17-18, Victoria Park Square E2

Pair of houses, now offices (converted 2003). Built circa 1690 with early 19th-century alterations and 20th-century additions. Stock brick with red brick dressings, brick string course at first floor level, and rendered basement. Tiled roof with wooden modillion eaves cornice and early 19th-century dormers. Two storeys with attic and basement.

Exterior: Each house is five windows wide with 19th-century sash windows, recessed and fitted with red brick flat arches and dressings. The entrance doorways have moulded architraves flanked by pilasters with carved and scrolled brackets supporting flat hoods with panelled soffits. The entrance steps to No.17 are flanked by stone balusters; those to No.18 have late 18th-century or early 19th-century ironwork. Ground floor windows of No.17 are protected by 19th-century cast-iron window guards. No.17 has 19th and 20th-century additions to the rear and a 20th-century two-storey extension at the northwest corner. No.18's rear wall was rebuilt and raised with a parapet in the 19th century.

Interior: Both houses retain original interior fittings including full-height staircases with 'barley sugar' turned balusters, heavy moulded ramped handrails and square newels with ball terminals. The stair flights have open strings with carved tread-ends up to the second floor, and closed strings above. There is staircase dado panelling. Full-height panelled rooms occupy the ground and first floors of both houses, with small areas replaced in the late 20th century; some panelling features bolection mouldings, others square-framed. Wooden box cornices are present throughout. No.18 retains several first-floor chimneypieces with deep wooden surrounds and elaborate overmantels decorated with diamond and 'fish scale' motifs. No.17 has several early 19th-century wooden and wide marble fireplaces. A brick-lined well is located in the rear basement room of No.18.

History: Nos.17 and 18 appear to be the 'two adjoining tenements with orchard and garden' referred to in 1690 abstracts of admittance for Stepney. First owned by James Grunwin, the property was bequeathed to Thomas Vickars and William Barwell in 1701. The garden behind was enclosed with a wall and sold to Joseph Blissott, who owned another property in Bethnal Green. Throughout the 18th century, the property was let to successive tenants and remained relatively unchanged in footprint until the later 19th century. In 1887, No.17 was used by the University Club, an Anglican settlement founded in Bethnal Green by theology graduates from Oxford. It was then that the first building, a clubhouse for the Settlement, was constructed on the site of No.16. Nos.16-18 were formerly listed as a single item, with No.16 considered to be a much-altered circa 1690 house.