Walk down Fenchurch Street in the City of London today and you will see something no other construction site in the world can offer: a 700-year-old stone church tower standing on steel stilts, hoisted into the air while a 36-storey skyscraper rises around it. 50 Fenchurch Street, also known as Fifty Fenchurch, is one of the most talked-about construction projects in London, with completion targeted for 2028.
Deep Historical Roots
This is not an ordinary plot. The 1.2-acre island site sits in one of the oldest corners of London, and roughly 80% of its footprint covers rich archaeological ground. Excavation has uncovered a Roman road, early clay-and-timber buildings and ditches dating from the 1st to the 4th centuries, when this ground was part of Roman Londinium.
The site has belonged to The Clothworkers' Company since 1528. Successive Livery Halls built here were destroyed by the Great Fire of London in 1666 and the Blitz in 1941. The new tower will carry that history forward with a modern Livery Hall built into its subterranean levels.
Two protected monuments stand on the site. The Tower of All Hallows Staining, built in 1320, is a Grade I-listed medieval stone tower and the only surviving part of a church that survived the Great Fire but collapsed in 1671. Lambe's Chapel Crypt, a Grade II-listed crypt dating back to the 12th century, was carefully disassembled and is being reinstated within the new building.
The Church on Stilts Engineering Feat
The headline engineering feat is the suspension of the medieval tower. The 700-tonne stone tower was underpinned and propped 14 to 16 metres in the air on temporary steel plunge columns. While it hung suspended, crews excavated 125,000 tonnes of earth, digging 18 metres deep directly beneath and around the tower to anchor the skyscraper's foundations. Once the basement structure was sound, the tower was permanently integrated back into the ground-level architecture.
The team delivering the project includes developers AXA IM Alts and YardNine, with Multiplex and Keltbray as contractors and Eric Parry Architects as designer. It is a chain that requires experienced, carded workers at every level, from the deep basement dig to the final fit-out.
Engineering Overview
Watch this engineering breakdown to see how the 700-year-old monument was propped up safely amidst a live skyscraper construction site:
Modern Architecture and Sustainability
The finished building will be a 149.6-metre tower delivering over 62,000 square metres of flexible office space. It is designed to be one of London's lowest-carbon tall buildings: a 100% all-electric tower targeting a BREEAM Outstanding rating, with vertical urban greening built into the facade to filter air and noise pollution.
Public space on the site increases 36-fold. The Fen Garden at street level will nestle the medieval tower in marshland-inspired planting, and a public roof garden on the 10th floor will look out over the Tower of London and the River Thames.
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