Millbank Tower
Here you can explore the images on this site that feature Millbank Tower.
A short walk upstream from Parliament, next door to Tate Britain, Millbank Tower has been on the river since 1963. Ronald Ward and Partners designed it, and at 118 metres it was briefly the tallest building in the country, until the Post Office Tower, now the BT Tower, overtook it the following year. It was built for the engineering firm Vickers and known for its first years as the Vickers Tower.
It is a slab, curved gently on one side, with a lower block at its foot, and it belongs to the same moment of confident post-war building as Centre Point and the Shell Centre. It was listed Grade II in 1995.
The tower’s afterlife has been political. The Labour Party ran its 1997 general election campaign from offices here, and the building’s name became shorthand for the party’s new professionalism. The Conservative Party made it their headquarters between 2006 and 2014, and the student protests of November 2010 broke into the lobby. Few office buildings have had so much history walk through their doors.
From across London the tower is the tall pale slab standing just beyond the Westminster group, and it is the easiest way to find the river’s turn south past Lambeth Bridge. You will find it in the Westminster images and in the 360 degree view from the top of The Shard at dusk, always a little apart from Elizabeth Tower and the Abbey.
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London Begins
A London Sunrise Panorama A new day over London, and the sunrise washes over the city. The square mile is drenched in light, the enormous buildings momentarily insubstantial. Usually, it’s the tall buildings that are the heroes of any cityscape. But here, the Queen Elizabeth II Great Court at the British Museum really proclaims its…
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London Landmarks, Autumn Evening
London’s tall landmarks bound together in one panoramic image as the sun sets on an autumn evening. From Earl’s Court, Kensington Gardens and the Albert Hall towards the west, then across the Serpentine to the iconic Battersea Power Station, Crystal Palace, Big Ben, the London Eye, Thames House at Vauxhall Cross (the MI5 building), Westminster…
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Shard London Bridge Summit
This 360 image was captured at the top of the Shard London Bridge, 310m above London, on the night of the student protests in November 2010. You can see the police helicopters hovering over London above the demonstration. Technically this was a very difficult shoot, I was on the crane at the top of the…
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Hyde Park Dusk
Aerial London panorama by Hyde Park with views of the Serpentine, Albert Hall, Battersea Power Station, London Eye, the BT Tower, The Shard with the City of London and Canary Wharf in the distance.
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Sundown over Holborn
Panorama looking from Holborn over London at sundown. This London cityscape includes the following landmarks: Shard London Bridge; Strata Tower; Guy’s Hospital Tower; 33 St Mary Axe (The Gherkin); Tower 42; the Heron Tower; King’s Reach Tower; the Barbican; Canary Wharf; the Tate Modern; the London Eye; the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben.