This site was originally occupied by housing, St Katharine's Rents. In 1864 the builder George Myers erected this warehouse to store merchandise for the Plymouth Densham family business. It was always unpopular because it blocked views of the Tower from All Hallows, and vice-versa.
With tea being grown in India, the Denshams moved to London (owning property in Purley and Croydon) and made a fortune from their tea business.
The parent company, Densham & Sons, handled the loose tea trade from 49/51 Eastcheap, but one of the Densham partners made early use of new ideas about advertising. He created the name Mazawattee (from a number of Hindu words) and used it, together with an image of a tea-drinking grandmother and child to "brand" the product. The Mazawattee Tea Company was founded in 1887. This approach was very successful and by 1894 Mazawattee had its own offices together with warehouses and vaults in the Tower Hill warehouse.
An insurance map of 1897 shows this site marked in some detail as "Tower Hill Bonded Tea Whse", with 7 or 8 storeys and 2 or 3 basement levels. Maps of 1896 and 1916 both show the building marked as "Printing Works".
In WW2, late 1940, the building was bombed. After the war the Tower Hill Improvement Trust bought the land and the remains were largely demolished in 1951, leaving no more than one storey above ground, thus reopening the views. There is now a rather windblown, gardened terrace on the top of the low building, which would afford a good view of the Tower, were it not for the modern visitor centre/gift shop in between. See Lord Soper for a photo.
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