This week Camden Guide Paul Guest takes us on a journey through the fascinating history of 82 Gower Street. From its past to its present as a stunning Waterstones, this building is home to one of London’s most beautiful (and in our opinion best) bookshops.
Listed Grade II and built 1907-1908, the block that spans Gower Street, Torrington Place and Malet Street was designed by Charles Fitzroy Doll (1850-1929). Doll, trained in Germany, was appointed Surveyor to the Bedford Estates (Bloomsbury and Covent Garden) in 1885. Specialising in hotel design, he is particularly noted for the Russell Hotel (1898), now Kimpton Fitzroy, and the former Imperial Hotel (1905, demolished 1967), also in Russell Square. He was responsible for the (less durable) RMS Titanic dining room too. The Russell Hotel was very clearly designed in the grand manner, and Doll’s architectural style apparently gave rise to the phrase “dolled up”.
Perhaps this led Nikolaus Pevsner to describe the Gower Street block as “wild”, and “restless and flamboyant”. This description seems fairer towards its sculptural reliefs than the exterior as a whole. Even then, however, it would seem unduly negative: the building, described overall as red brick with terracotta and stone dressings, is in elaborate Franco-Flemish Gothic style – an architectural gem hiding in plain sight.
The Façade’s Design
The sculptural reliefs on the Kimpton Fitzroy’s façade are varied but discreetly spaced. Those at Gower Street are at once dense, amazingly varied and subtle in their designs. Their features include: gargoyles in the form of mythical beasts (e.g. dog-shaped); fleur-de-lys motifs; finials of reclining female figures above dormer windows; the dates 1907 and 1908 encased in rainwater pipes with lion-mask spouts, below two small turrets above Torrington Place (19 + 07 are inscribed to each side below the western pinnacle, junction of Gower Street and Torrington Place); the Italian motto of Doll’s employers (Che sarà sarà, “What will be, will be”) around the 3rd-floor bay window together with mythical beasts and a coat of arms; imps’ faces; floriated window architraves; tracery. Above the western pinnacle there is a weathervane.
A Series of Shops
The block was originally a parade of shops, with flats above them. Until the 1970s, at least, the parade comprised – from Gower Street to Malet Street via Torrington Place – a chemist, a newsagent, a café and Dillon’s University Bookshop. The original address of Dillon’s was 1 Malet Street. Its premises gradually expanded and in 1998 the company was taken over by Waterstone’s, which now occupies the entire block; its address is 82 Gower Street.
I worked at Dillon’s from 1972 to 1978. Its interior was remarkably bright and airy at the time. There were three sales floors – basement, ground and first – and also a mezzanine, which housed Penguin Books. A friend of mine, with an Irish background, once filled the whole floor with copies of James Joyce’s Ulysses in Penguin. He told me later that customers had snapped them up (I only bought it, elsewhere, in 2022).
The Founder of Dillon’s
Agnes Joseph Madeline Dillon (1903-1993), known as Una J Dillon, was one of several distinguished and pioneering female booksellers who largely came to the fore in the 1930s. A graduate in physics of Bedford College, University of London, she subsequently worked for the Central Association for Mental Welfare and set up bookstalls for it. During that period, in 1936, she was intrigued by a small bookshop at 9 Store Street, Bloomsbury. She managed to buy it and, even though she had no bookselling experience, the business flourished. Believing that specialisation stifles curiosity, she conceived it as “a really good general [book]shop with an academic slant”. The shop did, however, come to focus increasingly on academic works.
During the Second World War, she took over an empty bookshop unit at 33 Store Street; it is now occupied by Treadwell’s, a bookshop focusing on esoteric subjects.
In 1956 she was offered a partnership by the University of London in order to set up a bookshop on its behalf. This business’s turnover increased strikingly, from about £30,000 through well over £1m by 1967 to £4m by 1977, the year of Una Dillon’s retirement from the board. During my time a number of branches opened in London and other parts of the country; by 1993 there were 117 of them together with a turnover of £145m.
The Original Interior
Una Dillon paid close attention to the ambience of the University Bookshop. According to a definitive profile of her, she used the design of its interior to help attract custom; it is especially striking that she wanted it “to complement the architecturally ornate exteriors of the premises she took over”. The same source quotes a publication, British Books, describing it in 1962 as “a bright and cheerful shop”, in which the long ground-floor windows generate natural daylight. “People who like a bookshop of the traditional dark and musty atmosphere”, so the writer remarks, “would be horrified by Dillon’s.” In short, we are told, it is “a colourful fresh place in which to peruse books quietly and at leisure”. It emerges that Una Dillon could also talk knowledgeably “about different kinds of floor coverings (linoleum, thermoplastic tiles, vinyl, wood, cork and cork tiles, terrazzo and carpeting).”
Miss Dillon’s conception of bookshop design was evidently in keeping with her concern for giving the best possible customer service – she sought to make books accessible, whether academic or otherwise, to the general public. She was also concerned for her staff’s well-being and earned their wholehearted loyalty.
The Company’s Crisis
She was still on the board in an unusually difficult year for the company – 1975. At a time of high inflation, its future was under threat and redundancies, on the principle “Last in, first out”, were envisaged. There were weekly (I think) crisis meetings, held at the University of London Union (“ULU”) building across Malet Street. They were conducted by the Chairman, Peter Parker (1924-2002), who was appointed Chairman of the British Railways Board in 1976 and knighted in 1978. Una Dillon did not attend them, and I never met her. My late best friend Patrick Carroll was, however, employed by her personally in 1963.
Wikipedia calls the mid- to late 1970s “a period when Dillon’s was controlled by the unions (Actss)”. The Association of Clerical, Technical and Salaried Staff was a group within the Transport and General Workers’ Union. It did not “control” the company, though. The union branch expressed some interest in workers’ control, but shop stewards still negotiated pay and conditions with the Management (I became a shop steward in 1976 though, as I can see now, not very militant).
The Last Years of Dillon’s
Dillon’s was re-launched in 1986. 82 Gower Street, extensively re-fitted, was officially opened as its “flagship store” by Princess Anne. An advertisement proclaimed that it had “over 5 miles of books in 52 specialist departments and 110 booksellers to help you find them” and boldly described the shop as “Europe’s finest bookstore”. Above the name “Dillons the Bookstore” was a logo comprising a huge “d” in lower case and a tiny “s” attached to its top right-hand side.
Una Dillon later made clear her hatred of the logo and the word “bookstore”. She is commemorated there in two ways: the name Dillon’s on the window of the café, facing Torrington Place, and a plaque. The latter, on the first landing of the staircase opposite the Torrington Place entrance, certainly does her more justice with the caption “Founder of Dillon’s Bookshop”. She was awarded an Honorary MA by the University of London in 1965 and a CBE, for services to bookselling, in 1968.
I cannot be proud of my own record at Dillon’s – all the more reason, then, to be thankful for this opportunity to pay a small tribute to the bookshop and the elegant and harmonious design of the building. I can appreciate them now as never before, just under seventy years since the foundation of Dillon’s University Bookshop.
Sources
https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/sculptural-reliefs
Details of façade: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1379009
Pevsner, Nikolaus, and Bridget Cherry, London 4: North (The Buildings of England), 1998
Rayner, Samantha J, Women Booksellers in the Twentieth Century: Hidden Behind the Bookshelves, 2025 – Includes some photos of Una Dillon. https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/10204014/1/women-booksellers-in-the-twentieth-century%20%281%29.pdf
Stockham, Peter, “Obituary: Una Dillon”, The Independent, 16 April 1993 – Peter Stockham (1928-2003) was Managing Director of Dillon’s 1967-1975.
Wikipedia: “Dillons the Bookstore”
Personal recollections 1972-1978