Category: Heritage

The day of Mr. Clank begins at 5:15, when he rises from his cot in the boiler room, brushes his coat, and says good morning to the radiators. By 6:00 he has polished the great door. By 7:00 he has swept the steps. By 8:00 he has deflected three delivery lorries, two pigeons, and a persistent bishop.

At noon, he lunches upon a single sardine and a hard biscuit. At half past two, he rests, upright, on his stool by the door, perfectly still, like a statue of a statue. He has not, in thirty four years, been seen to blink. Many believe him to be an elaborate piece of furniture. He has never contradicted them.

It is with solemn pride that I pay homage to the brass revolving door at the entrance of this establishment. It has turned some seven million times since 1904, admitted an estimated three hundred thousand cats, and delivered, on one famous Tuesday, a very confused hedgehog.

The door bears the scars of its service: a paw print here, a scratch there, a tuft of ginger fur in the hinge. Our porter, Mr. Alfred Clank, polishes it daily with a cloth he refers to as ‘Her Majesty’. If you pause in the doorway, you may hear it creak a short, complicated sigh. It is the sound of a very old friend.

Ladies and Gentlemen, there lies behind the Information Desk a mechanism of extraordinary ingenuity: the Pneumatic Tube. Installed in 1906 at a cost of £340, it conveys canisters of paper at the astonishing speed of twenty eight feet per second to every department in the building.

Over its long life the Tube has carried receipts, requisitions, a single small kipper, and, on one famous occasion, a young apprentice named Wilfred who had climbed inside to retrieve a toy mouse. He arrived in Haberdashery looking pleased and slightly flattened. The Tube is still in use. The mouse is on display in the Atrium.