The History behind the Silver Vaults in The Hallmarked Man
Robin Ellacott and Cormoran Strike’s investigations have taken them to a lot of unusual places in London, but some are unique. The Silver Vaults off Chancery Lane, for one, are a fascinating oddity, a little-known shopping destination where dozens of independent silver and antique traders operate out of huge underground vaults. You can hear Robert Galbraith talking about this very unusual location here, and today we’re taking the opportunity to dig into their history, and see how Robin comes to be interviewing an unhappy antique dealer far below one of London’s busiest streets.
A long, low-ceilinged, arched underground passageway stretched away from her, the walls on both sides lined with heavy steel vault doors. She set off along the corridor, noticing the regularly spaced cameras watching her from the ceiling, and looking left and right through the open doors at Aladdin’s Caves of dazzling, gleaming silver.
The Hallmarked Man, Robert Galbraith
Robin and Strike’s client, Decima Mullins, tasks the agency with proving the body found in the locked vault of a silver shop in central London is that of her missing boyfriend (The Hallmarked Man). The shop, Ramsay Silver, specialises in masonic insignia, silverware and rarities, and the dead man was working there under the name of William Wright, but with the discovery of his body came a great loss. Kenneth Ramsay had recently bought the silver collection of prominent freemason and explorer, A. H. Murdoch, and it disappeared on the same night ‘William’s’ body was left in the vault.
Kenneth Ramsay is keen to talk to their detectives in his slightly run-down shop near Freemasons Hall, hoping their inquiry might lead to the discovery of the missing silver. Its loss has been a terrible blow. Kenneth and his wife, Rachel, were already struggling, devastated by the loss of their son in a jet-ski accident, and relying on Kenneth’s sister-in-law, Pamela Bullen-Driscoll, for help.
Pamela Bullen-Driscoll was at Ramsay Silver on the day the Murdoch silver was delivered, but runs Bullens & Co., the company which was founded by her great-grandfather. She has no interest in talking to Strike or Robin.
Trying to piece together the events on the day of the delivery, Robin decides to visit Pamela in person. In doing so, she discovers one of London’s best-kept secrets, the Silver Vaults.
‘This,’ said Pamela, gesturing around at the Silver Vaults, ‘is the fourth most secure building in the world. There’s never been a theft from the London Silver Vaults, ever’.
The Hallmarked Man, Robert Galbraith
Bullens & Co has been trading one hundred and thirty-seven years, so is older than the Silver Vaults, which was founded as the Chancery Lane Safe Deposit in 1885. Thomas Clarke, a builder from Holbeach in Norfolk, had been buying up dilapidated buildings in Chancery Lane for some years and replacing them with ‘fine modern buildings’ suited to the professional classes in the area. He realised that these professionals needed somewhere secure, and fire-proof, to store valuables and important documents and turned a section of an abandoned tunnel under Chancery Lane into a state-of-the-art storage facility. The opening of the Chancery Lane Safe Deposit was celebrated with a grand dinner for the new Lord Mayor and some two hundred guests, and The Spalding Guardian celebrated with a meticulous account of its fixtures and fittings.
The Silver Vaults’ entrance was a discreet wooden door with a small glass awning.
The Hallmarked Man, Robert Galbraith
The modern entrance in Southampton Buildings, which Robin uses to visit Pamela at Bullens & Co, might be discreet, but the original was anything but. It was a massive red granite archway, cut off from the street at night with wrought iron gates. The vestibule had mosaic floors and a ceiling of enamelled iron. The company also provided reading rooms and telephones and received letters on behalf of clients. Off the lower corridor were five thousand fireproof safes often used for documents, and larger vaults where valuables could be kept. According to the newspapers, several regiments of the British Army stored their silver there when they went off to fight in the Boer War at the turn of the century.
From the beginning, the Safe Deposit boasted about its absolute security. Its full page adverts in the Illustrated London News show the armed watchmen who patrolled the place at night, and on one occasion an image of the ghost of famous London thief Jack Shepherd, lamenting in verse how he would never have been able to ply his trade as a robber if his contemporaries had been able to keep their valuables so secure.
In 1940 and 1941, devastating raids destroyed the buildings above the Chancery Lane Safe Deposit, though the vaults survived. The blitz also destroyed the shops of a lot of the traders who rented space there, and so some began trading directly from the vaults.
By the end of the decade, it was becoming known as a place which specialised in silver, and American customers in particular made it a shopping destination. A writer in 1952 describes the ‘dizzy dollar’ season when Americans made a beeline for the silver vaults, buying up all sorts of silverware for their homes across the Atlantic.
It was one of the larger shops, carpeted in bright blue, and a veritable sea of silver met her eyes: shelves of platters, trays, boxes, urns, jugs and shields and, on sturdy mahogany tables, gigantic pieces including candelabra, centrepieces covered in cherubs and a huge Nef representing a galleon in full sail.
The Hallmarked Man, Robert Galbraith
Pamela doesn’t want to talk and tries to turn Robin away, but she is struggling with the after-effects of laser eye surgery. She bumps into a table laden with silver objects, and a fragile-looking horn cup in an elaborate silver casing falls to the ground. Pamela stands on it accidentally, shattering it. When she bursts into tears, Robin helps her pick up the pieces and finds a coffee machine in the corner of the shop. Then, as Pamela recovers and they drink their coffee, Robin learns a great deal about Kenneth’s failings as a businessman and about the Murdoch Silver, and the unusual way the under-qualified ‘William Wright’ was hired.
Pamela tells Robin she’s been very kind, and Strike is overjoyed to hear what she’s learned. He tells her she’s ‘a fucking marvel’ as she makes her way back to the Chancery Lane Tube station.
