Guildhall

I am delighted to have been joined at the Estates Gazette pop-up podcast studio here at LREF at London's Guildhall by Rory Wheel, head of the New Homes Accelerator London at the GLA.

So first off, Rory, how's your day going so far? Are you enjoying your LREF experience?

It's good.

And you mentioned you've launched it here today.

You've got a presence here at LRF.

What's the response been like? And tell us about some of the conversations you've had here at the Guildhall.

Yeah, it's been really positive.

I think today's a great event because you've got so many people in one place that are all sort of unified in a desire to unblock housing in London.

Hello from the London Real Estate Forum at the City of London Corporation's Guildhall and welcome to this Estates Gazette podcast.

I'm Tim Burke, Estates Gazette's editor, and I'm here to discuss the health of the London office market and whether a strong occupier market can and will feed through into a rise in investment deals.

I'm joined by two stars of the LRF stage from JLL, John Woodger, head of Central London Capital Markets, and Alistair Meadows, head of International Capital for the UK, who are both fresh off stage from the Great Hall from a discussion about the state of the market.

He had been once a very lean, weazen little boy, never dreaming of carrying such a weight of flesh upon his bones or of money in his pockets, and glad enough to take his dinner at a baker's door and his tea at a pump but he had long ago forgotten all this, as it was proper that a wholesale fruiterer, alderman, common councilman, member of the worshipful company of patent-makers, past sheriff, and, above all, a lord mayor that was to be, should.

And he never forgot it more completely in all his life than on the 8th of November in the year of his election to the great golden civic chair which was the day before his grand dinner at Guildhall.

It happened that as he sat that evening all alone in his counting-house, looking over the bill of fare for next day, and checking off the fat capons in fifties, and the turtle soup by the hundred quarts for his private amusement, it happened that as he sat alone occupied in these pleasant calculations, a strange man came in and asked him how he did, adding, "'If I am half as much changed as you, sir, you have no recollection of me, I am sure.' the strange man was not over and above well dressed and was very far from being fat or rich-looking in any sense of the word yet he spoke with a kind of modest confidence and assumed an easy gentlemanly sort of an air to which nobody but a rich man can lawfully presume besides this he interrupted the good citizen just as he had reckoned three hundred and seventy-two fat capons and was carrying them over to the next column as if that were not aggravation enough the learned recorder for the city of london had only ten minutes previously gone out at that very same door and had turned round and said good-night my lord yes he had said my lord he a man of birth and education of the honourable society of the middle temple barrister at law he who had an uncle in the house of commons and an aunt almost but not quite in the house of lords for she had married a feeble peer and made him vote as she liked he this man this learned recorder had said my lord I'll not wait till to-morrow to give you your title, my Lord Mayor,' says he, with a bow and a smile.

You are Lord Mayor de facto, if not de jure.

And there followed then one of the more monumentous debates in London's political history.

Quote, After the aforesaid proclamation was proclaimed, the lords, or most of them, continuing in London, came the next day to the Guildhall, during the time that the Lord Merrin's brethren sat in their court or in a chamber, and entered and communed a long while with them, And at last the mayor and the brethren came forth unto the common council, where was read the king's letter sent unto the mayor and the citizens, commanding them to aid him with a thousand men and to send the same to his castle at Windsor.

On the other side, by the mouth of the recorder, it was requested that the citizens would grant their aid rather unto the lords, for that the protector had abused both the king's majesty and the whole realm.

and that we had taken from the King and were made to understand his folly." There it is.

and now it's burning.

The fire takes Guildhall, London's great civic headquarters.

It reaches the Old Bailey, Newgate, Warwick Lane, Watling Street, Ludgate Hill, Fleet Street.

It gets as far west as the inner temple.

And so, you know, that was great.

When you made the decision to go to London to study acting at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 1980, was that partly about getting out of Northern Ireland?

No, I'd been playing in bands.

I'd left school.

It was a neutral space where people could kind of get together and I really

liked that and that's why I wanted to stay there.

So then you went to London, you got onto that prestigious course at the Guildhall and you've said you were amazed when you got across the water to discover how little Northern Ireland, Ireland generally, featured in the public consciousness over there.

But I mean your timing wasn't great because of course it can't have been easy to be arriving as a young Irishman in London.