The architectures and interior spaces of Bourne and Hollingsworth were built around these respectable shopping practices and were infused with these cultures of quiet conservatism.Stafford Bourne was mindful that the new building for the shop built in the 1920 represented an enormous expense and would need to see the store through many decades.He chose with caution, avoiding fashionable modern retail architects, and commissioning the architectural practice of John Slater.Tellingly,the Slaters were close family friends and neighbours, with offices practically next door at 46 Berners Street. The firm had built its reliable reputation as architects and surveyors to the Berners Estate, on whose land Bourne and Hollingsworth was situated.John Slater'sown son and partner J. alan Slater acknowledged the conservatism of the firm's early twentieth-century work, 'I am bound to say, to modern eyes, these buildings were not particularly distinguished from the architectural pointof view' but were all well planned, efficiently built and proved to be profitable to the developer. Bourne had already tested out these architects with structural alteration to the old shop, anearby factory and garage, hostel facilities for staff, and alteration to the Bourne family home, Garston Manor in Hertfordshire