Locations - The British Museum

Posted on March 24th 2025

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The London Repository isn’t the only secure location based around Chancery Lane.

The Chancery Lane Safe Deposit, still operating today as the London Silver Vaults, is a large subterranean market that first opened over a century ago on the 7th of May, 1885.

Originally providing strong rooms and vaults to hold silver, valuable jewellery, and important documents for customers, it transitioned to offer secure premises for dedicated silver merchants a few years later.

Security you can trust

With 1.2-metre (3.9 ft) thick walls lined with steel, the underground vaults have never been broken into (though they once advertised for burglars to try!). One of those vaults was used to store a single farthing (equal to 1/4 of a British penny) for over thirty years, with the owner paying more than £100 for continued use of the vault.

During World War II, the building above the vaults was struck directly by two incendiary bombs (at precisely 22:59 on September 7th, 1940, the very first night of the Blitz), but the vaults suffered no damage whatsoever. This was in spite of the building above being partly destroyed. It was later destroyed entirely by a second direct hit.

The vaults today

A new building, Chancery House, was constructed after the war, and since 1953 it has been in its present format - a collection of forty individual shops. All forty of these underground shops have been owned by the same families ever since.

It is said today that the premises contains the largest single collection of silver for sale in the world. They are open to the public and can be found on Chancery Lane, London, WC2A 1QS if you ever want to visit.

From the author

“I actually didn’t know about the Chancery Lane Safe Deposit or the London Silver Vaults when I first began writing the series. Hard to believe, I know.

When I eventually found out, I was stunned. Subterranean vaults? Right by the London Repository? It was a crazy coincidence. Imagine my surprise a few months later when I learned about the Kingsway Exchange Tunnels running beneath Chancery Lane!”