St Luke’s Refinery–Bank of England

The stamp shown here is the largest of a collection of six St Luke’s stamps in the Bank of England Museum.

In November 1920, the Bank of England opened its own refinery, St Luke’s, in Old Street (around one kilometre to the north of Threadneedle Street), in the large building to which its banknote printing operation had recently relocated. Interestingly, prior to the building being purchased by the Bank in 1917, it had housed the St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics, having been built for that purpose in 1787.

The main purpose of setting up the refinery was to undercut the London refiners’ charges for refining South African gold and thus to keep South African production coming to London. South African mining houses had complained for some years about the London refiners’ charges.

The refinery was managed by R.G.C. Pearson, who had been running the Ottawa Mint refinery, to which the Bank had directed large amounts of gold during the First World War. Pearson installed 30 Miller chlorine process furnaces and an electrolytic plant for refining gold and silver. The potential throughput was an amazing 30 tonnes per month, enough to cope with all South African output, then running at around 250 tonnes per year.

The first bar, with an oval stamp of Britannia and marked ST LUKE’S REFINERY BANK OF ENGLAND, was cast on 15^th November 1920. The experience was brief. Pearson was lured away to advise on the establishment of the Rand Refinery, which was due to open late in 1921. It soon became clear that the Rand Refinery would be refining all of South Africa’s mine output and the Bank shut down St Luke’s early in February 1921, after producing 2,040,338 ounces. The 5,100 bars produced, however, were rated Good Delivery as can be seen from the Bank being included on the London Gold Market’s Good Delivery List in 1936 (in effect as a Former List refiner). As far as we know, no St Luke’s bars survive.