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Original Text (Annotation: EPW006160 / 2151525)

' The Foreign Office...'was completed in 1868 as part of the new block of government offices which included the India Office and later (1875) the Colonial and Home Offices. George Gilbert Scott was responsible for the overall classical design of these offices but he had an amicable partnership with Matthew Digby Wyatt, the India Office’s Surveyor, who designed and built the interior of the India Office. Scott designed the new Foreign Office as ‘a kind of national palace or drawing room for the nation’ with the use of rich decoration to impress foreign visitors. The same was true of Wyatt’s India Office. The Colonial and Home Offices, however, were seen purely as working buildings and their interior decoration, by contrast, was ‘as plain as was compatible with a major department of state’.' - See https://www.gov.uk/government/history/king-charles-street '