Premises Of Messrs Liberty And Company Limited (Tudor Building)

Department store built 1922-1924 by Edwin T. Hall and E. Stanley Hall, located on Great Marlborough Street in Soho. A bridge connecting to the Regent Street store was added in 1925, a further bridge in 1974 by William Holford and Partners, and other minor late twentieth-century alterations were made.

The building is designed in Tudor Arts and Crafts style, reusing timber from the breaking up of two early nineteenth-century men of war sailing ships, HMS Hindustan and HMS Impregnable. The block facing Great Marlborough Street and Little Marlborough Street is timber framed with stone cladding, tiled roofs, and clustered moulded brick chimneystacks. The rear elevation is clad in white brick. The building is four storeys with gabled attics.

The facades feature a long range with closely set mullioned and transomed leaded casements to the upper floors, some of Sparrows House Ipswich type with some stained glass pictorial cames. Gables have decorative bargeboards and there are elaborate balconies. The centrepiece with main entrance has corbelled canted bays surmounted by overhanging gables. The central gable has a weathervane with a gilded model of the Mayflower. Flat-headed display windows feature leaf decoration, and there are decorative lead rainwater heads. A left side door to the Great Marlborough Street elevation has deep relief carving of craftsmen at work above. The left side elevation has two timber-framed bays and a left side stone-clad staircase tower with a Tudor-arched doorcase to the ground floor.

The 1925 link bridge is three storeys, clad in stone to the two lower storeys with a timber-framed gable above. The ground floor has a giant elliptical arch. The first floor has a clock designed by Mr Hope Jones, Chairman of the British Horological Institution. Forming the spandrels of the clock face are four winged heads representing the four winds. The crowing cock and rising sun symbolise morning, and an owl and moon the night time. At the chiming of the hour, moving figures of St George and the dragon would fight. A plain 1974 link bridge behind the building is also present. A late twentieth-century corrugated roof extension to part of the Great Marlborough Street elevation is not of special interest.

Interior: The building is divided into a series of galleries four storeys high grouped around three wells. Each layer of wide galleries is divided into eight fireproof compartments. The wells are top-lit with open timber roofs, all of a different pattern, and the galleries have high quality carving. At the west end of the western gallery is a wide well staircase of oak adorned with carved posts and panelled balustrades. A secondary staircase at the south east angle incorporates a War Memorial to members of the firm who died during the First World War. Lifts have Tudor arches and are lined with linenfold panelling. Oak doorcases are throughout.

The fourth floor was designed in small areas to suit display of furniture. It has a northern range roof of king-post, a rectangular well with arch-braced roof with trefoil decoration, an octagonal shaped well with arch-braced roof with pendants, and a rectangular well with hammerbeam roof and quatrefoils in the spandrels. A stone fireplace with stone ogee arch is lined in brick and flanked by blank round-headed niches. A Jacobean style stone fireplace has leaf-carved spandrels and a carved wooden mantelpiece with four terms, central round-headed arch with marquetry inlay, strapwork panels, strapwork pilasters and adjoining plank and muntin panelling. There is a fireplace of antique blue and white tiles and original oak and metal housings for radiators.

The third floor has exposed floor joists and limed oak fittings. The first floor retains plastered motifs. The ground floor retains plaster decoration and panelling. The basement retains a fireplace with stone four-centred arch and brick surround and a smaller wooden four-centred arched fireplace with brick surround, together with some original oak display cupboards with shelves below.