BMA House is a Grade II listed building in London’s Bloomsbury area, serving as the headquarters of the British Medical Association (BMA) since 1925. Designed by architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, it stands on the site of Charles Dickens’s former home in Tavistock Square.
 
Originally it was designed as the headquarters for the Theosophical Society—a mystical group led by Annie Besant. Strange little touches such as coffered barrel-vaulted roof in the Great Hall painted “nocturnal green” and “dead black. The Prince’s Room has unusual acoustics where whispers travel corner-to-corner but not at right angles - by design or by accident?
The Courtyard’s Gates of Remembrance (shown above), dedicated by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1925, honor 574 BMA members lost in World War I, and a fountain features Aesculapius staff symbols of Sacrifice, Cure, Prevention, and Aspiration.
 
Interesting facts...
The site was once Charles Dickens’s home from 1851-1860, where he built a small theater in the former schoolroom for amateur plays. On July 7, 2005, BMA staff witnessed a suicide bomb on a bus outside, they promptly left the building and turned the courtyard into a field hospital saving many lives.