Researching this address unexpectedly turned up two terrific items.
Firstly, the 1932 Wakefield High School Magazine. In the list of members (old girls, presumably) we find: "Hemingway, Maisie, Norcutt House, 35 Dorset Square, London, NW1." That would seem to confirm that the house was still a single family residence in 1932 and that it had already acquired the name Notcutt House.
And at the IWM we found this lovely watercolour of Dorset Square, with the tower of Marylebone Town Hall visible through the gap, painted by Charles J. Bathurst. The property is not there identified but the view of the tower indicates that it is the bombed house on the south side of Dorset Square. Initially we assumed this was number 35, where the plaque is but (see the 2024 paragraph below) it is actually number 38, where the plaque should be.
The painting shows that the opening which would have originally been the door, had been converted to a window, so prior to the bombing the house had been merged in some way with one of its neighbouring houses.
Looking at the terrace today there are some tell-tale missing front doors, on either side of the door with the plaque, numbers 34 and 36. And the view of the roof does suggest that these 3 properties might now all be one. Then we found this 2020 planning application: actually 35-38 are all one property now, converted into flats.
2024: Johan van der Merwe, member of the St Marylebone Society Council and a member of the Planning Sub-Committee, kindly contacted us. He wrote: “The Charles J Bathurst painting, is in fact of 38 Dorset Square and not 35. I have seen the painting in the IWM, and it is very personal to me as I live in what is now 37-38. Number 38 is the part that was completely destroyed. Notcutt House is 35-38 Dorset Square, and was laterally converted when rebuilt in 1950. I am an interior designer and was partly responsible with Gaby Higgs, RIBA Architect for the supporting documents for the Planning Application. The front door to 37-38 was re-instated in the same position as the original door.”
