Built mainly in the 1840s on the site of nursery gardens, this street became fashionable after the surplus funds from the 1851 Great Exhibition helped to create the new 'South Kensington' devoted to the promotion of the arts and sciences. Residents of the house have varied from a valet to the 6th Duke of Rutland in the 1870s, advertising pioneer Arthur Greenly in the 1920s, and an Assistant Judge Advocate General in the 1960s.
From the early 1970s it was home to Myles Cooke, a former MI6 officer, and his wife Sandra but the marriage ended in divorce. She owned the house for more than 35 years, in the meantime meeting her future husband at Harrod's Food Hall one day in 1985. Her fellow shopper was the film director Sir David Lean, who was buying grapes. Lean had just scored a significant triumph with A Passage to India. She became his sixth and last wife.