The Hatton Garden Heist: What Really Happened in the 2015 Safe Deposit Burglary
Over Easter 2015 a gang of mostly older career criminals drilled into the vault beneath 88–90 Hatton Garden and emptied 73 safe deposit boxes.…
History & Stories
From the Great Exhibition of 1851 to famous vaults, wartime safes and legendary heists: the stories behind the steel.
12 articles
Bank Vault Doors: How They Work, Who Made Them and How Time Locks Changed Bank Robbery
A bank vault door is a machine as much as a door. Swing one open and you’ll find inches of laminated steel, a ring…
Cannonball Safes: History, Makers, Value and How to Identify One
A cannonball safe is a round, screw-door bank safe built to beat the nitroglycerine burglar. Here’s where the design came from, who made them,…
Inside the Bank of Spain Vault: History, Security and the Real Flood Trap
Thirty-five metres under Madrid’s Plaza de Cibeles lies the gold vault that Money Heist made famous. It’s real, its doors were made in America,…
Safes in Literature: The Strongboxes, Safes and Vaults in My Favourite Books
Iron safes, cash-boxes, strong-rooms and safe-deposit vaults turn up in some of the best-loved books in English. Here are the ones I keep coming…
The History of Safe-Cracking: From Gunpowder to the Thermic Lance
Forget the film safe-cracker with his ear to the dial, listening for clicks. That’s mostly fiction. For two centuries the real contest was cruder…
Infamous Failed Bank Robberies: 8 Heists That Went Wrong
Some of the most famous “failed” robberies weren’t failures at all. The thieves got into the vault, got out again with the loot, and…
Alfred Charles Hobbs and the Great Lock Controversy of 1851
In the summer of 1851 an American lock salesman opened the two most trusted locks in England: a Chubb detector lock on a Westminster…
The Great Exhibition of 1851 and the British Safe Industry
In the summer of 1851 Britain’s best safe and lock makers set out their wares in the Crystal Palace, and within weeks an American…
World War II Safes and Vaults: Gold, Documents and the Safe Makers at War
The Second World War put the world’s vaults to work, and a lot of treasure ended up in unlikely places. Britain shipped its gold…
The Most Secure Vault in the World? 7 Famous Vaults Compared
Nobody publishes a league table of vault security, and the places that guard the most gold are the ones that say the least. So…
History of Safes: When Safes Were Invented and How They Evolved
Nobody invented the safe in a single moment. People have locked valuables in chests for thousands of years, but the heavy iron safe you…