The London Silver Vaults began as the Chancery Lane Safe Deposit, a Victorian strongroom where wealthy Londoners left their family silver. Today it’s a market of around 30 silver dealers, trading from the old strongrooms behind steel doors. Here’s the safe-maker’s side of the story.
6,000
safe boxes by 1890, for 3,000 customers
4 ft
steel-lined walls, about that thick
7 t
the John Tann door at the entrance
30
specialist shops today, by the vaults’ count
Key takeaways
- The vaults opened as the Chancery Lane Safe Deposit Company, Britain’s second private safe deposit outside the banks. The opening year is disputed: 1876, 1882 and 1885 all appear in print.
- Customers rented boxes and strongrooms for household silver, jewellery and papers; Hatton Garden jewellers left their stock there overnight.
- The building above was bombed in the Blitz. The vaults’ own history says the strongrooms survived with their contents, though one account reports damage below ground too.
- The 1953 rebuild was fitted out entirely with John Tann doors and lockers; the original vault doors appear to have been Milner’s.
- Since 1953 the vaults have been a shopping destination, open to the public with no appointment needed.
In This Article
The London Silver Vaults at a glance
| What it was | The Chancery Lane Safe Deposit Company: private safe deposit boxes and strongrooms |
| Opened | 1882 by the vaults’ own account; May 1885 in accounts drawn from the press of the day; 1876 in older safe-trade histories |
| Original entrance | 61–62 Chancery Lane, London |
| Below ground | Two levels down, about 40 feet below the street |
| Walls | About 4 feet thick, lined with steel |
| Size by 1890 | 6,000 safe boxes, 3,000 customers |
| Bombed | September 1940, in the Blitz; the building above was destroyed |
| Rebuilt | 1953, renamed the London Silver Vaults |
| Doors and lockers | Milner (original vault doors, by the style of hinge); Ratner (first extension); John Tann (all of the 1953 rebuild) |
| Today | About 30 specialist silver shops; entrance on Southampton Buildings; address 53–64 Chancery Lane, WC2A 1QS |
Sources for the table are given in the sections below. Opening hours change, so check the vaults’ own website before you go.
The safe deposit idea comes to London
A private safe deposit is a business that rents out secure space and does nothing else, and New York got there first: the Safe Deposit Company of New York launched in 1865. Britain’s first was the National Safe Deposit Company, established in 1872, which opened its premises at 1 Queen Victoria Street in the City in 1875.1
The Chancery Lane Safe Deposit was the second, set up, Metrosafe says, to give households strongrooms for their silver.12 Safe makers were quick to see the market. In 1887 a Milner’s price list in The Solicitors’ Journal ran from deed boxes for lawyers at £4 8s up to “Milner’s Safe Deposits” at £5,000, a whole installation sold off the page like a cash box.3 You can see that advert in our collection of old safe adverts.
The Chancery Lane Safe Deposit
Which year did it open? It depends who you ask. The vaults’ own history says 1882.2 Two safe-trade accounts say 1876.41 A letter to the Antiques Trade Gazette calls 1876 “entirely incorrect” and says the deposit was opened by the Lord Mayor in May 1885, and the recent accounts that went back to the newspapers of the time agree on 1885.567 We think 1885 has the best support for the opening itself, but we couldn’t see the 1885 press reports ourselves, so treat that as the weight of evidence, not a final word.
Its chief promoter was Thomas Clarke, who was elected a Sheriff of the City of London in 1885, the same year.7 The way in was a grand red granite archway at 61–62 Chancery Lane, closed at night by wrought iron gates, with mosaic floors in the vestibule. Clients got reading rooms and telephones, and the company would take in letters for them.86 A July 1900 advertisement reproduced by Grace’s Guide gives the company’s address as 63–64 Chancery Lane, by then trading as the Chancery Lane Safe Deposit and Offices Co.9
Two recent accounts say the strongrooms were built in part of an abandoned tunnel under Chancery Lane, which TeaTime describes as an early underground railway for the post, given up in 1874.68 We haven’t found a primary source for that, and it’s the kind of story London likes to tell about itself, so we’d keep an open mind.
Who rented the boxes and strongrooms
The first customers were wealthy Londoners who left their silverware, jewellery and documents there while they were away at their country houses. The jewellers and dealers of nearby Hatton Garden used it too, depositing stock at night and collecting it each morning.2 That habit lasted: more than a century later the same trade was renting boxes a few streets away at Hatton Garden Safe Deposit, the vault emptied in the Hatton Garden heist of 2015.
The neighbourhood helped. Chancery Lane runs past the Inns of Court and the law courts, and TeaTime points out how much legal paper that world produces and has to keep.6 London On The Ground found 1886 rates of one guinea a year, or five shillings for a month.7 By 1890 there were 6,000 safe boxes and 3,000 customers.2 According to newspaper reports collected for the Galbraith feature, several British Army regiments stored their mess silver there when they left for the Boer War.8
How the strongrooms were guarded
The vaults sit two levels below ground, about 40 feet down, and the walls are about four feet thick and lined with steel. The vaults’ own history adds iron doors and armed guards, and says the corridor looked like a row of prison cells.27 The company’s advertising leaned hard on all of it. An 1880s advert in the Illustrated London News said the vaults were “built on columns, and are entirely isolated”, with patrols or corridors around, over and under them; an 1887 advert in the same paper offered 6,000 safes and strong rooms under a military patrol day and night.6
“Night watchmen have revolvers.”
Chancery Lane Safe Deposit advertisement, Illustrated London News, 1880s
Then there was the stunt. In 1893 the company ran an advert headed “Burglars Wanted”, inviting a burglar or two to try their luck.76 Nobody seems to know whether anyone applied. In 1889 a newspaper quoted a reformed burglar who reckoned “it would be easier to break into the Bank of England”.7 The management says the vaults have never been burgled, which, as boasts go, is the one a safe deposit most wants to be able to make.10
Who made the doors
This is the part of the story the guidebooks skip, and it’s the reason we wanted to write this page. Three of the big names of the British safe trade were involved, at different times.
Victorian vault
Milner
An advert for the first deposit shows vault doors with Milner’s distinctive style of hinge, which the safe historian behind safeman.org.uk reads as Milner work.4
First extension
Ratner
Ratner built safe deposits all over the world, 26 by 1925, and the first Chancery Lane extension is on its list.11
1953 rebuild
John Tann
When the vaults were rebuilt after the war, the installation was exclusively Tann’s lockers and doors.4
The Milner attribution is an inference from a picture, and safeman.org.uk is careful to say so: because Ratner also claimed to have supplied the deposit, it suggests several makers may have been involved, possibly including Tann.4 That fits the firms. Milner’s fire-resisting safes were commonplace in solicitors’ and registrars’ offices across the country, and the Ratner Safe Company, founded in 1889 by Milner’s former partner Daniel Ratcliff, concentrated on safe deposits in its early years, with Selfridges, Harrods, Rotterdam and the Bank of Athens among its other jobs.11
The 1953 work is better documented. Safeman.org.uk shows Tann’s stainless steel “C.6” door and architrave for the new deposit, and the British Safe and Vault Trade Association’s history of the industry names the London Silver Vaults and the Chancery Lane Safe Deposit as Tann’s main showpieces, alongside the later doors for the Jewel House at the Tower of London.411 If you want the firm’s whole story, from Edward Tann’s iron chests to the treasury doors, read our history of John Tann safes; the firm’s own 1912 advert for safes and strong rooms shows the kind of door it was selling by then.
The door you walk through today
The vaults’ own history describes a steel vault door three feet thick, still in use.2 TeaTime and London On The Ground both put its weight at 7 tonnes and name the maker as John Tann; London On The Ground adds that it was built for this site, and TeaTime says it’s timed and open only during trading hours.67 We couldn’t find a published lock specification, and we wouldn’t print one if we had. What you can see, or could in 2015, is a small Tann safe on show under a red shield recalling the Great Exhibition of 1851. A nice touch from the oldest name in the British safe trade.
The Blitz and the survival of the vaults
By the 1930s many of the wealthy households had gone, and silver dealers had taken their place, using the large strongrooms to store stock.27 Then came the war. TeaTime gives two dates in September 1940. On the 7th, the first night of the Blitz, two incendiary bombs fell in the street above and badly damaged the entrance, but the vaults were unharmed. On the 25th a bomb hit the building directly.6
What that second bomb did underground is where the accounts part company. The vaults’ own history says the bomb destroyed the Victorian building above, while the strongrooms survived with their contents intact; safeman.org.uk agrees that the vaults themselves were undamaged.24 TeaTime says the direct hit did a good deal of damage to the safe deposits and strong rooms, and that extensive repairs were needed after the war.6 The Galbraith feature speaks of raids in 1940 and 1941 that destroyed the buildings above.8 What everyone agrees on is the important bit: the building went, and the vaults came through well enough to be used again.
Did you know?
The war made the vaults a shop. With their own premises bombed out, some traders began selling straight from the strongrooms, and during the war dealers were selling silver to American officers stationed in London.82 The vaults say the American connection still holds today.2
Dealers were trading from the vaults by about 1941.2 By the end of the 1940s the place was known for silver, and a writer in 1952 described a “dizzy dollar” season of Americans buying for their homes.8 Underground storage saved a great many other things in London’s wartime, as we tell in safes and vaults of the Second World War.
1953: from safe deposit to silver vaults
When a new building, Chancery House, went up above ground in 1953, the vaults were officially recognised as a shopping destination and renamed the London Silver Vaults.27 Safeman.org.uk describes how the rebuild worked. Rather than simply restore the old layout, the owners enlarged the vault and divided it in two: one part for the safe deposit, the other for 40 smaller strongrooms, each a silver dealer’s showroom. The result was an avenue of little shops, each one lockable and secure inside the main vault overnight.4
That’s the clever bit, and it’s why the place still works. Every shop is its own strongroom with its own door, inside a bigger strongroom with a bigger door. It’s the same nesting you’d find in a bank vault full of safe deposit boxes, scaled up so that the boxes are rooms and the customers stand inside them.
Timeline
- 1872 The National Safe Deposit Company, Britain’s first, is established; it opens at 1 Queen Victoria Street in 1875.
- 1876–1885 The Chancery Lane Safe Deposit opens: 1876, 1882 and May 1885 are all given.
- 1890 6,000 safe boxes and 3,000 customers.
- 1893 The “Burglars Wanted” advert.
- By 1925 Ratner has built the first extension of the deposit.
- 1930s Silver dealers replace most of the private clients.
- Sep 1940 Bombs fall on 7 and 25 September; the building above is destroyed.
- c. 1941 Dealers are trading from the vaults.
- 1953 Rebuilt with Tann doors and lockers; renamed the London Silver Vaults.
Visiting the London Silver Vaults today
The way in is a modest door on Southampton Buildings, just round the corner from Chancery Lane; the official address is 53–64 Chancery Lane, London WC2A 1QS. No appointment is needed.26 You sign in at the front desk before going down.6 Downstairs, the shops are the strongrooms, opening off two corridors with their steel doors standing open.12
The vaults say there are 30 specialist shops, some run by the same family for three or four generations, selling silver and silver plate from the 1600s to the present day.1312 (On the day we checked, the shop directory on their site listed 25.) They’re independent businesses, so we don’t recommend any one dealer; go and browse. Opening hours are on the vaults’ website, and the vaults are closed on Sundays and bank holidays.2
The vaults’ visitors’ list runs from Princess Margaret and Liberace to Mick Jagger, J K Rowling, Anthony Hopkins and Gregory Peck. Dealers there supplied silverware for productions including Downton Abbey, and the vaults turn up in Ben Aaronovitch’s novel Rivers of London.2 Rowling, as Robert Galbraith, set part of the Cormoran Strike novel The Hallmarked Man there.8 If you’re more interested in the doors than the teapots, you won’t be the only one, but you may be in a minority.
For more odd places where valuables are kept, from a soft drink’s secret formula to the world’s seed bank, see our round-up of the strangest vaults in the world, where the Silver Vaults have a short entry of their own.
The Silver Vaults have been a market since Victorian times.
They were a safe deposit. Dealers stored stock there from the 1930s, traded there from about 1941, and the vaults became a shopping destination in 1953.
They were a bank vault.
They were a private safe deposit company, only the second in Britain outside the banks.
The vaults opened in 1876.
The date is disputed. The vaults say 1882; accounts based on the press of the time say May 1885.
The doors you see today are Victorian.
The 1953 rebuild was fitted out with John Tann doors and lockers.
Frequently asked questions
Can you visit the London Silver Vaults?
Yes. They’re open to the public on weekdays and Saturday mornings, with no appointment needed; you sign in at the desk. Check the vaults’ website for current hours.
Is it free to go in?
We found no admission charge on the vaults’ website or in the accounts we read: it’s a set of shops, and you only pay if you buy something.
How many shops are in the London Silver Vaults?
The vaults say 30 specialist shops over two corridors. When the vaults were rebuilt in 1953 there were 40 small strongrooms for dealers.
Were the Silver Vaults bombed in the war?
Yes, in September 1940. The building above was destroyed; the vaults’ own history says the strongrooms survived with their contents, though one account reports damage below ground as well.
Who made the vault door?
John Tann, which fitted out the whole 1953 rebuild with its doors and lockers. The entrance door is reported to weigh 7 tonnes.
When did the London Silver Vaults open?
As the London Silver Vaults, in 1953. As the Chancery Lane Safe Deposit, in 1882 by the vaults’ own account, or May 1885 according to accounts drawn from the press of the day.
Sources:
- Christopher Barrow, “The history of the safe deposit box”, Metrosafe (1 March 2016). ↩︎
- The London Silver Vaults, “About” (history, famous visitors, address and opening hours; accessed 13 November 2026). ↩︎
- Milner’s Safes advertisement, The Solicitors’ Journal, 12 February 1887, p. 262, Internet Archive. ↩︎
- safeman.org.uk, “Edward Tann & Sons: the story of Britain’s first safemaker” (archived copy, Internet Archive, April 2021): the 1953 Chancery Lane Safe Deposit, its doors and the original makers. ↩︎
- Letter to the editor, “Silver Vaults since 1885”, Antiques Trade Gazette, issue 2332. ↩︎
- Jane Pettigrew, “The Silver Vaults”, TeaTime magazine (12 February 2025), quoting Illustrated London News advertisements of the 1880s. ↩︎
- London On The Ground, “The London Silver Vaults: Chancery Lane’s dazzling open secret” (16 August 2025), drawing on period press reports and advertisements. ↩︎
- Robert Galbraith official website, “The history behind the Silver Vaults in The Hallmarked Man“ (27 February 2026). ↩︎
- Grace’s Guide, “Chancery Lane Safe Deposit and Offices Co” (advertisement of July 1900, 63–64 Chancery Lane). ↩︎
- Exploring London, “10 subterranean sites in London: 2. The London Silver Vaults” (19 October 2017). ↩︎
- Alan Bullock (Insafe International), “A history of the British safe industry”, British Safe and Vault Trade Association. ↩︎
- The London Silver Vaults, “Shops” (“30 specialist shops over two corridors”; accessed 13 November 2026). ↩︎
- The London Silver Vaults, home page (number of shops, opening hours; accessed 13 November 2026). ↩︎
The History of Safes letter
One old safe a month, in your inbox
Once a month I send one safe worth a closer look, the new maker histories and a find from the patent and advert collection. Nothing else, and you can leave with one click.
You'll get a confirmation email first. One email a month, unsubscribe any time. Privacy policy.
