Restoration dramatist Thomas Southerne lived in an earlier house on this site from 1704.  Southerne was intimate with many of his literary contemporaries, including Dryden, Swift and Pope, and achieved considerable financial success with plays such as 'The Fatal Marriage'.  A century later the street had declined in prosperity and the house became a butcher's shop.

The present house was built in an imposing late Victorian style in 1888 as part of a general smartening up of the street and conversion of many of the houses to offices.  Adams & Co, manufacturers of bathroom products, were the first tenants, producing iconic Art Deco-inspired designs.  Near neighbours have included a Foreign Secretary in the 1930s, the Beaverbrook Foundation, the Labour Party headquarters, the Spectator and the Embassy of Chile.