41 And 43, Wardour Street W1

Commercial premises dating to 1904-05, designed by H.M. Wakeley. The building is constructed of red brick with elaborate green and buff stone dressings, topped with a slate roof, and is designed in a Free Style Jacobean manner. It is four storeys high with an attic, and three windows wide. The ground floor features an elaborate central doorway with a mask and consoles. The jambs include metal cartouches commemorating that Sarah Bernhardt laid the foundation stone in 1905. Shop windows are positioned to the left and right, with an entablature-fascia above, flanked by pilasters with garlanded caps and giant brackets supporting large urns. Upper floor windows are treated as through-storey canted bays with shaped dividers to casements, set back within full-height recesses, and topped by segmental pediments broken by balconettes. Behind these are pedimented dormers. A bowed central arch on the first floor features cartouches on the dividing columns, inscribed "Established 1833" and "Rebuilt 1904." Three segmental windows sit below a shaped eaves cornice. A Greater London Council plaque commemorates Willy Clarkson, a theatrical wigmaker, who worked from 1861-1954.