Sutton House

Sutton House is a pawnbroker's shop and pledge offices built in 1934–5 to the design of architect Reginald W Lone. The building has undergone minor alterations in the later 20th century.

The exterior is faced in dark red brick and Portland stone with grey brick dressings, designed in the Moderne style. It rises six storeys across three bays. The central bay is stone-faced and canted above the ground floor, flanked by stout fluted half-columns and surmounted by a ziggurat centrepiece bearing the inscribed date 1935. Window aprons are slightly concave. The shop front is bronze with fluted pilasters on a black granite plinth, facetted bronze stallrisers, and etched glass transom lights decorated with a stylised Vitruvian scroll pattern. A hanging sign displays the three gilded spheres of the pawnbroker's trade. The entrance to the offices stands to the left with a panelled door and fanlight; a gilded relief pawnbroker's sign is mounted on the pilaster to the right.

The interior shop retains extensive original fittings: polished veneer panelling, mostly original showcases, internal window shutters, glass light fittings, and a Moderne stepped plaster cornice. The rear section is also panelled and survives with rare glazed polished hardwood booths for client privacy. The former pledge offices above feature a stair with a solid concrete balustrade, though their interiors have been substantially modernised. Most original doors survive throughout the building.

The pawnbroker Thomas Miller Sutton founded his firm in 1777 and moved to the Victoria Street location in 1800. The firm acquired the adjacent property and built the present Sutton House on the combined site in 1934–5. During the 1930s, Sutton's operated offices in Paris, Cannes and Berlin, serving wealthy European clients who sent valuables to London by courier to raise funds. The principal of the company at this time, also named Thomas Miller Sutton, was renowned for his ability to assess the carat content of gold jewellery by touch. In 1934, Sutton famously refused to surrender the Stavisky jewels—part of a cache pawned internationally by swindler Alexandre Stavisky—despite intense pressure from French authorities during one of Europe's most politically volatile financial scandals of the 20th century. During the Second World War, the firm's European offices were taken over by Nazi Germany and their documents confiscated.