Pall Mall Barbers: The Barbershop That Has Been Serving London Since 1896
The original Trafalgar Square barbershop
A Victorian shopfront off Trafalgar Square, a name borrowed from a game played by kings, and eight London barbershops built to look exactly like the original. Everything else, from the services to the styling to the products, is built for the man walking in today. This is Pall Mall Barbers.
Pall Mall Barbers is one of the oldest barbershops in the world, and one of the oldest in London. It has been trading from the same address on Whitcomb Street, a few minutes' walk from Trafalgar Square, since 1896, and now runs nine barbershops in the UK and America: eight across London, and a flagship at New York's Rockefeller Center, alongside its own range of grooming products. It is a modern barber brand with a very deep set of roots, and the reason it has lasted is that it has kept moving.
A Name They were Right to Shorten
The business opened as the Pall Mall Toilet Saloon. The name raises a smile now, but in Victorian Britain 'toilet' meant the daily ritual of washing, shaving and dressing before facing the world, nothing to do with plumbing. When Richard Marshall bought the shop in 2005 he kept the Pall Mall and, understandably, dropped the rest. The idea underneath it, that grooming is a daily habit rather than an occasional errand, is one that Pall Mall Barbers has kept and built on, and now sums up as Keep Sharp Every Day.
He only discovered the shop's age by accident. While renovating, he lifted the original Victorian floorboards and found a pristine business card printed with the original name. Archive research confirmed the date: 1896. Rather than modernise the history away, he restored the shop's oak panelling and leather chairs and has replicated that look in every site since, and calls the approach Modern Heritage.
The name works in both directions. The rooms are heritage: oak panelling, leather chairs, a shopfront that has barely changed. Everything that happens inside them is not. Cutting and styling are contemporary, the service menu has been rebuilt around how men actually live and work now, and the product range is being developed to match. Clients come for a barbershop with genuine credibility behind it, and leave with a modern haircut.
Richard Marshall
The Man who Bought It
Richard Marshall started in barbering at 12, sweeping hair from the floor of a shop in his hometown. He was kicked out of school at 15 with no qualifications and could not read or write until he was 40. He bought the Whitcomb Street shop at 29 and has since grown it from that single site into an international business, betting against the prevailing trend that the traditional British barbershop look was an asset rather than something to modernise away. What he did next was the harder part: a sympathetic modernisation, keeping the room and updating everything else.
For eighteen months until November 2025 he advised the UK Government as a member of the Small Business Growth Council, working on the industrial strategy for the UK’s 5.6 million SMEs. He was also awarded an MBE in the King's New Year Honours List 2026 for services to international trade, mentoring and to people with dyslexia.
A Name Borrowed from Royalty
Pall Mall itself takes its name from pall-mall, a 17th-century game somewhere between golf and croquet, played by royalty on the ground where Pall Mall and The Mall now run. By 1896 the name had become shorthand for British craftsmanship and standards, which is precisely why the original owners borrowed it.
The Trafalgar Square barbershop today
Services
Every appointment begins with a warm welcome. The core offer is men's haircuts, skin fades, beard trims and traditional wet shaves, alongside head shaves, hot towel treatments, shaving lessons and combined haircut-and-shave packages. The wet shave is the traditional half of the menu; the cutting and styling side is firmly current.
Products
The Pall Mall Barbers range covers haircare, grooming, men's shaving products, gift sets and a range of hair combs. Gift packs are available from £37 to £206, and gift vouchers from £50 to £500.
For more information: https://www.pallmallbarbers.com/
