This pair of houses in the heart of old Chelsea date from around 1690 and were at first occupied as a single dwelling, with neighbours such as the Duchess of Monmouth and Tobias Smollett.  But from the 1830s the house was sub-let to several households, culminating in its being combined with the property adjoining as a sixpence-a-night doss-house.  The number of lodgers frequently totalled 100 living in squalid conditions scarcely better than those at the workhouse.  Doss-houses often provided a three-relay system in which lodgers shared a bed in three eight-hour shifts.

Residents in the 1920s included an intrepid young actress who set off alone to British Guiana where she spent six months in the jungle living among the Mazaruni Indians digging for diamonds.  Later occupants of the house were the journalist and novelist Philip Jordan and Lady Galway.

Built mainly in the 1840s on the site of nursery gardens, this street 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 included an organist and composer of sacred music, a Canadian merchant and politician, and architect T. Marsh Nelson who designed the layouts of Westbourne and Gloucester Terraces in Bayswater.

After the Second World War the house was bought by art dealer Geoffrey Houghton Brown who shared it for a year with flamboyant decorator Ronald Fleming and architectural historian James Lees-Milne.  In the late 1940s it became home to author Joyce Maxtone Graham who under her pen name Jan Struther created the enormously popular 'Mrs. Miniver'.  Neighbours in the 1990s included Anthony Hopkins.

This house dating from c.1861 originally served as the coach house and stables to the property adjoining it.  It was altered and enlarged at various times, most notably in 1928 by Sir Edwin Lutyens for Sir Roderick Jones, the chairman of Reuters, and his wife the author Enid Bagnold.  The large drawing room created at garden level out of the coach house and outbuildings was used to entertain diverse foreign dignatories, such as the Moslem leader Jinnah and the Maharaja of Alwar.  The latter caused a considerable flurry by enquiring in advance whether there would be meat or meat-based sauces, leather-seated chairs, curtains which might conceal an assassin, or cats to which he was allergic.  Other guests included H.G. Wells, Harold Nicolson, Margot Asquith, Bernard Shaw and Joachim von Ribbentrop.

Built in c.1789 this terrace was one of the first to be erected in the magnificent Camberwell Grove - later described by Ruskin as 'beautiful in perspective as an unprecedently long-drawn aisle'.  The house soon became home to a Southwark distiller's widow and later a stockbroker.  The next resident, a tea dealer, was to start the house's association with tea for nearly eighty years.  It remained in the ownership of a local cheesemonger for nearly seventy years from 1893, during which time the Grove declined in prosperity.  A certain variety of family life, taking the form of tightly-knit groups living together as tenants - such as at this house - became a prominent feature.  The gradual gentrification of the Grove from the late 1950s started with the arrival of predominantly youthful, professional people who were attracted here by the fine - if dilapidated houses - at bargain prices.  Many of these newcomers were faced with daunting restoration projects.

This mews house built in c.1880 to service a large property in Cadogan Square was originally much smaller.  Space was at a premium and every inch was needed on the ground floor for the coach house, stalls and loose box, harness room, grain bins and WC, as well as the stairs to the upper quarters of the coachman and his family and the groom.  The Irish fantasy writer Lord Dunsany accommodated his cars and chauffeur here from 1922 until the Second World War.  In spite of the dangers at their Irish castle during the troubles - which included having a finger shot off at a road-block during the Easter Rising - the chauffeur worked for the Dunsanys at their various homes for over forty years.  The house was later used as garages by anthropologist Captain George Pitt-Rivers, and as an office for the managers of the Great Britain men's hockey team - winners of Olympic gold at Seoul in 1988.

This terrace was built in c.1859 on the old glebe lands owned by the vicars of St. Mary Abbots since 1260.  The first tenant of the house was Henry O'Neil, one of the most celebrated historical genre painters of the day, whose painting Eastward Ho! had recently drawn huge crowds at the Royal Academy.  A later resident was sculptress Emily Addis Fawcett.  Lyricist Peter Mulroney lived here from 1938.  He took in a young refugee from Nazi Austria - Edward Kassner - and together they set up Mayfair Music.  Kassner went on to establish The Edward Kassner Music Company and published a string of hits, such as Rock Around the Clock which became a global sensation.

Neighbours included writers and artists, such as Max Beerbohm and Wyndham Lewis, and intrepid foreign correspondent Murray Sayle.

This riverside house built in 1759 was part of a small terrace originally known as Bowling Green Row.  An early resident was a coal merchant who leased the bustling wharf opposite where barges unloaded their cargoes of coal and ice.

The river, which swept in a broad bend across the lane from the terrace and the unique light which emanated from it, later attracted painters such as Joseph Turner, James McNeill Whistler and Philip Wilson Steer to neighbouring houses.  For nearly forty years John Tweed - 'sculptor of the Empire' - lived in this house, where he regularly entertained his closest friend Auguste Rodin.  A later resident was Richard Scott, chairman of The Guardian.

This house was built c.1829 in the newly fashionable district of Tyburnia.  Several interesting 19th century residents were followed in the 1930s by Lord Killanin, who became President of the International Olympic Committee; and subsequently by two well-known amateur golfers.  In 1959 it was bought by Shirley Bassey - a house of her own for the first time - who installed deep-pile red carpeting, a pale pink sunken bath and a doorbell that chimed her hit song As I Love You.  The Philips recording studio nearby later rented the house for some of their artists, including the blues singer Jon Hendricks.  Lady Mary-Gaye Curzon who had been one of the most glamorous debutantes of her day was a resident in the 1970s.  

This house was built in 1933-4 as part of the complete redevelopment of the area into a fashionable district.  It was designed with all the modern conveniences expected in the 1930s, such as an ensuite bathroom to the principal bedroom, a rubbish hatch in the kitchen and a serving hatch through to the dining room.  The top floor landing featured a housemaid's cupboard fitted with an enamel sink.  In 1948 it was the first marital home of the Hon. Wentworth Beaumont, a heroic Spitfire pilot who had been imprisoned in Stalag Luft III, the setting for what was to be immortalised in the cinema as The Great Escape.  As ADC to Lord Mountbatten in India in 1947, Beaumont and his fiancee Sarah (the daughter of General Lord Ismay) experienced a horrific journey to Delhi, where the Muslim passengers were pulled out of the train by their Hindu fellow travellers and butchered in the most brutal manner.  Their servant, hidden under the seat, was the only Muslim to arrive at Delhi.

Neighbours have varied from dapper American publisher Morley Kennerley, poet and diplomat George Seferis, comedian Jack Train and 'Spycatcher' Lieutenant-Colonel Oreste Pinto - to the getaway driver for the Great Train Robbery in 1963.

The Shaftesbury Park Estate was the most publicised and widely discussed housing experiment of its day.  Built between 1872 and 1877, it was the first major development of the Artizans, Labourers and General Dwellings Company, founded by a band of working men and supported by philanthropist Lord Shaftesbury.  The aim of the new estate, promoted as the 'Workmen's City', was not only to create healthy and affordable housing, but also a community spirit by the provision of meeting rooms, schools and open space - but no pubs.

This house, originally a two-up-two-down cottage, soon became a newsagent and tobacconist.  A shopfront was installed and the workshop behind was fitted up as a barber's shop - a common pairing at the time.