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London Court is a three- and four-level open-roofed shopping arcade located in the central business district in Perth, Western Australia. It was built in 1937 by wealthy gold financier and businessman, Claude de Bernales for residential and commercial purposes. The arcade runs between the Hay Street Mall and St Georges Terrace and is considered an important tourist attraction in the City of Perth. It received a National Trust of Australia classification in 1978 and was recorded in the Register of the National Estate in 1982. The Heritage Council of Western Australia included it in the State Heritage Register in 1996.


Built in 1937 as a combination of residential and commercial premises for shady gold miner and financier Claude de Bernales, London Court is designed to look like a Tudor street scene. It opened with an ‘Olde English Fayre’, complete with Elizabethan costumes and traditional music.

At the Hay Street entrance, a blue-faced clock is a replica of the Great Clock at Rouen in France, with four knights who circle in the window when the clock chimes. A second clock is located on St George’s Terrace entrance, with a miniature St George doing battle with the dragon.

The twenty-four flats boasted they had diamond leadlights for windows, but otherwise were up-to-date residences, including a new form of air-conditioning which could cool in summer and warm in winter. At the St George’s Terrace end was a large basement occupied by the Old English Inn, with a moulded ceiling depicting sailing ships and walls covered in old maps, shields and swords. It also advertised an all-hours grill room and chickens turning on the spit.

Today, London Court continues to attract local and international visitors with its unique architectural style, statues of Sir Walter Raleigh and Dick Whittington and a feeling for the narrow streets of a past era.

1940 

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