I surprised the staff in a Virgin Gym today by informing them they were working inside a planned Nazi HQ.
This rather wonderful Art Deco building, known as Ibex House, was completed in 1937 as an office block. Advertised as “Air Conditioned. Perfect light. Fast lifts.”, it is now Grade II listed and is on the eastern edge of the City.
It is rumoured that Hitler was much taken with it, and in fact earmarked it as a future Gestapo HQ if the Germans had occupied Britain.
Ironically instead of this Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, was imprisoned just down the road at the Tower of London in 1941 after he landed in the UK offering to broker peace.
There is one more further Nazi link to the City that I have unearthed – apparently Von Ribbentrop the German Foreign Minister surprised his London hosts in the 1930s by performing an impromptu magic trick called the Cups and Balls at the Customs House, just down the road.
