Royal Mint Court, formerly known as Eastminster, is a building complex in Tower Hamlets. It is located in front of the Tower Bridge and is close to the City of London financial district. The site was the home of the Royal Mint from 1809 until 1967 and was earlier the site of a Cistercian abbey, built in 1348 and known in its time as Eastminster. Eastminster's foundations are relatively well preserved and visible in the partially open basement of the site. In May 2018, the site was sold to China to be used for their new London embassy.
After the dissolution of the monasteries, the 5.5 acre (2 hectare) property was used as a victualling yard for the Royal Navy, then as a tobacco warehouse, before becoming a mint in 1809. After the mint relocated, the site was redeveloped in 1987 by the Crown Estate Commissioners with a new office and residential block added to the complex alongside the two remaining Grade II listed mint buildings. The 100 residential homes were leasehold properties and Queen Elizabeth II was the Superior Landlord.
In 2017, Royal Mint Court was again set to be redeveloped with plans for a new office, shopping and leisure complex. Planning permission was granted in July 2016. As the freeholder, China became the superior landlord over the 100 leasehold homes. David Chipperfield was appointed as the architect for development of the site in 2020.
History
During the Black Death in 1349 the site became a plague cemetery known as the Churchyard of the Holy Trinity, and three mass burial trenches and 14 grave rows were dug alongside a small chapel. During excavation of the site between 1986 and 1988 the remains of 762 bodies were recovered, as well as a number of belt buckles and two hoards of coins. On 20 March 1350 Edward III granted the site to the Cistercian order for the building of a new chapel named the Royal Free Chapel of St Mary Graces on Tower Hill, which eventually became the Abbey of St. Mary de Graces; the monastery was known as Eastminster, or sometimes New Abbey. Built to house just ten monks and an abbot, the abbey was the last Cistercian foundation in England to be built before the Dissolution of the Monasteries. In 1538 St Mary Graces was surrendered to the Crown and sold to Sir Arthur Darcy, who demolished part of the monastery buildings and lived there until his death in 1560. The site was then sold back to the Crown; it was a victualling yard for the Royal Navy until 1739, when the navy moved to new premises in Deptford.
The Royal Mint
The Royal Mint, previously housed in the Tower of London, moved to the site between 1806 and 1811, and the Mint's new buildings were finished by the end of 1809. The main building, designed by James Johnson and completed by Robert Smirke, contained apartments for the Deputy Master of the Mint, the Assay Master, and the Provost of the Moneyers as well as bullion stores and the Mint Office. In addition to the main building, the site included two gatehouses, buildings housing machinery, and dwelling houses for officers and staff. A boundary wall surrounded the site. A narrow alley known as the Military Way ran along the inside of the wall, patrolled by the Royal Mint's military guard. In the 1880s the machinery buildings were reconstructed and extended, and there was further rebuilding at the turn of the century. By the 1960s little of the original mint remained apart from the Smirke building and gatehouses.
The Royal Mint Refinery In 1848, a royal commission examined the efficiency of the Royal Mint and recommended that the Royal Mint separate the process of refining gold and striking gold coins and that refining be leased to an agency that was external to the Royal Mint. Anthony de Rothschild (1810-1876) was very enthusiastic about the opportunity to manage the gold refinery and on 26 January 1852 he wrote to the Deputy Master of the Mint of his readiness to 'execute the Lease for the Refinery. On 3 February 1852, a Lease for the buildings and equipment was sanctioned and the Royal Mint Refinery became part of Rothschild's London businesses' interests for over a century'. Prior to receiving the Lease, the Rothschilds had a long history of gold trading in Paris and London and in 1815 they famously provided the Duke of Wellington with gold coins to pay his soldiers prior to the Battle of Waterloo. In 1825, the Rothschilds came to the aid of the Bank of England when a number of English banks collapsed causing a run on the Bank. Using family connections, they were able to purchase gold from European banks.
The Royal Mint Refinery proved to be a huge success for the Rothschilds as new gold finds in California and Australia brought a wave of new supplies of gold into London in the 1850s. By the 1890s the operations were so successful that they were able to acquire the freehold of the Royal Mint Refinery, which had previously been leased to them. They also purchased freehold properties on Royal Mint Street and other locations close to the refinery and these were provided as housing for workers and their families. In 1894, Alfred de Rothschild acquired a plot of freehold land in Cartwright Street from the Metropolitan Board of Works on the understanding it would be kept for at least eighty years 'Artisans Dwellings' to accommodate 100 workmen at the refinery.
Rothschild, through its connection to the refinery, gained access to and control over British Empire gold, which in 1914 accounted for 70 per cent. of world output; the majority of which was shipped to London and treated at the Rothschild refinery. Operations continued through the first and second world wars until the 1960s when the refinery was no longer viable and in 1965 the copper foil plant was sold to Clevite followed two years later by the sale of the entire business to Engelhard Industries Limited. In November 1968, the last Rothschild employee of the refinery left the building and closed the gate on 19 Royal Mint Street.
In 2018, the Land Registry Extract for Royal Mint Court, Title Number EGL198329 contained, 'A Conveyance dated 10 April 1929 of the land tinted blue on the title plan made between (1) The King's Most Excellent Majesty (2) The Commissioners of the Crown Lands and (3) Lionel Nathan de Rothschild and Anthony Gustav de Rothschild excluded the walls on the north .........and west sides therof and the recess marked A, B on the plan annexed to the conveyance under the arch in the west wall thereof.'''
The Title also includes, 'A Licence dated 11 December 1962 made between (1) Her Majesty's Postmaster general and (2) Edmund Leopold de Rothschild, Leopold David de Rothschild, Evelyn Robert Adrian de Rothschild and Rothschild Continuation Limited relates to the erection and maintenance of a security fence'. Post Royal Mint The Royal Mint was based at the site until 1967, when it began moving to its current site in Llantrisant, Wales. Minting ceased at Royal Mint Court in 1975. Two new office buildings were constructed on the site in the 1980s. Designed by Sheppard Robson, they were subsequently known as Murray House and Dexter House. This brought the site's total office space to 460,000 square feet (4.3 hectares). Smirke's 1809 building ceased to be used by the Royal Mint in January 2000. After the Mint vacated the Murray House building on the site it was used as commercial offices by Barclays Global Investors which paid £5 million rent annually, and was later sublet to Deloitte and Old Mutual until the tenancy expired at the end of 2014.
Leases for the offices were granted to Gulldale Limited a company incorporated in the Isle of Man which took a mortgage based on income from the properties. The Royal Mint Court mortgage was securitised as part of a £401,340,000 Barclays Capital-issued Commercial Mortgage Backed Security (CMBS) called Equinox Eclipse 2006-1 sold in 2006. The maturity due date for these notes was January 2018.The value of the leaseholds fell afterwards leaving the securitised loan with an unpaid balance of £69.5m, while the B-loan, held by a private individual investor, had £14m outstanding balance, against a less than £32.5m valuation for the Royal Mint Court leasehold. It was reported that bondholders of this did not consider it economically attractive to sell the leasehold for Royal Mint Court. On 6 March 2014, Gulldale Limited was placed into administration in England. In so doing, Gulldale became the first Isle of Man incorporated company with the centre of main interest in the Isle of Man to be placed into administration in England.
Sale of the freehold to Delancey In 1994, a company led by the billionaire George Soros, G Soros Realty Investors, acquired £1.34 million British Land shares at 298p from a Quantum Fund holding. Documents issued by British Land did not disclose this, but did reveal that Mr John Ritblat received 2 million shares at cost from the Quantum Fund. When the matter was made public in June 1993, Mr Ritblat's share issuance was defended as providing an incentive for British Land to perform. An early deal for Soros and Ritblat was for the Broadgate complex in the City of London in 1994.
In 1998, in a complicated deal, one of George Soros's Quantum hedge funds from the tax-efficient British Virgin Islands pumped £127m into Delancey Estates. Quantum, places money offshore for high net worth individuals, shares go to a trust for some of the Soros family, and to a Guernsey company linked to Richard Katz and his wife. The deal with Quantum would give Delancey net assets of £150m, of which £128m would be cash. Although Quantum provided financial backing for Delancey, management for the property arm of the company was to be provided by Freehold Portfolios Estates (FPE), a property advisory company owned by Jamie Ritblat.
In 2000, The Guardian reported that Delancey Estates, then a quoted George Soros-backed property vehicle, could be the next major real estate company to take itself private. The first major office investment was reported to be 6 Chesterfield Gardens, London W1 for £30m in 2003 and Soros's Morstan Nominees was said to be the largest shareholder in Delancey's old Tribeca fund.
In 2005, The Guardian reported that Soros was buying £2bn of London property through his investments Delancey. At the time, Delancey was selling off commercial property and also sold its stake in Mapeley, the off-shore firm that owned and managed Inland Revenue buildings. The article added that this was seen as a vote of confidence in the long-term strength of the UK commercial property market. George Soros was also investing in other businesses including a large stake in one of China's largest airlines.
Mapeley Real Estate was the subject of press coverage in 2002 when the UK Treasury Select Committee questioned why the Inland Revenue sold its estate of more than 600 buildings to a Bermuda-based company, and later admitted it wrongly announced the properties were sold to a UK firm; and again in 2020 when a £6.5m Government payment was made to a company in a tax haven). Sir Nicholas Montagu, the Revenue's chairman told the Treasury Sub Committee his department had issued misleading information and also failed to inform parliament properly and apologised. In 2009, Mapeley warned shareholders it could go bust if it did not raise £48m as it needed to pay back £60m to Deutsche Bank in April. Following an audit by the National Audit Office in 2010, The Guardian reported that those who negotiated the 20-year deal with Mapeley were inept and had deprived the UK of income when everyone living in the country was having to pay more tax and austerity to pay for bailout of the banks in 2008, and should hang their heads in shame. Mapeley was owned by Fortress Investment Group, USA, Soros Real Estate, Netherlands and Delancy East Ltd, UK, but was later based offshore in Bermuda. The Strategic Transfer of the Revenue properties to the Private Sector was expected to save A$860m (£344m) over the 20-year contract period.