The Assay Office and some Wet Protest Tents

So I took the plunge, and handed in all my silver items at the Assay Office this morning. They should be ready on Friday!
The place is not much to look at from the outside, but we visited with my jewellery class last year, and it's fascinating inside (I got to hold a kilogram bar of gold - it's much smaller than you might think).

All the items are tested for their metal purity, and if found to be within the standards, they get marked with the maker's mark, the traditional fineness mark ( a lion for sterling silver), a 925 sterling mark, the Assay Office mark (the London office is a lion head) and a letter for the date. All these are just half a millimetre high!

Entrance to the London Assay Office

The Assay office is quite near St. Paul's Cathedral, so I took the opportunity to photograph the protest tents. The weather last night was appalling - so I don't think they had a very good night. At least a few people still occupy some of the tents. Poor wet protesters.

Protest tents near the steps of St. Paul's Cathedral

Protest tents outside St. Paul's Cathedral

The weather is very very different, but the protests and the tent city are much like the ones in Tel-Aviv which I photographed in the summer