Number 18 Mansfield Street (previously number 3) is on the east side of the street, the penultimate house at the southern end. The lease was taken by the carpenter and builder, John Hobcraft (c1720-1802). Hobcraft worked with the Adam brothers at Croome Court, Worcestershire, and was doubtless one of the builders working on Mansfield Street. Moreover, Hobcraft was a subscriber to Robert Adam's Ruins of the palace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalatro in Dalmatia (1764).

In 1774 the lease was purchased by Thomas Bermingham, 19th Baron Athery (1717-99), who was created Earl of Louth (of the second creation) in 1777.

Number 18 is one of the surviving houses, although a nineteenth-century Doric entrance has been added. Adam's ante room and drawing room ceilings survive in situ, as well as his ornamentation to the stairwell, including Adam's original anthemion ironwork balustrade. Moreover, there are eighteenth-century Adam-style ceilings surviving in the ground-floor rooms of this house, and although there are no drawings for these ceilings, it is likely that they were also designed by Adam.

All of the houses on the east side of the street were purchased after the Second World War by the British Employers Confederation, and remained their headquarters until 1997. In 1998 a 150-year lease was acquired for all four buildings from the Howard de Walden estate by a developer who separated the houses, and sold the leases individually. The house is now divided into one office and two private residences.

Literature:
See Mansfield Street scheme notes.

Frances Sands, 2013

Sub-scheme

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