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Daunt Books, 83 Marylebone High Street

By the Survey of London, on 22 September 2017

Daunt's Bookshop, Marylebone High Street. Photographed by Chris Redgrave for the Howard de Walden Estate and the Survey of London Historic England

Daunt’s Bookshop, Marylebone High Street. Photographed by Chris Redgrave for the Howard de Walden Estate and the Survey of London. © Historic England

Daunt’s in Marylebone High Street is a favourite destination for book lovers. With its top-lit gallery, a remarkable Edwardian survival, it has one of the most distinguished interiors in the country. James Daunt took over the premises in 1989–90, initially specializing in travel books, and expanded into the next-door shop in 1999. But there had been a bookshop here since 1860. At that time it was in the hands of Francis Edwards. He had married in 1855 Sarah Anne Stockley whose father, Gilkes Stockley, was a bookseller with a shop in Great Quebec Street near Portman Square. After the marriage, Edwards took over Stockley’s business and five years later, with a growing family, moved to the High Street. He took the lease of what was then No. 83A. It became No. 83, as it is now, in 1927 (until then the present 83A was No. 83).

Detail of the gable of No. 83 Marylebone High Street photographed by Chris Redgrave

Detail of the gable of 83 Marylebone High Street photographed by Chris Redgrave. © Historic England

The High Street as it developed during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was as mixed in shopping and business character as any London high street. In the early 1830s Thomas Smith, in his invaluable Topographical and Historical Account of St. Mary-le-Bone, summed up its humdrum character in a single sentence: ‘The houses have nothing to recommend them in point of architectural beauty, being plain brick buildings; and from their having been built at various periods are destitute of uniformity; they are, however, principally occupied by respectable tradesmen’.

Marylebone High Street, Daunt's bookshop and on the right No. 83 A built around 1859. Photographed by Chris Redgrave.

Marylebone High Street, Daunt’s bookshop and on the right No. 83A, built around 1859. Photographed by Chris Redgrave. © Historic England

There was some small-scale mid Victorian rebuilding of shops and public houses as leases expired, but nothing to alter radically the look of the street until the late nineteenth century when the Portland (later Howard de Walden) Estate began a systematic policy of complete rebuilding as the condition for renewing old leases. When Edwards moved to the High Street it was to a late eighteenth-century building, although the neighbouring premises to the north (the present 83A) had been rebuilt the year before.

The top lit gallery at the back of No. 83 Marylebone High Street. Photographed by Chris Redgrave.

The top-lit gallery at the back of 83 Marylebone High Street. Photographed by Chris Redgrave. © Historic England

Originally specializing in theology, the shop expanded under the management of Francis’s son, also Francis, to become one of the country’s leading antiquarian bookshops. Theology gradually gave way to a new emphasis on travel, topography and maps. Business evidently thrived, as Edwards embarked on a no-expense-spared rebuilding in 1908. By that time the family was no longer living over the shop, having moved out to the London suburbs, first to Ruislip and then to Northwood. Edwards chose W. Henry White as his architect, among the best of a handful of architects regularly employed on rebuilding schemes on the estate around this time. At the same time White also designed No. 84, the adjoining property to the south, in a similar vein, and a few years earlier had designed Nos 70 and 71 (built in 1903–4).

 Arched window at the end of the gallery at 83 Marylebone High Street. Photographed by Chris Redgrave.

Arched window at the end of the gallery at 83 Marylebone High Street. Photographed by Chris Redgrave. © Historic England

Nos 83 and 84 are an unmatched pair in red brick with plentiful stone dressings topped off by shaped gables, in the commercial Queen Anne style favoured by the Estate. The date 1910 can be seen on a shield above the three arched windows lighting the attic of No. 83. The elegant shopfront with its central doorway flanked by large plate-glass display windows also has a side entrance providing access to the upper floors, all framed by pink granite piers and stall risers.

Shopfront of 83 Marylebone High Street. Photographed by Chris Redgrave.

Shopfront of 83 Marylebone High Street. Photographed by Chris Redgrave. ©Historic England

Francis Edwards died in 1944, but the shop remained in the family until the late 1970s. The business was subsequently bought by Pharos Books in 1982 and the shop was briefly known as Read’s of Marylebone High Street. Francis Edwards still exists as an antiquarian bookseller’s, with premises at Hay-on-Wye and in Charing Cross Road.

Pediment over the entrance to Daunt Books, 83 Marylebone High Street. Photographed by Chris Redgrave © Historic England.

Pediment over the entrance to Daunt Books, 83 Marylebone High Street. Photographed by Chris Redgrave © Historic England.

The recent series of Who Do You Think You Are, featuring Charles Dance noted that Dance’s ancestors the Futvoyes had an art shop at No. 83 High Street in the early nineteenth century, and the Howard de Walden archive shows that Charles Futvoye was granted a lease of No. 83 in 1819. This was, however, not on the site of the present No. 83. It may have been the present 83A, or a house further to the north, long since rebuilt.

2 Responses to “Daunt Books, 83 Marylebone High Street”

  • 1
    Tony Gilbert wrote on 28 December 2021:

    In-between Francis Edwards bookshop premises being sold by the original Edwards family firm (Summer 1979) and their acquisition by Pharos (in Summer 1982), it was occupied for 3 years by an antiquarian book business with Alan G. Mitchell, previously a sole trader specialising in Africana books, as Man. Dir., and Humphrey Winterton (formerly World Bank) as Chariman. Many of the original staff were retained – I was one of them, having joined in the Summer of 1973 – and after a rocky start, the business regained some of it´s former standing as one of the “big 4 antiquarian booksellers in London”, but a combination of factors, one of the most telling being the general financial slump in the early 1980´s, led to the shop and business being put up for sale again, and this time they were ripe for the picking by the avariscious head of Pharos, Leon K. Morelli, who had already bought his way into the book town of Hay-on -Wye alongside other bookshop acquisitions. However, his intention (in 1984) to cash in on the end of the initial 5-year lease from 1979 by changing useage of the premises to those of a boutique style fashion shop foundered on the Grade 2 Listing of the upper rear Gallery, and though Daunt´s wished to acquire the premises then for their own bookshop, they had to wait for the end of the 2nd 5-year lease period in 1989 to do so. Just to bring matters a little more up to date, the last few years has seen the death of Alan Mitchell, Humphrey Winterton & Leon Morelli, whilst the onetime Francis Edwards premises on Charing Cross Road, also opened by Morelli, closed at the very begining of the Corona crisis in March 2020. The Francis Edwards name & antiquarian book business in the Cinema at Hay-on-Wye still flourishes to this day.

  • 2
    john graingeer wrote on 20 August 2023:

    Hi
    I was a school friend of Alan Mitchell – we boarded together at John Fisher in Purley – and he was head boy in 1966 or thereabouts. I had lost touch with Alan after school save for a brief visit by him to my home as he knew my father, who had lived most of his life in Kenya, had some books on Africa dating to the late 19th early 20th century which he thought he could acquire.
    I subsequently spent much of my life abroad, much in the Middle East, but now regret not reconnecting with Alan as I believe we had a common interest in the early travelers/explorers in Africa but also the Arabian Peninsula. I would very much appreciate being able to know a little of Alan’s later life. Thank you

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