Built in the early 1840s on the site of nursery gardens, this house is part of a square designed by George Basevi. The area became highly 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.
Early tenants of the house included a Major-General and an Admiral, and another in 1868 whose caretaker - a music hall actress - comprehensively stripped the house when it was left in her care. She was arrested wearing one of her mistress's best silk dresses. During the 1960s the house was owned by the diplomat Sir Peter Wakefield and later by Prince and Princess Yuri Galitzine. Wild parties were thrown in a neighbouring house by the flamboyant theatre critic Kenneth Tynan, whose guests regularly included John Lennon, Germaine Greer, Vanessa Redgrave and Roman Polanski. One evening Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon watched risque movies there with Harold Pinter and Peter Cook.