• History of SIS
• The Bethell Letter
• SIS or MI6 What's in a name?
• Were there any other MIs?
• SIS Headquarters Buildings
• SIS and GCHQ
• Archive and Records Policy

SIS Headquarters Buildings

SIS's modest origins as the Foreign Section of the Secret Service Bureau were reflected in the austerity of its first accommodation. Both the Foreign and the Home Sections of the Bureau took up office space at 64 Victoria Street, Westminster, rented from an enquiry agent. Commander Mansfield Cumming RN, the Head of the Foreign Section, was less than happy with the arrangement and was soon looking for alternative premises.

Cumming worked long hours and most weekends. He wished to find accommodation that would combine both an office and living quarters. His choice, made within a matter of weeks of the original move to Victoria Street, was Ashley Mansions in Vauxhall Bridge Road, Westminster.

The steady expansion of the work of the Foreign Section eventually necessitated another move. Flat 54, 2, Whitehall Court, Westminster, brought several advantages, not least a greater proximity to the War Office, Admiralty and Foreign Office in Whitehall. Cumming later took the decision to expand his accommodation at Whitehall Court, writing in his diary on 23 May 1916 'moved to a new office'.

Whitehall Court remained the Service's headquarters until the end of the First World War. Security issues and reductions in the Service's finances and personnel then led to a move away from Westminster to West Kensington. 1, Melbury Road has been described as ' a large red brick mansion in Holland Park' and, as with Cumming's previous headquarters, it combined the function of office and residence of the Chief of SIS. It was here that Cumming died in June 1923.

Cumming's successor, Rear Admiral Hugh Sinclair, kept the Service at its west London address for a few more years but a need to return nearer to the seat of government prompted yet another relocation. By 1926 SIS had moved into Broadway Buildings, 54, Broadway, near to St James's Park Underground Station. At first, SIS and its recent adjunct, the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), occupied only the fourth and fifth floors but with the outbreak of the Second World War the whole building was taken over. Meanwhile, Bletchley Park had been purchased by Sinclair as an emergency SIS war station. It became famous as the centre of the GC&CS code breaking effort.

SIS remained at Broadway for almost forty years until in 1964 it moved to Century House, a modern tower block in Westminster Bridge Road, Lambeth. This was the Service's home for thirty years during the latter half of the Cold War.

In 1994 SIS moved to its present headquarters, Vauxhall Cross. Although almost within sight of its first headquarters, the large and prominent building on the banks of the River Thames is a far cry from the Service's beginnings in Victoria.