St Anne's Court - Soho, London, UK - UK Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

The plaque on Clarion House reads:

Clarion House stands on an historic site in St Anne's Court which passed from the Crown to the Dukes of Portland in the 17th century.

For two centuries the court was a haven for political refugees from France and Switzerland and, in modern times, from Eastern Europe.

The historic houses were demolished in 1967 but in the 1980's the site was brought back into housing use for local people by the Soho Housing Association.

Clarion House was opened on 24th June 1987 by the Hon. Peter Brooke MP.

Architects: Peter Mishoon and Associates
Builders: Tellings Ltd

The British History On-line website [visit link] gives an overview of St Anne's Court in 1966:

"Architectural Description, St. Anne's Court

St. Anne's Court is a pedestrian way of irregular plan extending from Wardour Street to Dean Street. The buildings fronting to the narrow western range have been rebuilt at various times, but several original houses survive in the eastern range, mostly on the south side. A plan of this south side is included in the Portland estate plan, made in 1792–3. This shows the public house at the Dean Street end, and eight small houses having an average frontage of seventeen feet and a depth of twenty-two feet, the interior being simply divided by panelled partitions to form a front room, a back room, and a dog-legged staircase. There were no closet wings, but each house had a small yard containing a privy and sometimes a shed.

All the houses contain three storeys and a roof garret, and the fronts, where original, are of the simplest design and built of russet stock bricks. The two windows of each upper storey have exposed frames set flush in openings with flat arches of red rubbers. On the north side, Nos. 27 and 28 are original houses, similar in size and finish to those on the south side, although the front of No. 28 is three windows wide. Moulded architraves of stucco have been added to the windows of both houses, and No. 28 has the remains of an original wooden doorcase, consisting of a moulded architrave and a single carved console-bracket. Most of the houses have shop fronts, generally nondescript and modern but sometimes incorporating earlier features such as the mutule cornice at No. 7.

No. 86 Dean Street is a three-storeyed house with frontages to St. Anne's Court and Dean Street, both three windows wide. Above the modern shop front is a restored face of stock brickwork where the side windows of each front are set with flush frames in plain openings having flat arches of gauged red bricks. The middle windows of the St. Anne's Court front are blind, but those in Dean Street have concealed frames recessed in openings dressed with cement architraves, friezes and steep pediments, suggesting that these windows were also blind originally."