Jacob Safra, of the Safra Group, the owner of the adjacent 30 St Mary Axe, informally known as the Gherkin. The proposal was rejected on 11 November 2021.

The Baltic Exchange (incorporated as The Baltic Exchange Limited) is a membership organisation for the maritime industry, and freight market information provider for the trading and settlement of physical and derivative contracts. It was located at 24–28 St Mary Axe, London, until the building was destroyed by a bomb in 1992. The Baltic Exchange moved into a new building at 38 St Mary Axe on 15 May 1995. It is now located at 107 Leadenhall St and has further offices in Europe, across Asia, and in the United States.