16-20 Barter Street, WC1

Tucked away behind High Holborn is Barter Street. The street name has only existed since 1937 – before then this was Silver Street, built as part of the Bloomsbury Square development in the 17th century. The street has a terrace of three early 19th-century shops.

All have neat, identical wooden shopfronts, with pilasters, unremarkable entablatures and bracketed cornices.

The fact that the street is hidden away means many of the past shop tenants seem not to be of the type that relied on passing trade. In 1882's Post Office Directory, only one of the shops is listed – number 16, occupied by blind maker Edward Jinks.

But by 1894 number 16 is occupied by John Hawley, tailor, who has been joined at 18 by bootmaker James Claridge. Number 20 is shared by Charles James Evans, a mathematical instrument maker, and wine merchant WJ Hollebone & Sons.

Leap forward to 1919 and confectioner Jane Owen has taken over number 16. At 18 is chimney sweep James Christopher Catlin, while at 20 is a printer, Jules Petit, and still WJ Hollebone & Sons.

In the 1951 Post Office Directory, Marine & Overseas Services Ltd's mail order office is the only shop listed, at number 16. This is the only business I've been able to find any significant remains of amid the depths of the internet. The exact nature of the company is unclear, but it did sell all sorts of bits and bobs such as watches and mathematical instruments, usually by mail order through adverts in newspapers and magazines. This one is from 1950 and was in Model Engineer magazine (from Grace's Guide):

I don't know about being the "ideal gift", but slide rules seem to have been a major part of its business for some time – it called itself The British Slide Rule Co at some time, judging by a classified ad in The Times (April 25, 1942). This is one of the company's slide rules (found here):

Perhaps a better gift idea was this "unique bed table", as advertised in Picture Post (November 5, 1949):

Another ad in The Times (December 1, 1949) offers "Swiss ex-RAF" watches for sale:

Perhaps this, from The Watch Forum, is one of them? Look closely and you can see Marine & Overseas Services Ltd written on the face:

Collage has a pic of the shops from 1956, but there doesn't appear to be much going on...

Today, numbers 16 and 18 are one business – London City Print. Number 20 is occupied by a solicitor, Brion & Co, which specialises in immigration law.

207 High Holborn, WC1

I set out last Sunday to take pics of Staple Inn on High Holborn, only to find it under scaffolding. So instead I walked a short way up the street to number 207, an early 19th-century Grade II-listed shop and terraced house clinging to the corner of Newton Street.

What stands out most about the shop, which has a wooden frontage, is the wrought iron cresting above the entablature. This was commonly used in the late 19th-century, so was most likely added around that time. According to Alan Powers in Shop Fronts, iron cresting was intended to catch the eye as shop fascias became weighed down with an accumulation of intricate details.

For most of its life the shop was a pawnbroker or antiques shop, under different owners but most famously under the name Shapland.

Back in 1834 it was a tobacconist, but the Lloyd's Weekly on September 16, 1849 has a court report involving pawnbroker G Webb of 207 High Holborn, who accused 40-year-old Jane Sinclair of trying to defraud him of 12 shillings by "tendering a spurious ring".

In Reynold's Newspaper on November 10, 1861, the shop was still a pawnbroker but now seemingly under the name Joshua Harding. The paper reported a case at Bow Street Magistrates' Court in which a young man named Henry Lewingstone stole a silver watch from Harding. A post office carrier, Thomas Bentley, told the court: "I was coming out of West Central District Office, at the the corner of Southampton Street and Holborn, when I heard a smash of glass in Holborn. I ran across the road, and saw the prisoner at the window of 207, with his hand through a hole in a pane [of] glass into the window. He had a watch in his hand. At that moment the assistant came out of the shop and seized him."

The shop crops up in a number of court reports down the years, due to its jewellery trade. In The Standard of May 5, 1879, the pawnbroker was now Mr John Allan, but this time it's the pawnbroker who is the defendant, with Allan accused of unlawfully detaining a gold watch. Allan was cleared but ordered to share the cost of the loss of the watch with the complainant.

At some point very soon after, diamond merchant Charles Shapland must have taken over the shop, at some stage also working jointly with someone called Cloud, as there are early advertisements (eg The Times, February 25, 1891) naming the business as Cloud & Shapland.

Shapland ran the shop as a pawnbroker specialising in old jewels and also as a clockmaker. A clock of 1880 (the 1833 visible is the clock number) is engraved with Shapland's address:

But Shapland eventually took sole control, and the shop traded under the Shapland name until the 1980s, specialising in antique silver. Here's an ad from The Daily Express in 1921, which sat on the front page beside the masthead:

Shapland was clearly a jeweller of some repute – the store had its own silver makers' mark.

The renowned Times wine correspondent Pamela Vandyke Price (who died just last week, aged 90) was clearly a fan, recommending the shop for silver tasting cups, brandy saucepans, toddy ladles and fine coasters in a few of her columns.

The City of London's Collage picture library has a great picture of the store, taken in 1974 – click here.

After Shadland closed in the 1980s, for some time it remained a jeweller, run by the Goldsmiths chain. When Goldsmiths moved out, its long association with jewellery ended, and instead of fine silver it now peddles distinctly non-precious greetings cards, One Direction face masks and 'Keep Calm and Carry On' tat as a branch of Cards Galore.

13 Rugby Street, WC1

The best known address on Rugby Street is number 18, where Ted Hughes was living when he wooed Sylvia Plath. But across the road, the shop at number 13 is more stimulating than the memory of dead poets.

Its mid-19th century wooden shop front has a covering of attractive blue tiles, with dentil entablature and a pair of lion mask consoles, atop flat pilasters. There is just the one, large window – still with pin holes above for wooden shutters – which has an odd post, maybe for structural support, just inside to the right.

The terraced house was built around 1721, and when the shop was added in the 19th century it wouldn't have stretched back so far. Hidden beneath the wooden floor of the newer part of the shop at the rear is a medieval conduit head, made from white marble and scribbled with 16th-century graffiti. It originally supplied water to Greyfriars Monastery in Newgate Street.

Now a jeweller's, number 13 was for many years a dairy shop – hence the 'Dairy' lettering on the tiled stallriser – run since 1887 by the Davies family. The shop name was French's Dairy – why I don't know – and the fascia was only recently changed by the current occupier, Maggie Owen.

The Davies's name suggests it was a Welsh dairy. During the Victorian period many Welsh-owned dairies sprung up close to the Marylebone and Euston Roads, which offered easy access from Paddington Station, the terminus for trains from South Wales. Demand for milk brought by rail rocketed in the late 1860s, following an outbreak of rinderpest among the cows stabled in London, from where most supplies previously came. Hence the influx of Welsh dairy families, and the growth of dairy shops selling products that were previously sold from dairy stables in the city (see An Economic History of London 1800-1914, Professor Michael Ball & David T Sunderland).

I did have a quick look to see if I could find out whether the shop had a pre-dairy life, but couldn't find Rugby Street in the Post Office Directory. However, I've since realised Rugby Street was until 1936 or 1937 called Chapel Street (after the Chapel of St John, which was demolished in the mid-19th century), and when renamed the street numbering system was changed too, so no wonder I couldn't find it. The name Rugby Street comes from Rugby School, which owned this area of Bloomsbury. Here's a map of the area in 1752, from the British Library (it spells Chapel Street with a double l):

Post-dairy, by the 1980s number 13 was a general store, still run by the Davies family, then in the 1990s was taken over by Rennies, a gallery-cum-shop specialising in original posters and graphic design. Interviewed by The Observer in 2003, Rennies owners Paul and Karen Rennie said the cellar of number 13 was still stacked with milk bottles.

Eight years ago Maggie Owen moved in. Her range of contemporary jewellery and accessories from various designers is well worth a look if you're passing by.

49 Gough Street, WC1

Number 49 Gough Street is a small shop with a big history. Situated behind Gray's Inn Road, it seems to have thrived for a number of years within the furniture industry, particularly as an outpost of larger furniture firms.

The house and shop, built in the early 19th century, were previously part of a terrace. Although altered at some point, the wooden shop front is original – English Heritage describes it as "exceptionally fine", with its dentil architrave, cornice and entablature atop fluted quarter columns.

It's no longer a shop. A Google search brings it up as the company address of the director of the British Parking Association, so perhaps it's an office, though there didn't look much happening when I visited on a Tuesday afternoon, and it looks more residential.

I don't know who the first retail tenant was, but in 1891 it was cabinet maker Baldassare Viscardini & Sons. Born in Como, Italy in 1831, Viscardini was living in the East End by 1841, working with his brother and father – the 1851 census shows all three were looking glass frame makers.

In 1857, Viscardini married 19-year-old Rose Martin, daughter of a carpenter. However, Rose must have met an unfortunate end – in 1867 Viscardini, now a widower, married again, this time to Eliza Sheppard, daughter of a boot maker. The wedding was in Holborn, and then the 1871 census has the family at Mount Pleasant, a stone's throw from Gough Street. In 1881 they're at 54 Gough Street, and by 1891 at 49.

Viscardini seems to have had two addresses at this time, the other being 15 West View in Islington, which must've been the family home. The census listing shows the whole of the family firm:

Baldassare Viscardini, 60, cabinet maker
Eliza Viscardini, 40
Amelia E Viscardini, 20
Carlotta B Viscardini, 18, jewel case liner
Baldassare G Viscardini, 17, cabinet maker
Giacomo Viscardini, 15, cabinet maker
John W Viscardini, 13
Beatrice C Viscardini, 10

However, life for Viscardini wasn't just about furniture making. He was clearly a patriotic Italian, as back in 1859 he went back to his homeland to fight alongside general and politician Guiseppe Garibaldi in the Army of the Red Shirts during the Second Italian War of Independence, helping Garibaldi form a united Italy. The Anglo-Italian Family History Society website actually has a picture of Viscardini from his time with the Red Shirts:

Clearly a remarkable man, Viscardini died in 1896 at West View, and is buried in New Southgate Cemetery.

Viscardini's business is still listed as occupying 49 Gough Street in the 1898 Post Office Directory – along with Frederick Nutt, an architectural modeller – but next to move in was possibly E Kahn & Co, listed as an artistic furniture maker in the 1906 directory.

E Kahn was a prestigious French furniture manufacturer, renowned for its copies of 18th-century French furniture, such as this E Kahn commode, which sold at Sotheby's in April 2012 for 37,500 US dollars:

However, there's no suggestion furniture this opulent was made at 49 Gough Street, as this was a smaller branch said to have produced pieces in an English Edwardian style. The company also had premises in St Andrew Street and Charlotte Street (the Shoreditch one) in London, and in about 1884 opened a New York office.

I've no idea what happened to the business, but here's an ad found on Grace's Guide, which lists E Kahn as still at number 49 in 1922 (this ad appeared in the British Industries Fair brochure):

The next Post Office Directory I checked was for 1951, and by this time shopfitters Frederick Sage & Co had installed themselves in number 49. Founded in 1860, the business was based around the corner on Gray's Inn Road until the Blitz in 1941, when its premises were destroyed. Whether it shifted some of its operations to Gough Street after that or was already there before then, this can't have been more than a small limb of a much bigger operation. A picture of the shop in 1947 can be seen here.

It may not look much in that picture, but Frederick Sage was a major shopfitting firm – it was responsible for the original shopfit in Harrods, and for many historic shop fronts on Regent Street, Oxford Street and Bond Street, such as Dickins & Jones, Selfridges and DH Evans on Oxford Street (now House of Fraser).

Remarkably, during each World War the company switched to manufacturing wooden airplanes, before picking up where it left off with shopfitting in peace time.

The business was global, with offices throughout Europe – Printemps in Paris was one job – the US and South America, as well as a factory in Cape Town, South Africa. It wasn't just shopfitting either – interiors were constructed for hotels, restaurants, and P&O and Cunard cruise ships. After the Second World War, Frederick Sage worked on the reconstruction of the bombed House of Commons.

The company struggled through the 1960s, and in 1968 was swallowed up by British Electric Traction. No doubt plenty of its work is still around today – in fact, I found these haberdashery shop drawers for sale on eBay...

93-101 Judd Street, WC1

Turning off gridlocked Euston Road, Judd Street doesn't look like it promises much. Between 1808 and 1816, 84 houses were built on the street, but few survive. There aren't any on the eastern side, but on the street's western side a stretch of original buildings erected in 1816 survives, from numbers 85 to 103. Of these, 93 to 101 have shops.

The Grade II-listed block is made from multicoloured stock brick. Here's a pic looking north in 1954, from the Royal Institute of British Architects' picture library:

Starting at the southern end, number 93 has an early to mid-19th century shop front with a slightly projecting window with four pretty, arched frames, and one console on the right of the fascia. Consoles, which are used on some of the other shop fronts in the row, are typical of mid-19th century shop design – they first became popular in the 1830s as a new way of marking off separate fascias in rows of shops.

For a random snapshot of number 93's history I looked in the 1898 Post Office Directory, and at that time number 93 was a linen draper run by Maria Barnard. Today it's a travel agency.

Next door, number 95 has a fine early 19th-century shop front, again in a style synonymous with the period – the Greek Revival, widespread from 1810. The four Corinthian columns support an inswept entablature and a dentil cornice.

British History Online has what looks to be an original plan for number 95, although it has consoles on either end of the fascia and no inswept entablature.

In 1898, number 95 was a butcher's, William Vardy. In 1950 it was also a butcher, but now under the name E Price. To see a pic of E Price in 1950, click here.  As far as I can tell from the RIBA pic from 1954, it was a butcher's then too, but this time under the name CW Bettiss – lots of chopping and changing in the butchery trade, it seems. At present it looks to be some sort of office, but is definitely the scruffiest shop on the row.

Number 97 looks similar to 93, but the shop front is early 20th-century. There was no listing for 97 in the 1898 Directory, so I'm not sure it was ever a shop before the current shop front was built.

Another 20th-century shop front, albeit a dainty imitation of a mid-19th century one, sits alongside at number 99. Since, I think, 1997 it's been Photo Books International, which specialises in – you guessed it – photography books. However, when I visited it had 'closing down' signs in the windows. Again, there's no listing for this address in the 1898 Directory.

Fortunately there is one more early 19th-century shop front, number 101. It's different to the rest of the row, with two simple, broad flat pilasters, inswept entablature and protruding cornice. The projecting window has pleasingly big panes. In 1898 it was occupied by the London & Provincial Window & House Cleaning Co. Unlike the other shops, it only makes do with one door, rather than two (one for the shop, one for the upstairs accommodation). Today it's split into three residential flats.

35 Swinton Street, WC1

The shop's not much to look at, but along with the corner house this dates from circa 1835-44 and is Grade-II listed.

The Post Office Directory of 1898 lists it as a chandler's shop run by a Mrs Amelia Bowerbank. I had a look through some earlier directories, but as the listings weren't by street I couldn't find anything for it ... so that's pretty much all I know.

Architecturally, it's a wooden shopfront with pilasters, entablature (although with some rectangular panels attached) and bracketed cornice, but there's nothing fancy.

Swinton Street's first houses were built in 1776, and it was originally a small cul-de-sac. The first occupant was able to gaze across the meadows to Fleet Brook. The western end of the street dates from that period, but the later houses that extended eastwards, including number 35, were begun in the late 1830s and completed by 1844.

And the street has pretty much remained the same since, despite major developments in the nearby area, notably the building of the railways and King's Cross station. I had a look around to see if I could find any old images of Swinton Street and the best I could do was this from a London Illustrated News of 1862, which shows the construction of the first section of the Metropolitan tube line, between Paddington and Farringdon. A small section of Swinton Street can be seen jutting out to the left behind the front-facing building just left of centre. The few houses furthest away are Britannia Street.  

173-179 King's Cross Road, WC1

I'd walked past 173-179 King's Cross Road a couple of times before, and each time lots of cars were parked outside. I was hoping to get lucky and find no cars there, but it wasn't to be...

Anyway, this terrace of four shops with housing above was built around 1796-99. It was previously called Field Place, but was changed following the building of King's Cross, when the road leading to the station, Bagnigge Wells Road, and the rows and places along it were all renamed King's Cross Road and renumbered accordingly.

It's not the most salubrious area, but that's often why old shops like these have survived. If these were on a busy high street, chances are the shop fronts would have been replaced by a wall of glass a long time ago.

The wooden shopfronts have pilasters carrying entablatures with projecting cornices.  The buildings are all made from yellow stock brick.

Number 173 is still in commercial use, as an architects. Although no longer a shop, it's the only one of the four to have lettering on the entablature. In the Post Office Directory of 1898, it's listed as Caxton Printing Co.

Number 175 is now a four-bedroomed house, with no commercial use. The wooden shop front has been well maintained but is a little scruffier than its neighbours, despite the pot plants. In 1898 it was occupied by Never-Rust Metal Plate Co.

Number 177 has previously been a tobacconists, a foundry and a chandler (John Hurst, according to the 1898 PO Directory) at various points in its existence, but like 175 is now a four-bedroomed house - the shop area is now the kitchen. It was a foundry for most of the 20th century, run by the Brimson family, but this closed down in 1985. Apparently much of the machinery from the foundry was acquired by the Museum of London. There is still a working pulley inside the house, which was used to move molten metal. The shop front style is the same as at 175, although looks better preserved - particularly the wood-panelled stall riser below the windows.

Finally, number 179 was restored in 1989. It still seems to be in commercial use, with a few different random company names coming up in Google searches (including a photography firm for fetish websites), but it's not clear who is currently there from the outside. The 1898 directory names a corn dealer, Bushnell & Sons, as the occupier - the company also had number 181. Of all the shop fronts it's the most ornate, with some nice curved arching in the window corners.

5 and 7 Tower Court, WC2

At the back of Ambassador's Theatre in Covent Garden sits Tower Court, a small terrace of former shops.

The buildings date from the late 18th century but today are all houses. However, the original wooden shop fronts have survived on numbers 5 and 7. Here's number 5:

And here's number 7 (should've moved the beercan):

Number 8, which was under scaffolding when I visited, also has a wooden shop front but it's a 20th-century reproduction. Number 10 also used to be a shop, but lost its shop front sometime after 1973.

English Heritage says all the windows have been altered for domestic use. I wonder how different they are to the originals? Based on my limited knowledge, the shop front styles on 5 and 7 are pretty much in keeping with the late 18th-century date of the buildings.

Neither are elaborate, just bracketed entablature and cornices (the best on number 7, below). Despite these shops' ages, I can't imagine they get much attention - there was only a council road sweeper having a fag break in Tower Court when I took a look.