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THE LIBERTYS AT 13 CORNWALL TERRACE, REGENTS PARK, LONDON
Arthur Lasenby Liberty (1843-1917) opened a small shop on Regent Street in 1875. At first, the business concentrated on silks imported from the Far East, making its name with ‘Liberty Art Fabrics’. An eclectic range of objects, furnishings, interior decoration and dress followed, and by the turn of the century Arthur Lasenby Liberty was widely known as an innovative and influential design-led entrepreneur, who had achieved status and financial success. The Liberty ‘brand’ gained an international reputation and remains embodied in a department store whose distinctive buildings of the 1920s are landmarks of London’s West End.
After modest beginnings, including an apprenticeship to John Weeks, a linen draper and silk mercer at 54 Baker Street from 1860-62, Liberty went to work for Farmer & Rogers, respected dealers in shawls and oriental goods on Regent Street, where he spent the next twelve years. In 1874 he became engaged to Emma Louise Blackmore, whom he married the following year. With a loan from her Her father Henry Blackmore, a Devonshire man with a military tailoring business on Brook Street, was persuaded to underwrite a lease on they opened their first shop Regent Street premises, together with a Bond Street tailor named Henry Hill. The loans were repaid within a year, reflecting Liberty’s immediate success. The couple lived with her father after they were married in 1875, at his house at 7 Fairfax Road, Hampstead; Henry Blackmore and Arthur Lasenby Liberty were listed as resident there in 1880. On her father’s death in 1881, Emma Liberty inherited and then managed his Brook Street tailoring premises while the Hampstead property was left to her husband.
In 1884, the Libertys moved The business was an immediate success and within a decade the couple moved to 13 Cornwall Terrace, one of the ‘Nash’ terraces on Regents’ Park belonging to the Crown Estate. It was previously inhabited by Seth Smith. The lease was assigned to Mrs E.L. Liberty on 30.4.1888 and further assigned subsequently to Cecil Hunter on 24.6.1907. It seems that latterly, the Libertys may have sublet the property (Crown Estate LLB 14, p. 335), as they settled more permanently in Buckinghamshire (see below).
In 1884, Emma Liberty published privately a short book entitled The Levant and Back Within Twenty-Eight Days (Extracts from a Diary). The Introduction is signed E.L.L., at 13 Cornwall Terrace, Regents Park NW. The book described a journey from London ‘to Constantinople, Ephesus, Athens and back … being the holiday side of a business journey’, and concludes with the words:
... landed at Dover at about 4 o'clock am, in a storm of sleet and rain, in which we were kept by the officials, whilst being mercilessly searched for Dynamite &c. Home not clear of painters and workmen, so we are staying at the Langham Hotel - an unpleasant ending to a truly delightful holiday.
The 1891 Census records only the four servants resident at 13 Cornwall Terrace on the Census day. The Libertys’ neighbours at this time included merchants, both active and retired, including East and West India merchants, a ship owner, a solicitor, a retired military officer, a school master, and households of independent means.
By a curious symmetry, given Lasenby Liberty’s interest in and trade with Japan, and his extended visit there in 1889 with Emma and their friends the artist Alfred East and businessman Charles Holme, the house has been occupied by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation since 1994
By Dr Sonia Ashmore