Liberty (Liberty & Co.)
A great department store framed from the oak of two old battleships, deliberately built to look centuries older than it is.
At a glance
The Liberty store off Regent Street is one of London’s most loved shops, famous for fabrics and design since the nineteenth century. Its mock-Tudor building, designed by Edwin T. Hall and his son Edwin S. Hall and finished in 1924, was framed from the timbers of two Royal Navy ships. Behind the half-timbered front lie galleries of small rooms set around light wells.
Key facts
- Location: Great Marlborough Street, off Regent Street, London
- Architects: Edwin T. Hall and Edwin S. Hall
- Built: 1924
- Style: Tudor Revival
- Note: framed from the timbers of two former warships
History
Arthur Lasenby Liberty had made his shop the home of Arts and Crafts and Aesthetic taste, selling silks, prints and the curving designs that gave Italy’s “stile Liberty” its name. For its new building the firm chose, against the fashion, a deliberately old-fashioned Tudor manner.
The Halls framed it in oak salvaged from two decommissioned ships, HMS Impregnable and HMS Hindustan, and arranged the interior as a series of small panelled rooms around three light wells, so that shopping felt like exploring a great house.
What you see
The Great Marlborough Street front is black-and-white half-timbering, gabled and leaded, looking for all the world like a Tudor manor dropped into the West End. Inside, dark wood galleries climb around tall light wells, floor stacked on intimate floor. It is theatre as retail, the opposite of the glass-fronted store.
Practical information
- Open: standard retail hours
- Cost: free to enter
- Best for: the half-timbered front and the wooden light wells
- Time needed: 30–45 minutes
Getting there
Liberty is just off Regent Street by Great Marlborough Street, a two-minute walk from Oxford Circus Underground.
Nearby
- Carnaby Street — the shopping lanes beside the store
- Regent Street — Nash’s great curving shopping street
Sources
- Encyclopædia Britannica / Wikipedia — Liberty (department store)
- Historic England — listed building record
- Wikimedia Commons — image source and licence
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