34, Farringdon Lane

A warehouse and showrooms, dating to 1875, designed by Rowland Plumbe for John Greenwood, a watch and clock manufacturer and importer. The building is constructed of beige stock brick in English bond, with rubbed red brick and painted Bath and Portland stone and stucco dressings. The roof is obscured by a parapet, and there are end-wall brick stacks.

The building has a side-hall entrance plan, with the ground and first floors originally intended as showrooms and the upper floors for warehouse accommodation. It is an example of elaborate Gothic Revival style, featuring four storeys with a raised basement and attic, and a five-window range. The elevation is clearly divided into two sections, above and below the first-floor cornice line, and incorporates a clock at the top centre of the gable. The ground floor has pointed arches. Steps lead to a deeply recessed entrance in the far right bay, featuring 20th-century doors and overlight, with a scored stucco reveal. Recessed casements with plain pointed fanlights are to the left of the entrance. Above the ground floor is a stucco sill band beneath shouldered segmental-arched casement windows. A projecting stucco first-floor cornice features a floral pattern to the frieze. The second and third floors have two tall arched bays with stucco recesses rising through both storeys, within which pairs of windows with colonnettes are set. Single arched sashes flank the tall arched bays at each floor level. The top floor has a tall gable cutting through a machicolated cornice and balustraded parapet, with a clock set in a roundel at the centre of the gable. The gable is also capped with an elaborate finial and pyramidal finials to the parapet termini piers. Decorative details include the coat of arms of the Greenwood family, the arms of the City of London and Middlesex, the Greenwood family motto 'ut prosim', and symbols of the family’s trade—an hourglass, sundial, sickle, and serpent—in the tympana above the third-storey windows. A foundation stone reads: ‘This stone was laid by Amelia Fisher Granddaughter of John Greenwood June V MDCCCLXXV’.

Internally, the building has been altered, with a mezzanine floor inserted between the ground and first floors. It represents one of the outstanding Gothic warehouses in the Farringdon Road area and an important survival connected to the local clock-making and watch-making industry. The architect was also responsible for housing work at Noel Park.