Suggested New Tea House and Alterations to Offices

Increasing numbers of visitors to the Tower - around half a million a year by the turn of the century - created the need for additional facilities. This proposal suggested transforming the Victorian Pump House (now home to the Tower's Gift Shop) into a teahouse.

Stylistically the design recalls the timber-framed buildings of the Tudor period, of which the King's House in the Tower's Inner Ward is a rare survival in London owing to the Great Fire of 1666.

The decision to build a new teahouse was deferred until after the First World War. In 1935 a new refreshment room was built, to a different design.