The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, London

I visited the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors‘ headquarters in Great George Street as part of Open House London. It’s the only surviving Victorian building on the street and was designed by Alfred Waterhouse in 1899, who also designed one of my favourite buildings in Nottingham, the Prudential building and the Natural History Museum in London (which will feature in a later post).

This was a really excellent tour by one of the staff detailing the history of the building as well as that of the RICS which I didn’t know anything about before this visit.

I was impressed to see that the building interior still has some original features like this lovely Victorian stained glass.

And I was surprised to see a mini museum inside the library which included some very interesting items including this Penfold pillar box, a replica of the pillar boxes that were designed in 1866

and this really good Lego replica of the building.

We also had the opportunity to go out onto the roof balcony – apparently being head of the RICS comes with the perk of being able to throw parties here at New Year’s.