Burberry's, 18-22 Haymarket, SW1

The Burberry building at 18-22 Haymarket is, like so many grandiose stores of the Victorian era, a testament to one man's commercial success.

After founding his company in Basingtoke in 1856, aged just 21, and inventing the weather-proof gabardine fabric, Thomas Burberry arrived on London's Haymarket in 1891, and in 1912 constructed this grand premises.

Designed in a Beaux Arts style by architect Walter Cave, the three-storey, stone-faced building stands on the corner with Orange Street. The entablature, supported by Doric columns, runs all around the building and still bears the traces of its former occupant.

The large unaltered display windows on the ground floor also turn the corner to Orange Street. These must have turned plenty of heads in their day. Upstairs, huge arches support the first floor windows and also the second floor windows, which are curved into the arches. A narrow staircase – I imagine a staff one – sits at the lefthand side of the building (behind the lamp-post in the picture below).

Signalling the store's presence to those approaching along the street is an ornate clock, which juts out bearing the Burberry name.

Round the corner on Orange Street is the trade entrance.

As well as a shop, Burberry made this its head office. It traded from here throughout the rest of the 20th century. This is a pic of the store from 1913:

The Haymarket address became a familiar sight on its advertising. This ad is from the Daily Express on 21 September, 1959, with the address bottom right.

When Cherie Blair and her lifestyle guru Carole Caplin brought Lyudmila Putin shopping here in 2003, Burberry had shaken off its chavvy image of the 1990s and was on the brink of expansion. Hence the company moved out in 2008, just a few years after spending millions on a revamp of the building's interior. Its HQ is now at Horseferry House in Millbank, although it is strictly offices, with no shop.

And 18-22 Haymarket has stood empty since, apart from being pressed into action as a party venue now and then, most recently during the London Olympics. It was bought by a mystery Russian businessman for £20m in 2011 - and there was some talk about TK Maxx moving in - but it changed hands again and is now owned by The Apprentice star and Mrs Tiggy Winkle lookalike Lord Alan Sugar's Amsprop Group.

St James's Bazaar, 10 St James's Street, SW1

Just yards away from Berry Bros & Rudd, which has thrived for over 300 years, is 10 St James's Street, site of a rather less successful retail venture but which is a notable example of the bazaar – a popular new retail development in early Victorian Britain (London's first was the Soho Bazaar, opened in 1816).

This stuccoed building stretching round onto King Street, where it has an impressive wide porch with Tuscan columns, was once St James's Bazaar, a gallery of individual shops set across two 150ft-long floors. It was constructed in 1830-32 at a cost of £20,000.  

Opened in April 1832, it was an opulent development – an issue of The Morning Post that same month noted its palace-like interior, although was amused that this was devoted only "to the display of bijouterie, toys and minute elegancies and trifles of every description".

Shoppers wandered among stalls "tastefully distributed in curves, lines and circles". Gas lighting illuminated the bazaar in the evening. There was also a magnificent display of looking-glass arranged among the shops, according to The Morning Post. Here's a small ad from the time, mentioning one of the retailers in the bazaar – Howe, a glover.

However, about one year after opening, the bazaar closed. By 1839 it had apparently stood empty for six years. Owner William Crockford blamed the "change of fashion [which] has affected not only this property but all property of a similar description in the Metropolis".

In the early 1840s the building hosted a couple of notable exhibitions. In 1841, a diorama of the funeral of Napoleon proved popular, and in 1844 the decorative works for the New Houses of Parliament were exhibited, including designs for doors and stained glass windows. This was less popular – The Standard of May 28, 1844 reported that the exhibition "although better attended yesterday than on any other day since its opening gratuitously to the public, was nearly deserted, the number of persons visiting it not reaching to more than 200 or 300 during the day". The picture below is from The London Illustrated News at the time of the decorative works exhibition.

In 1847, Crockford's widow converted the building into chambers. It has subsequently been used as offices, apart from when it was the Junior Army and Navy Club from about 1881 to 1904, and a two-year stint as a confectioner's run by Paris firm Rumpelmayer from 1907.

The building has been altered over time by its various owners – the current St James's Street entrance was constructed in the early 20th century, and the exterior was heightened in 1897 and 1914.

Go here for more on the history of the Victorian bazaar.

Berry Bros & Rudd, 3 St James's Street, SW1

After the Great Fire destroyed the City of London, shopping moved westwards, to Covent Garden, Strand and Holborn. And when the Palace of Whitehall burnt down in 1697/8, the court of William III moved to St James's Palace, and St James's Street quickly became a fashionable locale.

Businesses serving this wealthy clientele sprung up, particularly on the street's eastern side, and thanks to its coffee/chocolate houses and clubs it became the epicentre of masculine aristocratic society.

The firm now known as Berry Bros & Rudd was set up as a grocer's in 1698 by Widow Bourne. Her daughter married William Pickering and this family business supplied the area's coffee houses - the sign of the coffee mill still hangs over the shop.

The store remained in the same family, although the names of the family heads changed from Pickering to Clarke and then, in 1810, to Berry. It was around this time, when the company was led by George Berry, that wine became the principal focus. In 1920, Hugh Rudd, previously a wine merchant in Norwich, became a partner and in the 1940s his name was added to the fascia.

Although non-family directors began to be appointed after the Second World War, Berry Bros & Rudd is still run by members of the Berry and Rudd families, over 300 years since its creation. It remains a retailer to the aristocracy, currently holding royal warrants for HM The Queen and the HRH The Prince of Wales.

The three-storey building was originally two terraced houses with one shop, built circa 1731-2 by the Pickerings to replace their original structure. In 1800 it was altered to become a single property.

The oldest (the right-hand side as you look at it) part of the wooden shopfront, which has an interesting quasi-gothic design, dates from 1800; the left-hand part is a convincing 1930s imitation. There are vast wine cellars below, which stretch out 150ft to the centre of St James's Street.

The store retained its wooden shutters long after the introduction of roller shutters (the first London shop to use rollers shutters was Swan & Edgar of Piccadilly in the 1830s). These cumbersome wooden panels were carried in and out each day by the apprentices. They slotted into a groove and were pinned into the ledge above the stallboard. To see a pic of the store in 1980 with its shutters up, go to www.paulbarkshire.com and check out the London Shops & Pubs section.

The wooden shutters helped prevent serious damage to the shop front during the Second World War. They're now kept in the side alley leading to Pickering Place (pictured), but were pressed into action in 2011 during the London riots.

Stepping inside is like entering the 18th century, as the interior has changed little over the years, with wood-panelled walls, plenty of original fittings and shelving, and rickety, uneven wooden floors leading into small, separate rooms.

The scales that were used to weigh tea, sugar and spices began in 1765 to be used to record the weights of aristocratic customers - "people of fascination", according to Henry Fielding. Six generations of English and French royalty had their body sizes recorded for posterity; it was a sign of social status to have your name written into the books. The scales are still inside the shop today.

But Berry Bros & Rudd isn't a business relic. It has constantly moved with the times - after all, the family motto is 'Don't stop changing'. More recently it was the first wine merchant to launch a website, www.bbr.com, way back in 1994, and set up the Berry's Broking Exchange, in which customers buy and sell wines that are stored in the company's temperature-controlled Basingstoke warehouse.

I paid a visit on a bright winter's day, with the sunlight reflecting off the handsome shop front's blistered black paintwork. Although I enjoyed visiting Twining's the other week, my enthusiasm for wine easily beats that for tea, so I was looking forward to picking up a nice bottle.

When a shop assistant approached, I asked to see the port wines. Apart from two bottles, the whole lot were in the cellar, so after a brief chat in which he displayed his extensive wisdom but didn't patronise my very limited knowledge, I came away with a nice bottle of 2006 crusted port that was uncorked later that evening. He said when I returned, we could explore my tastes further...

Some of the pics (the first and third, ie the good ones) were sent to me by Berry Bros & Rudd's press office, and were taken by Joakim Blockstrom in 2011.

R Twinings & Co, 216 Strand, WC2

Londoners have been buying tea from Twinings on the Strand since 1706, when Thomas Twining took over what was originally called Tom's Coffee House at Devereux Court, where 216 Strand now sits.

The location was ideal as the area had recently seen an influx of the aristocracy, who had been forced out of the City by the Great Fire of London.

The shop, which Twining renamed Ye Golden Lyon, began selling cups of wet tea (as well as coffee and drinking chocolate), but dry tea soon became the main focus as domestic tea drinking grew increasingly fashionable.

Twining wasn't the first tea merchant - London grocer Daniel Rawlinson was selling tea (then known as "the new China herb") 60 years before Twining - but the business flourished, helped no doubt by the marketing clout of its appointment in 1711 as "purveyor of teas" to Queen Anne. Sir Christopher Wren and "hardened and shameless tea drinker" Dr Johnson were just some of the famous patrons of the tea house.

The shop staff - all male - originally wore swallowtail coats, snow white shirts and white ties. It's said their uniforms often became covered in tea dust, yet Twining insisted they could only serve customers if their outfit was spotless.

According to English Heritage, the stucco shopfront with elegant portico leading inside dates from the early 19th century, although some people claim it was constructed in 1787. It's a narrow shop, with just the door opening onto the Strand, and is only one storey. Steps inside lead to a basement, which I assume houses the stockroom.

The Grecian columns either side of the doorway support an entablature, atop which are perched a pair of Chinamen with their backs resting against a British lion.

Part of the shop and all the back premises were destroyed by bombing in the Second World War, although the store reopened within a few hours, trading from a temporary desk.

The Twinings logo - the company obviously didn't care about apostrophes - is the world's oldest continually used logo, created in 1787. The business is also London's longest-running rate payer.

The interior has recently been updated, including a new sampling counter where I supped a few varieties - I recommend the rooibos flavoured with orange and cinnamon. There's also a museum at the back of the store.

1-8 Goodwin's Court, WC2

Strolling down St Martin's Lane in Covent Garden, it's easy to miss the narrow opening into Goodwin's Court. But duck down it into this gas-light lit alley and you'll find one of London's most-intact rows of 18th-century shops.

The houses were erected in 1690, but the wooden bowed shopfronts from numbers 1 to 8 were added in the late 18th century. They're typical late 18th century, when window displays were becoming more eye-catching yet the shopfronts still had little architectural elaboration.

The London Building Act of 1774 restricted protruding bows to ten inches or less - these ones look well in keeping with that...

Look closely at some of the shopfronts and there are holes at the bottom of some of the frames, which often on old shopfronts is evidence of the wooden shutters that were used before the introduction of iron roller shutters in the 1840s. Pins holding the bottom of the shutters were inserted into the holes.

The original gas lights are 19th century.

The shops are offices now - the street has a more recent history of being home to theatre and entertainment agents (Dawn Sedgwick at number 3 represents Simon Pegg and Catherine Tate, among others). The Post Office Directory of 1855 lists numbers 2, 4 and 7 as occupied by piece brokers, who bought off-cuts or shreds of cloth and other materials to sell on, so it was clearly not a lucrative street. The long-gone shopkeepers, such as a tailor and piece broker at number 2 called Frederick Bartens, who was in court for insolvency in January 1855, were probably left to rue the St Martin's Lane shoppers who strolled on by...

The Old Curiosity Shop, 13-14 Portsmouth Street WC2A

It would be nice to believe the claim painted on the front of this shop - that it inspired Charles Dickens - but like his novel, it's fiction. It was renamed The Old Curiosity Shop in 1868 when it was a bookshop, 30 years after the novel's publication and no doubt to cash in on Dickens' fame.

Nevertheless, this is a rare 17th-century timber-framed house and shop, with overhanging first floor and tiled roof.

 
Some say it's London's oldest shop, but there's no evidence it's always been a shop since it was built. Its current occupant, Japanese designer Daita Kimura, told me it was originally two small houses, which were later knocked through to make a shop. At various stages it's been a dairy, a bookshop, and a stationer and waste paper merchant.

Alterations were made in the early 19th century, but the wooden-framed shop windows appear to be mostly 17th century or early 18th century. The glazing is early 19th century. Kimura told me that when he moved in 21 years ago, he had to pull up many layers of lino to uncover the wooden floor, which he says is about 150 years old.

Since 1992, it's been leased by Kimura. He uses the downstairs as a shoe shop - you have to ring a bell to be let inside - where he sells beautiful handmade shoes, hats and accessories, some of which are made upstairs. Kimura says most of his business is wholesaling to overseas, although he does have a handful of UK stockists, including Dover Street Market. He also has a long-running collaboration with English shoemaker Tricker's.

English Heritage has The Old Curiosity Shop listed as Grade II* due to its literary associations, so whether it's true or not, we must thank the man who renamed it - apparently a "chatty fellow" named Palmer (the bookshop owner) - as otherwise the shop wouldn't have survived the demolition of Clare Market, of which it was part, when it was cleared in 1900 to make way for Aldwych and Kingsway.