Millbank Tower... in the beginning

Millbank Tower, the curvaceous sixties skyscraper and low-rise complex along the Thames between Westminster and Pimlico, has been a feature of the news for the past few decades, firstly as home to the Labour Party's fearsome 1990s election machine and now home to the Conservatives operation. But initially it was designed for someone quite different: Vickers, the armaments manufacturers, famous for projects like the wartime Wellington Bomber, the Vickers machine gun and the Viscount postwar airliner. In the mid-fifties they commissioned Ronald Ward and Partners to design their London offices, the company who also designed Dungeness Lighthouse and the Nestle building in Croydon, Mowlem bulit it, and here's a film of their topping out ceremony in 1961.

The building was finished two years later, but in the topsy-turvey world of British business Vickers didn't remain the tenants for long. If the team behind Doctor Who were right, by 1968 the next owners were the mysterious International Electromatics, who turn out to be a front for the cybermen. Here's the Doctor's companion Zoe destroying a computer there with her mega-brain.



And finally, here's some footage of window cleaning on the tower 1970-style. Not for the faint hearted.