Inside The Strange Tale Of The Pandemic Cannabis Factory Next To The Bank Of England

When the staff of the Worshipful Company of Drapers came back to work in January after the Christmas break, something was different at their grand building in the City of London. The bar on the ground floor absolutely reeked of cannabis.

“The smell was overpowering,” Drapers Company Clerk Richard Winstanley told Bisnow. “We knew something was going on, this wasn’t just someone having a quick joint.”

The City of London police were called by staff of the company and when they raided the bar at 27b Throgmorton Street on 14 January, they found an unusual sign of the post-pandemic times. In the basement of the 19th-century building in the heart of London’s gleaming financial district, a stone’s throw from the Bank of England, was a fully operational cannabis production facility.

“The factory… consisted of 1,142 cannabis plants which have a street value of £1,038,500,” PC Daniel White, one of the officers who searched the premises said in a statement to a City of London Corporation hearing about whether the bar should have its license removed. “This was a considerable operation given its size and amount of plants already produced. The factory consisted of heating, lighting and watering facilities.”

The change in the way people live and work during the coronavirus pandemic and the unprecedented hollowing out of one of the world’s busiest financial centres made this particular illegal repurposing possible.

Throgmorton Street is at the absolute centre of London’s financial district — the small, narrow street leads out on to the Bank of England. It was named after Nicholas Throckmorton, a 16th-century English politician who was an ambassador on behalf of Queen Elizabeth I. 

The London Stock Exchange once stood on the street as did the home of Thomas Cromwell, politician and right-hand man to Henry VIII. 

“This is the first cannabis factory in the City, no doubt being set up in response to fewer people being out and about during the pandemic who might have noticed any unusual activity,” City of London Police Temporary Detective Inspector Andy Spooner said in a statement in January after the raid. 

The Drapers Company — a charitable organisation that traces its roots back to a City of London guild for clothes makers in 1364 — owns the building, and Winstanley said it was in the early process of terminating the lease to the bar, sometimes known as Throgmortons and sometimes as Canvas Bar. 

He said staff at the Drapers Company had been using its offices on the upper floors of the building throughout the pandemic to continue to undertake its grant-giving work, but agreed the sharp drop in City workers coming in to the office had made it possible to set up a major cannabis factory.

“The City has been pretty empty,” he said, adding that the Christmas holidays would have been particularly quiet. 

The bar’s license to sell alcohol is currently suspended, and the City of London Corporation has yet to publish its decision whether to reinstate the license or withdraw it completely. It is not the cannabis factory in the basement that is the only issue being considered — there are also unpaid fees and other administrative matters such as the bar operating while the license was suspended. 

The City of London police are continuing to investigate the discovery of the cannabis production facility. At a licensing subcommittee meeting on 15 October, the solicitor for Saeed Hashem Hosseini, the owner of the company that leases the bar, said the sub-basement in which the cannabis factory was discovered had been subleased to a third party, adding Hosseini did not have access to the area, which had its own separate entrance. A video of the meeting is available here.

His solicitor said Hosseini visited the premises about once every two weeks and had not smelled cannabis from other parts of the building or the street. When questioned how staff from the Drapers Company smelled cannabis from the street but he had not, Hosseini said: “I could never smell cannabis through the building. We spoke very closely with my supreme landlord, the Drapers, because it was a joint effort to discover how this happened. They described it as being very lucky to discover it because of the construction work they had, so if they hadn’t had that construction work, nobody would have smelt this, because they were being super professional.” 

Hosseini’s solicitor said his client is stepping back from his role directly running the company while the police investigation continues.