5, St Martins East

5 St Martins East is a house that has been converted into offices. It dates from the early 18th century and is constructed of red brick with a slate roof featuring gable ends. The building has a high plinth and a moulded brick eaves cornice, along with a brick and stucco band. It stands three storeys tall and has three windows with segmental brick arches, sashes with glazing bars, and flush casings. The entrance features an impressive wooden doorcase with fluted pilasters, deeply carved brackets depicting foliage and cherub's heads, a moulded segmental pediment, a rectangular fanlight, and a fielded-panel door.

At the rear, there is a wing from the mid 19th century that includes a flat-roofed lobby connecting to a high single-storey Conference Room, which was likely originally a teaching room for a Dancing Academy. This room is built of brick with buttresses and has a slate roof with an end stack. It features two 4-light windows on the north side, along with a further blocked window.

Inside the Conference Room, there is an openwork wooden roof, currently partly concealed, consisting of two principal-rafter trusses set on moulded corbels with arch braces to collars. Above the present suspended ceiling are two butt-purlin collar beam trusses with ogee braces and turned central king posts. The underside of the roof is lined with match-boarding. The room also has a dado rail with match-board panelling below and a 19th-century fireplace.

Historically, during the 19th century, this house was occupied by two teachers of dancing: Charles Smart from 1864 to 1870 and Morris Barnett from 1870 to 1899. The mid-19th-century Conference Room suggests it was purpose-built for a Dancing Academy, making it a very unusual survival.

5 St Martins East forms a group with Nos 3 and 7 and is located near St Martin's Cathedral Guildhall Lane.