The Bank of England dates from 1694 but did not have its own building until 1724; it has had a Garden Court since 1781 when, the Bank's premises needing enlargement, the Church of St Christopher-le-Stocks was demolished and its churchyard incorporated as a garden. As the Bank's business increased in the late C18th onwards, Sir John Soane was commissioned to further expand the buildings which he reconstructed between 1788 and 1827, his banking halls particularly famous. From 1916 the Bank underwent further rebuilding largely under Sir Herbert Baker, completed in 1939, during which the original position of the garden courtyard had changed to the present site.