An unusual hall in the centre of London  with a room designed to feel like a salt cave...
 
Salters’ Hall in the City of London is the headquarters of the Worshipful Company of Salters, one of the Great Twelve livery companies, and its story stretches back to medieval London’s salt trade. Its history is unusually dramatic because the hall has been rebuilt or replaced several times after fire, the Great Fire of London, and wartime bombing.
 
The company was formally incorporated in 1394, when salt was still a crucial commodity for preserving food, medicine, and industry. Earlier records show the Salters were already active in London by the 15th century, and a hall existed by the 1450s on Bread Street. That original site placed the company firmly in the commercial heart of medieval London.
 
Salters’ Hall has a repeated pattern of destruction and renewal. The early halls were damaged or destroyed by fires in 1539 and 1598, then the hall was again lost in the Great Fire of 1666 and rebuilt in 1668. Later, the 19th-century hall was bombed in May 1941 during the Blitz, and the company then spent decades without a permanent home before the current hall opened in 1976. 
 
The current Salters’ Hall on Fore Street was designed by Sir Basil Spence and opened in 1976. It is a rare Brutalist livery hall, with the bold concrete language that makes it stand out among the City’s more traditional guild buildings. It was refurbished 10 years ago and has a lovely garden with fragments of the original Roman wall.
 
Interesting facts...
The company’s motto is Sal sapit omnia, often translated as “salt savours all” or “salt saves all,” which unfortunately was not the case for the previous halls. The current modernist building has qualities however  for example the fifth-floor lobby was designed to feel like a salt cave, with concealed lighting and a chipped marble ceiling.