Tiniest house has a large back story
THE teeny-tiny house located on 10 Hyde Park Place, is a measly threefoot-wide. Looking at it, you might be wondering why someone would build a house so small.
And no, it wasn’t the fault of the housing crisis. The miniature home was built between two mansion blocks, with the earliest mention of the house we can find in a newspaper clipping from 1904.
Although it is believed to have been originally built to stop grave robbers from being able to enter St George’s graveyard at night, many argue it was used to simply house servants as it was sold at least once as an adjunct to the neighbouring mansion.
The 1904 news report notes that
London bus drivers would point out the house as the smallest in the city to passengers. During this time, it was not inhabited.
During 1913, the house was sold for £9,250 at an auction, which would set you back around £1,074,362 in today’s money, an extortionate figure for something so small. It is suspected that the auction price did include one of the neighbouring mansions but that it wasn’t reported on.
The property, which sat vacant for 15 years – was again, up for sale in 1933. Inside the house, it contained two rooms connected by a ladder. The upper room also featured a partition, so that you could pretend it had two bedrooms.
An old wife’s tale left the house being dubbed the ‘Dwarf ’s dream house’ after the story of a dwarf with a red face and long beard supposedly ‘ran out every night on the stroke of midnight and played by himself in Broad Walk’. We can only hope this wasn’t true.
Following the Second World War, the house was incorporated into the neighbouring Tyburn Convent which was founded in 1901 and still stands today. The convent may be minutes away from the city centre, but the nuns inside never leave.
In recent years the house underwent construction and now features a red brick exterior to match the convent. The tiny house is still in use today as the clergy house for the priest who runs the convent.
Although we were not invited in to have a cup of tea and a nosey around the house, we do hope they refurbished the inside for him.