Erection date: 1939
Cornhill was anciently a soke of the Bishop of London who had the Seigneurial oven in which all tenants were obliged to bake their bread and pay furnage or baking dues.
This entry will increase your word power: "Soke" - the territory under the jurisdiction of a particular court; "Seigneurial" - belonging to a feudal lord; "Furnage" - the fee paid a feudal lord by his tenants for the right to bake in his oven. Seems the tenants had to pay furnage whether or not they wanted to use the Bishop's public oven in Cornhill.
Site: Cornhill Insurance doors (8 memorials)
EC3, Cornhill, 32
The carved doors are at the right of the building, behind the cyclist in our picture. According to Esoteric London these panels, listed here in reading sequence (left right, top down), "were designed by the sculptor Walter Gilbert in 1939. Gilbert modelled each of the reliefs in clay and from this the two mahogany doors were carved by B. P. Arnold at H. H. Martyn & Co. Ltd of Cheltenham 'architectural decorators and furnishers'."
