174 AND 176, EAST HILL, SW18

Nos. 174 and 176 on East Hill is a large house built around 1736, with some windows altered in the late 19th century. It is constructed of stock brick with red brick dressings and features a slate roof with four hips at the rear. The building has three storeys and cellars, with five windows on the front and six on the rear. There are bands between the floors and a deep band at the parapet. The windows have red gauged flat arches and dressings, and they are late 19th-century sashes with horns but no vertical glazing bars. The front has red quoins and a central wooden doorcase with Doric engaged columns, triglyphs, and a pediment, along with a deep fielded six-panelled door.

The rear elevation retains early 18th-century windows on the right side with thick glazing bars, as well as an early 19th-century curved three-light bay with thinner glazing bars. The interior largely preserves its early 18th-century features, including a stone floor and panelling in the hall and principal rooms on the first floor, doors, cupboards, and various fittings, as well as moulded timber and plaster cornices, shutters, and some bolection moulded fire surrounds. The upper flights of the contemporary staircase, featuring a moulded handrail and turned balusters, are also intact. The first known occupant, recorded in Vestry Minutes from 1772, was William Vander Esche Esquire. In the early 19th century, the house was used as a boarding school for young ladies. This property is one of the earliest and best-preserved examples of middling-sized houses built by wealthy Huguenot or Dutch immigrant families in Wandsworth and Putney during the early 18th century.