No. 17 and No. 19 Egerton Terrace now stand on what was part of an 84-acre parcel of land left in trust in 1627 by Henry Smith, Alderman of the City of London, ‘for the relief and ransom of poor captives being slaves under Turkish pirates’. The site was either very close to, or formed part of, The Grange, a large mansion Constructed in the later 18th century by Polish architect Michael Novosielski. On his death it was acquired by the celebrated tenor, John Braham [1774c-1856], who ruined himself through disastrous theatrical speculation. The houses of Egerton Terrace first begin to appear in the Court guides in the early 1820s. No. 17 first features in Boyle’s Court Guide in 1824 when it is shown in the occupancy of Philip Edwards, a gentleman of private means, who remained here until about 1832. It then passed to Thomas Purvis Q.C., who commuted each working day, almost certainly by private carriage, between this house and his chambers in Bloomsbury. By 1851 the house was occupied Christopher Preston, a 61-year-old ‘annuitant’. About 1855 it passed to Charles Adam Woolley, a prosperous cab proprietor or ‘jobmaster’ who rented his horse drawn carriages out to drivers by the day.