In 1986, LEGO released the all-time classic LEGO Castle 6067 Guarded Inn (so beloved that it was even briefly re-released in 2001). Harking back to this bygone era, LEGO just announced the latest in their long-running line of modular buildings, LEGO Icons 10350 Tudor Corner. Launching on January 1st, 2025 for LEGO Insiders members (January 4th for everyone else), the set incorporates design elements from traditional British architecture for the first time, including a ground-floor pub named after the Classic Castle set and brick-built half-timber construction. As its name indicates, Tudor Corner is also the next corner module, following 10297 Boutique Hotel from 2022. The set includes a whopping 3,266 parts with 7 minifigs, and will retail for US $229.99 | CAN $TBD | UK £229.

At LEGO headquarters in Billund, Denmark, I sat down for a conversation with the set’s designer François Zapf alongside graphic design team manager Ashwin Visser, and I’ll be sharing insights from that interview throughout this review.

Set designer François Zapf (right) and graphic design team manager Ashwin Visser (left) unveil 10350 Tudor Corner

The LEGO Group provided The Brothers Brick with an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.

The box & contents

The new modular comes in the now-familiar 18+ LEGO Icons box design. The back of the box integrates the new set into a street scene featuring all the most recent modulars, with interior details along the bottom.

The front of the box slides up off the back, with a lip on the lower half to help contain the various bags, which fill the box rather densely.

There are 20 sets of numbered bags, along with sleeves for the instructions and baseplate. Only one of the bags (for larger pieces like plates) is plastic — all of the rest of the packaging is fully recyclable paper packaging.

A nicely printed paper sleeve replaces the plastic sleeve that’s been keeping instruction booklets pristine in larger sets for a while now.

The instructions themselves include an introduction from designer François Zapf (from whom we’ll be hearing more throughout this review), as well as little notes that connect details in the new set to previous LEGO sets.

Even the 32×32 baseplate gets its own sleeve. This may seem unnecessary, but in a larger set the sleeve ensures that the baseplate doesn’t get wedged and bent out of shape and that corners don’t get damaged as it bounces around in the large box (both of which have happened on sets I’ve bought myself in the past). It’s a great example of an improvement LEGO can make with the shift to more recycled/recyclable packaging.

A key design decision LEGO has been making for many years regarding modular building sets is that key elements like signage are always printed rather than stickered. This remains true for Tudor Corner, which includes many unique printed elements. In addition to the main signs over the pub and haberdashery, there are chalkboard menu signs, clocks, and a 2×2 tile for some key details in the top-floor apartment.

There are a number of recolors (although the design team confirmed there are no new elements), including droid arms and legs in pearl-gold and an interesting black piece in the “candlestick” family that works beautifully as the top of downspouts along the outside of the building. Given its structural potential, it will be interesting to see how builders incorporate this new piece into their custom creations, especially after it becomes available in larger quantities.

The build

After the earliest modular buildings, each new release in the series has packed more and more detail into the interior. (Yes, many collectors remain nostalgic for Cafe Corner and Green Grocer, but let’s be honest that we don’t remember them for their detail-packed interiors…) These details are often incorporated into areas that end up hidden in the finished model, so for me, the build itself is the aspect of each set I enjoy most. With that in mind, let’s dig in!

As always, the first steps in the set create the basic footprint for the building — in this case, a sidewalk that goes around the corner and the basic plan for the small interior rooms. The sidewalk is a bit deeper than the standard width on one side to accommodate the angled wall and outside seating we’ll add later.

The sidewalk incorporates a shield-like design. “There’s a coat of arms,” François Zapf told me, “Because the inn is called the old guarded inn, and we found it really funny to suggest that this is the same location, same place, as the old guarded inn, but few centuries later.”

The haberdashery comes together first, with hats and yarn adorning the shelves against the shop’s walls. (I’ll share later why the haberdashery has what might seem like an odd juxtaposition of hats and yarn…) Meanwhile in the back, the pub’s toilet (or loo) under the stairs and the tiny galley kitchen both come together.

The pub/tavern really starts looking the part as the bar area forms. The curved bar even features a full English breakfast, with an egg, toast, and bacon. Especially noteworthy in this section is the cash register, which is built together with the red-and-white ketchup bottle as a single small sub-assembly, then attached to the back counter via a single stud under the bottle, allowing the cash register to float at the correct angle on the curved tiles.

The stairs soon cover up the toilet, and we’re ready to move on to all the details and techniques in the front walls.

The entrance to the haberdashery is nicely layered, with great detail built from pins and feathers to highlight the printed sign.

The front face of the tavern begins with an angled frame, which will hold the outer wall in place.

That wall is built separately as a fairly large sub-assembly. The name of the pub is printed in gold lettering on a black 2×4 tile, and of course the name itself is a callback to the classic set from 1986/2001. Decorative foliage is built onto droid legs attached upside down.

The exterior wall assembly includes an interior table, and with the wall in place, it creates a cozy seating area for pub patrons. Notice the tiny clock on the 1×3 table against the wall — you’ll be seeing a lot more clocks between now and the end of the build.

Two more sub-assemblies complete the outer wall on the or ground floor, with a menu on two printed 2×3 tiles filling in the corner.

The pace of the build for the outer structure picks up as we shift from a tiled baseplate and angled outer walls to regular plates and a square footprint. The designers of modular buildings have shifted away from the large, single-use staircase pieces to brick-built stairs, and the stairs in this set are no exception. But I don’t recall another LEGO set in recent memory that includes a staircase built fully sideways like this one. The steps are attached sideways to brackets, which creates a nice overhang over the risers, with a bit of dark-brown peeking through. It looks oddly layered mid-build, but creates a really lovely, subtle design once the stairs are complete and slotted into place — although a door and wall ultimately enclose the whole staircase, proving my earlier point about elements you enjoy during the build that are hard to see in the finished model. Similarly, a cute old-fashioned vacuum cleaner (or hoover) fits under the staircase.

The floor above the pub and haberdashery is dedicated to a clockmaker’s workshop. One of the notes connecting details and characters in this set with previous LEGO sets says that the clockmaker’s proudest achievement was creating the large clock on 10224 Town Hall from 2012. Nearly all of the interior details in the clockmaker’s workshop are of course horological. There are more than ten time-keeping devices in the space, from an hourglass on the clockmaker’s workbench to several large grandfather clocks.

The exterior walls are no less detailed, though the techniques are a little more straightforward than the off-grid construction on the ground floor. Sub-assemblies slot in to complete the wall, and a large exterior clock stands out from the side of the building.

Foliage completes the look of the second story/first floor (depending on if you’re American or British), tying the divergent design of the walls together with a shared detail from the ground floor.

Things start getting wild as we work our way toward the complex roof line and half-timber construction on the top floor. Some of the treasured LEGO elements from my ancient copy of the original Guarded Inn set are the old-style castle wall pieces printed with a half-timber design (though I have to admit I’ve never actually used these strange black-on-red pieces in a model of my own). Just like real half-timber or wattle and daub construction, the wooden frames angle through the walls and are not all horizontal or vertical. The “easy” way to build half-timber details into a LEGO model is simply to incorporate black vertical and horizontal elements in between white bricks. François Zapf and the rest of the LEGO design team take half-timber construction to a new height by creating angles within the walls. To ahieve the angle, François insets a 1×2 grill piece attached to a 2×2 plate/tile with two studs into a narrow, angled space between 1×2 cheese slopes.

This is an incredibly parts-intensive technique, and as a result the walls in the attic space are at least three studs thick. My only disappointment with the half-timber section of the building is that these angles only appear on the first two bricks high, at the base of the floor.

The black-and-white details continue in the dormer window that caps the pastel-blue section above the haberdashery, with a sub-assembly that includes 1×1 elements on their sides. The window section is inset into the roof built from standard 1×2 tall slopes, which are offset by one plate vertically to create a layered effect.

The remainder of the half-timber construction is built in more-expected ways, including black window frames with opaque white window panes.

The top-floor resident isn’t just a cat-lover. On the chimney, there are little shelves with terrariums that include bugs. The boxes are built from 1×2 clear bricks, into which you stick a 1×1 round tile printed with an adorable rhinoceros beetle. Growing up in Japan, I kept rhinoceros and stag beetles myself, and upon reflection this probably wasn’t a great experience for those noble wild creatures. Regardless, the printed beetles are wonderful, and the printed tiles inserted into the clear bricks are an innovative way to create tiny terrariums.

The roofline spans the small attic room below, providing structure for the angled roof we’ll be attaching next.

The resident of the top floor is an animal-loving woman who apparently frequents the veterinarian with the office on the upper floor of 10264 Corner Garage, according to another little note in the instruction booklet. (It’s almost like LEGO is creating a Modular Building Cinematic Universe with these character details. After the fifth or sixth note like this, though, the notes did start feeling like cross-promotional product placement rather than cute callbacks for long-time collectors.) The set includes two cats, at least one of whom lives with the woman on the top floor, as evidenced by the ball of yarn, food and water dishes, and great cat tree. The chair/sofa (minifig hips are, after all, incredibly wide) and coffee table combine with the excellent bookshelf for some truly cozy details.

The eight roof sections are not necessarily built from crazy new techniques individually, clipping into place on angle bricks or clip+bar connections. Two dormer windows extend from the roof. After initially attaching each roof section sub-assembly, you then attach another small sub-assembly to that roof section, thus wrapping the roof around the dormer windows. Taken together, they form a roofline with some seriously complex angles that my own brain would have struggled to design.

But I’m not a professional LEGO designer. “I started with the roof design,” François told me, “Because it’s the most challenging part of the building with crazy techniques and angles. Tudor architecture is well known for the cross-gable, so that was the first thing I tried to achieve. It was a lot of trial and error, because there were so many collision issues, especially when you have those weird overlaps.”

The roof was one of the most impressive aspects of the set when I first had a chance to take a look in Billund back in September, and we spent a bit more time talking about it. I was (and am) especially impressed with how sturdy the roof elements are, both after they click in, but — more importantly — how firmly they hold together as you’re assembling the set, given the pressure you have to exert on them to click them in.

“That was also a challenge,” François shared, “Because you can press there and it won’t break. At first, with the roof being so steep, to have structural support inside for everything. And specifically, when you pressing on it really hard. Yeah,

The cap on the building is the usual simple affair, with an extra, non-functional chimney retconned into existence by way of a note saying that it was preserved in response to a “petition” from the chimneysweep character for “aesthetic” reasons. I can’t disagree that the second chimney does add visual interest to the top of the building, but I was rolling my eyes at these little notes by this point in the instruction booklet — though, admittedly, I was certainly smiling.

Each of the three main modules of the building are substantial in their own way. Most of the structural complexity is in the ground floor; the pub has a detailed bar area, kitchen, and toilet, while the haberdashery is full of goods for sale. But the various clocks on the second floor, the innovative sideways staircase, and the half-timber construction and roofline on the top floor all provide really fun experiences throughout the entire build process.

The finished model

When complete, the three-story building has four distinctive sections — the green-and-black ground-floor pub or tavern, a brick middle floor, half-timber top/attic level, and a pastel-blue section that extends up from the haberdashery through the middle floor. As disparate as these sections are, they work together beautifully while avoiding the bottom-to-top architectural repetition that characterizes some of the single-purpose modular buildings.

The left-rear side of the building includes quite a lot of detail, with a staircase up to the clockmaker’s workshop and a dumpster with a rotten fish that’s attracting one of the cats. The walls aren’t left bare, with nice foliage climbing up the pastel-blue sections through the middle story.

The other side of the rear is essentially bare, obviously designed simply to butt against the modular building next to it.

As we’d expect, much of the design team’s attention goes to the front face of the ground floor, and I wasn’t disappointed by off-grid walls, lots of printed elements, and excellent interior details.

I asked designers François and Ashwin why the haberdashery included both hats and yarn. They shared that they wanted to ensure the set worked in both European and North American contexts, and that “haberdashery” means something different on each content. In North America, a haberdashery is a shop for men’s accessories, particularly hats. But in Great Britain, a haberdashery instead sells all kinds of supplies for sewing and tailoring, from buttons and zippers to yarn. Thus, François and Ashwin said, the haberdashery in 10350 Tudor Corner includes both racks of hats and skeins of fabric and yarn.

Although its exterior may be simpler than the ground floor, the interior of the clockmaker’s workshop might be my favorite. In addition to the plethora of clocks, the workshop has a fantastic fireplace with a grill, mantel, and (of course) mantel clock. François told me that one of the most fun aspects of designing the set was researching all the different kinds of clocks over the past several hundred years, and finding ways to recreate as many of them as possible for the clockmaker’s space.

The available space on the top floor is restricted by its location in the attic, so there are fewer details needed to fill it comfortably. My favorite detail is the bookshelf, although that azure couch is fantastic too.

The minifigures

With seven minifigs (plus a mannequin), there’s no shortage of denizens of all sorts to populate the sidewalk and interior spaces of the modular’s three levels. According to François and Ashwin, the characters include the tavern’s owner-chef, the watchmaker, the haberdasher, a food critic, a passerby in a red hat (who resembles the writer character inspired by Agatha Christie in 21344 Orient Express, a chimneysweep, and a “crazy cat lady.”

The watchmaker sports a huge mustache with his work apron, the haberdasher wears a stylish suit, the tavern keeper wears a chef’s jacket, and the chimneysweep looks the part in all-black clothes with a flat cap and large brush. Both the watchmaker and tavern keeper have reversible heads. I especially like the choice to use a winking head for the watchmaker to show him focusing on small work.

The animal-loving resident of the top floor wears headphones around her neck, while the two other women wear outfits that would work in nearly any age or era. All three also have reversible heads for alternative facial expressions.

Finally, the crazy cat lady (who seems more stylish than crazy, to be fair) gets around town on a cool cargo trike.

Conclusions & recommendation

As with any product line for any company that’s run for more than 15 years, individual products are going to appeal to different people. The challenge LEGO has with the modular building series is that the company only releases one new product in the line each year, and they only carry three or four of them at any given time. They need the product to appeal to both new builders and longtime collectors. And for longtime collectors, LEGO must balance between competing claims from some collectors who want each new modular to “fit” with previous ones they’ve collected, while other builders crave more variety.

As much as I’m a proponent of diversity and representation in LEGO (often to the annoyance of certain vocal readers), I am ironically more of a traditionalist in my personal preferences for this particular LEGO theme. Taken on their own, I enjoyed building 10260 Downtown Diner and 10264 Corner Garage with their distinctly American vibe. But I’ve always preferred the European-style architecture that has typified the majority of LEGO’s modular building series. (Doubly ironic perhaps, my all-time favorite modular is 10246 Detective’s Office, with its iconically American barber shop, pool hall, and noir detective agency.) All of that is to lay out my own biases as part of sharing my recommendation here.

With an enjoyable build process, several innovative techniques, and a great parts palette in colors like pastel-blue (azure), several shades of nougat, and dark green, there are a lot of fairly objective reasons I’d argue make the set worthy of a hearty recommendation. But ultimately, with twenty large sets in the product line since its inception in 2008, whether or not you choose to drop $230 to add it to your own collection becomes a matter of personal preference.

For me, the set climbs past classics like Cafe Corner and Grand Emporium into my personal top five, alongside favorites like the aforementioned Detective’s Office and 10243 Parisian Restaurant.

What excites me most, though, is that this could represent a diversification within that broader category of European and American architecture. For the twenty modular building sets released so far, LEGO has flipped between an essentially dualistic pair of broad categories — generically “European” (which could also be generically “pre-war east-coast American”) and overtly “American.” Even Parisian Restaurant, which carries an explicitly French name, fits comfortably in the “generically European” class of sets.

Toward the end of my interview with him and Ashwin, François confirmed this as an intentional shift in direction. The modular series “has always been around Paris, or Parisian architecture, or US architecture, or things like this,” he said. “So, going to Great Britain, it’s fresh, it’s new.”

Indeed. So many countries have unique architectural traditions that would support 2-3 annual sets that share certain design aesthetics. Imagine a row of colorful Danish or Dutch harbor buildings, for example. Despite the old-fashioned architecture, I think Tudor Corner — with its half-timber construction and complex roofline inspired by English architecture — actually pushes the theme in a new and interesting direction with high potential for really fun sets in the future.

---

LEGO Icons 10350 Tudor Corner includes 3,266 pieces with 7 minifigures (plus an extra mannequin), and will be available beginning January 4th, 2025 for US $229.99 | CAN $TBD | UK £229 from the LEGO Shop, and may also be available from third-party sellers on Amazon.com or eBay.

The LEGO Group provided The Brothers Brick with an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.

---