The first occupant of this house, built in c.1721, was Lewis Way, a barrister and South Sea Company director. Other 18th century residents included a Commander of the Lord Camden, one of the great East Indiamen which plied the trade routes between London, the Indian subcontinent, the East Indies and the Chinese port of Canton.
The painter Clare 'Tony' Atwood had a studio at the house from 1916, and it was also home to several actors after the First World War. The Nation & Athenaeum, chaired by John Meynard Keynes and described as 'the mouthpiece of Bloomsbury liberalism', was published from here in the 1920s. Its literary editor was Leonard Woolf, who would help impecunious young authors, including Robert Graves and E. M. Forster he knew through the Hogarth Press by commissioning them to write reviews and articles.