McLaren has secured the Faryners House preconstruction deal for an £85m redevelopment of a 1970s office block at 25 Monument Street in the City of London, appointed by client Monument Estates to a scheme that sits on the site of the bakery where the Great Fire of London began.
The site on Pudding Lane occupies the location of the bakery associated with Thomas Farriner, whose premises were identified as the starting point of the September 1666 fire that, according to Building, destroyed around 80% of the City of London. The plot sits immediately adjacent to the Monument, the column erected to commemorate that disaster, giving the new scheme its name: Faryners House, referencing the baker whose surname was also recorded as Faryner.
Faryners House preconstruction deal: programme and scope
McLaren has not yet been awarded the main construction contract. The current programme envisages main construction work beginning in August next year, following a preconstruction phase that will allow the contractor to work up detailed delivery plans for a complex city-centre scheme. J F Hunt has been awarded the demolition and enabling works package and would be novated to McLaren upon a main-contract award.
Planning permission was granted earlier this year. The redevelopment will deliver about 9,000 square metres of Grade A office space across 10 upper floors, with terraces incorporated at selected levels to provide outdoor amenity. A visitor centre focused on the Monument is also planned, alongside a south-west-facing pocket square intended to open up the surrounding public realm. Cycle storage, landscaped areas and improved pedestrian routes complete the public-benefit offer. The scheme was designed by Fletcher Priest Architects.
Embodied carbon strategy and BREEAM target
From a sustainability standpoint, the project has a clear headline commitment on embodied carbon: the existing basement will be retained rather than demolished and rebuilt, directly reducing the structural carbon burden associated with below-ground construction. Basement retention is a well-established strategy for cutting embodied carbon on city-centre redevelopments where the existing substructure is serviceable, avoiding the material and energy intensity of new piling and ground-floor slab construction.
Beyond the retained basement, the project is targeting a BREEAM Outstanding rating, the highest tier in the Building Research Establishment’s Environmental Assessment Method. Achieving Outstanding requires a holistic performance case across energy, water, health, transport and materials, meaning the design team will need to demonstrate substantive operational and embodied carbon reductions, not merely procedural compliance. For a Grade A office in a constrained City of London location, that combination of basement retention and an Outstanding target signals a genuine attempt to address both operational and whole-life carbon, though the methodology behind any carbon claims will only become verifiable once the full BREEAM assessment is submitted.
The decision to replace a 1970s block is itself worth noting from a fabric perspective. Buildings of that era typically carry high operational carbon loads and frequently present awkward structural geometries for modern fit-out, making retention of the superstructure technically difficult. Selective retention of the basement while replacing upper floors is a pragmatic response to that tension.
The Faryners House preconstruction deal places McLaren at the centre of what is, by the standards of the immediate neighbourhood, a scheme with considerable public dimension. The visitor centre and pocket square commitments reflect the planning authority’s interest in unlocking public access around the Monument, one of the City’s most visited landmarks. How those spaces are specified and materialised will matter as much to the scheme’s legacy as the office floors above.
With the Faryners House preconstruction deal now formalised and demolition works under way through J F Hunt, the next critical milestone is the award of the main construction contract, which would set the programme firmly on course for an August start to principal works.
