Minster Court

Minster Court is the building on Mincing Lane that looks as though it should be somewhere else. Completed in 1991 to a design by GMW Architects, it is a group of three office buildings in pale stone and dark glass, with steep gabled roofs, pointed arches and a sharp-edged silhouette that owes more to a Victorian railway hotel than to anything else built in the City that decade. It went up at the end of the post-modern moment, when architects were reaching for the past again, and it reached further than most.

The City gave it the name it deserved. It is the Batman building, for the pointed roofline that looks like Gotham City, and the film industry agreed. It was the House of DeVil, Cruella’s fashion house, in the 1996 film of 101 Dalmatians. Three bronze horses by Althea Wynne stand at the entrance, and for many years the building was home to the London Underwriting Centre, the insurance market’s other trading floor a short walk from Lloyd’s.

Its roof is the giveaway in a City view. Its gables and pinnacles sit low among the towers around Fenchurch Street, and they hold their shape from any direction, which makes the building a useful marker for the eastern end of the Square Mile. Look for a dark spiky roofline in front of the taller glass behind it.

Click any of the thumbnails below to explore the Minster Court images and the London panoramas it appears in.