Crusader House

Crusader House is a five-and-a-half-storey building above a basement, dating to the early 20th century and situated on Pall Mall. It was designed as shops and an entrance hall on the ground floor, with flats occupying the upper floors, arranged around a central, top-lit stairwell. A caretaker’s flat and lightwell are located at the rear.

The building’s Portland stone facade exhibits a highly ornate French Renaissance style, with extensive carved decoration. The design is tripartite: the central section is recessed while the outer bays are treated as slightly projecting towers. Continuous balconies and loggias feature across the upper floors, creating a contrast to the towers' verticality.

The ground floor contains four shops, two on each side of the main entrance, each with mahogany shop-fronts, moulded uprights and carved detail in the spandrels and stall risers. Granite piers separate the shops, with freestanding Doric columns supporting bas-relief panels depicting cherubs, cornucopias, and arabesques. The entrance porch is supported by scroll brackets with male figures emerging from foliate volutes and topped with a balustrade and urns. A female head in high relief, flanked by palm fronds and strapwork, is carved into the lintel above the doorway. Channelled masonry decorates the first floor, dividing tripartite windows in the outer bays with engaged columns. A balustraded balcony, supported by massive scroll brackets, runs across the second floor, projecting forward over the outer bays to emphasise the verticality with giant pilasters rising to the floor above, framing carved arabesque panels between the storeys. The third floor features a balcony with wrought-iron scrollwork, behind which are French windows set beneath scrolled pediments on brackets. Above a deep modillion cornice, the fourth floor has channelled masonry on the outer bays and paired Ionic columns forming a loggia in the central section, capped with a dentil cornice. Shaped dormers, larger on the outer bays with engaged columns and carved tympana, adorn the attic. Twin stacks of banded rustication rise from the roof ridge.

The interior features a small entrance lobby with carved mahogany panels, which leads to a barrel-vaulted passage with a black and white marble floor. This opens to a large, central hallway with an ornate flying staircase. The staircase is characterised by shaped stone treads, scrolled ironwork balustrades, a moulded hardwood handrail, and a top-lit rectangular well. The lower flight is curved, while the upper flights are arranged around the well. The interiors of the flats were renovated in 1996.

Area railings of wrought and cast iron, displaying complex scrollwork, foliate terminations, square-sectioned uprights, and palmette decoration, are a further notable feature.