This brick house frontage was possibly built by or for Edward Helder, a bricklayer (d. 1672), after the designs of Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723).

It formed part of the school-house in which the poet John Keats received the greater part of his education (about 1803-1810). At a later date the building became part of Enfield Railway Station. The station was demolished in 1872; the façade however was saved, and originally purchased for the Structural Collection of the Science Museum, then part of the South Kensington Museum.

The acquisition of the façade is recorded in a contemporary publication about Enfield by Edward Ford. He noted: '...it was taken down brick by brick, with the greatest care, all being numbered and packed in boxes of sawdust for carriage. Nothing could exceed the beauty of the workmanship, the bricks having been ground down to a perfect face, and joined with bee-wax and rosin, nor mortar or lime being used. In this manner the whole front has been first built in a solid block, the circular-headed niches, with their carved cherubs and festoons of fruit and foliage, being afterwards cut out with the chisel....'

Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723) was a designer, astronomer, geometer and one of Britain's greatest architects. He designed 53 churches in London, including St. Paul's Cathedral, and many other secular buildings, for example the Greenwich Naval Hospital. He was a founder of the Royal Society, and its President from (1680-82). He also carried out scientific research, and was a respected colleague of both Sir Isaac Newton and Blaise Pascal.