James Sowerby house Mead Place 

‘Continuing down Surrey Street and turning right along Westminster Bridge Road took him [Mr Loudon] to No. 2 Mead Place. He knocked on the door and a servant opened it.

“Is Mr Sowerby at home?”

“Who shall I say is calling?”

“Mr Loudon, with a letter of introduction from Dr Coventry.”

The servant returned to say “Mr Sowerby will see you in the museum, please follow me.” This is a quote from The Claudians: gardens, landscapes, reason and faith: John Claudius Loudon and Claudius Buchanan, Tom Turner (Kindle, 2024).

More about James Sowerby (1757-1822) 

Sowerby was a prominent British naturalist and natural history illustrator. He lived and worked at No. 2 Mead Place, Lambeth for over 40 years. The house was a wedding gift from his wife’s father. c1796, Sowerby constructed a museum in the garden to house his natural history collections. The house was destroyed by bombing in the Second World War.

In her Life of her husband Jane Loudon wrote that 'In 1803 he first arrived in London. The following day he called on Mr. Sowerby, Mead Place, Lambeth, who was the first gentleman he visited in England; and he was exceedingly delighted with the models and mineralogical specimens, which were so admirably arranged as to give him the greatest satisfaction from his innate love of order; and he afterwards devised a plan for his own books and papers, partly founded on that of Mr. Sowerby, but much more complete.' Architecturally, James Sowerby's Mead Place home in Lambeth compares to Chapel Street, where Loudon lived at that time.