London Court, shopping arcade in Perth, Western Australia
London Court is a four-level mock Tudor open shopping arcade running between Hay Street Mall and St Georges Terrace. Its ornate entrances have large wrought-iron gates, and the interior includes bastion towers with statues of Dick Whittington and his cat at the north end and Sir Walter Raleigh at the south end. Gargoyles, masks, shields, crests, gabled roofs, weather cocks and lead lighting decorate the facades, and the floor is laid with terracotta tiles.
London Court was built in 1937 for gold financier Claude de Bernales on land bought in 1935 from former Perth mayor Thomas Molloy. Melbourne architect Bernard Evans designed it with local firm Oldham, Boas and Ednie-Brown, and construction took under a year. Sir James Mitchell opened it on 29 July 1937, and a three-day Elizabethan fayre raised £2,000 for the new Perth Hospital.
London Court carries the name of London streets and reflects a desire to bring European charm to Perth. The passage is experienced today as a place where people pause, take photographs, and feel transported to a world apart from the modern city.
The arcade links the Hay Street Mall with St Georges Terrace, so it works as a through-route across the block. The Hay Street entrance holds the jousting clock; the St Georges Terrace end has the Saint George window. Shops and cafes line the ground level, and the upper galleries are reached by stairs.
The Hay Street clock is a copy of the Liberty Clock on Great Marlborough Street in London, and below its face it carries the same warning against "squandering time". Four mechanised knights emerge from a castle door and move in a semicircle as they joust each time it chimes.
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