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From London Tea History: "The 3rd plaque, sponsored by Tata Consumer Products, has been erected at Sir John Lyon House in London EC4V 3PA - sadly due to Coronavirus a plaque ceremony could not take place.  Tata Consumer Products are best known in the UK for Tetley tea. The tea trade shifted to this building in 1970 after the tea auctions moved out of Plantation House. Sir John Lyon House was the head quarters of the global tea industry for several years. Sir John Lyon House was synonymous with the tea trade who still have their links with this institution of a building till this day.  Our third plaque commemorates the tea trade over 350 years. The tea trade operated  in these streets for this period. Many old tea timers visit the area. We thank Tata for their kind sponsorship towards this plaque."

Luckily that page has an image of the plaque from which we took our transcription.

Oh dear, oh dear. When the plaque committee planned this commemorative tablet we're sure this was not how they envisioned it would be displayed. They actually planned the erection of a number of plaques, all in the same format, at a number of tea-related sites around London, and some of them have worked well - see Tea Trade in London, but this brand new building could almost have been designed to repel all plaques.  There's just nowhere to put it, which is why it's ended up in the window, where the reflections make it impossible to read; almost impossible to see - we spent some time hunting around before we spotted it, and we knew it was there. Perhaps the lesson for plaque erectors is that each plaque needs to be designed for its intended site. But the success of the Blue Plaque scheme rather disproves this since the same design is used everywhere. 

We took our photo of the building from the walkway, the stairs to which you can see in the reflection in the other photo.  We were there on a Sunday and found a gap in the passing traffic to take our photo.

What with the pedestrian bridge, the tunnel, and the traffic on Upper Thames Street this is one of the nastier places in London. So, of course, it's an unavoidable section of the Thames Riverside Walk. It's probably a good thing that the tourists don't see the plaque, or they might be tempted to linger in this horrible place and read it.

The plaque repeatedly refers to "this historic building" which is odd since the host building was built in 2009. Nowhere can we find an image of the building that was here before, the one in which all the tea trade activities took place, 1971 - 2005.