Part of a glorious terrace of Italianate villas by Henry Bassett, this house was built c.1842 and home to several merchants and a small school in the mid-19th century. Poor Mrs. Charles Dickens spent the last twenty years of her life opposite after separating from her husband - when she left, never to see her husband again, she was allowed to take with her only their eldest child.
In the 20th century neighbours included Walter Sickert, a prominent member of the Camden Town group of painters, who also took a keen interest in the Jack the Ripper case. From the early 1960s the crescent became a celebrated nerve-centre for liberal intellectuals, artists, writers and journalists. These included Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennett (and 'the lady in the van'), Claire Tomalin, Ursula Vaughan Williams and jazz musician George Melly.