10-38, BOURDON STREET

10-38 Bourdon Street is a row of ten stables with accommodation above, incorporating a former horse-shoeing premises, now converted into mews houses. The buildings were constructed between 1889 and 1900 by Jonathan Andrews of Mount Street, with the builder possibly working to designs by Horace J. Helsdon. Nos. 28-30A were added between 1890 and 1892 by T.H. Watson.

The stables are built of red brick with red sandstone dressings and tiled roofs. They are two storeys high with gabled attics and are largely three windows wide. The row is divided into three sections: 10-20, 28-30, and 32-38, comprising two groups of mews-like stables flanking the former horse-shoeing premises. The ground floors generally have a central entrance flanked by double doors, each with two or three registers of upper lights. Many doors have hinges inscribed 'Cottam. Compy. London'. First-floor windows are arch-headed, with aprons and keystones, and contain casement windows with eight-pane top lights. Projecting pilaster strips to the party walls are topped with ball finials. A moulded cornice is broken by loft doors, many of which retain projecting hoists with decorative wrought iron panels. The triangular gables terminate in small pediments carried on scrolls.

The appearance of Nos. 28-30A differs from the rest of the row. They feature moulded stone surrounds to the ground floor openings and triple windows with segmental pediments and aprons on the first floor, with single plate glass sash windows between. The triangular pediments above the parapet are entirely of brick. The interior of the buildings was not inspected.

These picturesque stables were designed in the Queen Anne style and represent a good survival of stable buildings serving the Mayfair residential area. They were built towards the end of the era of horse reliance and were subsequently adapted for motor car use. Nos. 28-30A were originally built for the Metropolitan Horse shoeing Company. A Westminster City Council plaque commemorates the photographer Terence Donovan (1936-96), who worked at No.30 between 1978 and 1996.