Bloxam describes the house
Dracula, Chapter 20
“It was only a few doors from a big white church or somethink of the kind, not long built.”
“It’s a ’igh ’un with a stone front with a bow on it, an’ ’igh steps up to the door.”
resources
Where was Dracula’s London house?
Nobody knows exactly which London house Bram had in mind for Count Dracula. The novel gives the address as “No. 347, Piccadilly”, a number that has not been matched to a real house. Several buildings facing Green Park have been proposed instead. No. 138 has the best-known attribution; Nos. 107 and 128 offer other possibilities. Each has something in its favour, but no document yet examined shows Bram choosing any of them.
As with Castle Dracula, it helps to separate two questions: where does the story put the house, and where might Bram have found its appearance? He could have borrowed details from more than one building. We present the different arguments below without treating a proposed identification as a settled fact.
What the novel tells us
In Chapter 20, Jonathan Harker follows the trail of nine boxes of earth brought from Carfax to Piccadilly. The carter, Sam Bloxam, remembers a tall house with a stone front, a bow and high steps. Harker gets out of his cab at Piccadilly Circus, walks west and finds the house beyond the Junior Constitutional Club. Dusty windows, closed shutters and the remains of a sale board make it look long unoccupied.
The estate agents Mitchell, Sons & Candy tell him that the executors of Archibald Winter-Suffield sold the mansion to Count de Ville, who paid in banknotes. On 3 October the hunters enter it and find eight of the nine boxes. Dracula returns, escapes through the back and reaches the mews. The address belongs to the fiction; the surrounding streets are real.
The clues in Bram’s words
Harker walks west
Dracula, Chapter 20
“At Piccadilly Circus I discharged my cab, and walked westward; beyond the Junior Constitutional I came across the house described.”
The balcony, entrance steps and railings add clues. So does the back of the building: a dining room behind the hall, a lower flagged area, steps, a stable opposite and a way out into the mews. That complete escape route may be a better test than a bow window alone.
A church or a club?
The Junior Constitutional Club stood at 101–104 Piccadilly. Its new building, dating from 1890, had a pale marble and Portland-stone frontage. Bloxam’s uncertain “church or somethink of the kind” could describe it. If so, his “few doors” would favour a house close by. This is an interpretation, however: Bram never says the church and the club are the same building.
That qualification matters. Harker’s word “beyond” tells us which way he went, but does not say how far. No. 138 is much further west than No. 107. Its distance is a stronger objection if the supposed church really is the club.
Reading 1: 138 Piccadilly
The identification of No. 138 is attributed in later accounts to Bernard Davies, co-founder of the Dracula Society. The house faces Green Park and has several features readers recognise from the novel: a stone front, projecting bay and first-floor iron balcony. Historic England records that it was remodelled and refaced in 1891. These are real architectural correspondences, although they do not establish Bram’s intention.
The strength of this reading is the combination of visible features and an established history of attribution. Its difficulties are the distance from the club and the unverified entrance and escape route. Descriptions of the older Queensberry mansion must also be kept separate from the building as it appeared after the 1891 alterations.
Davies’s own explanation remains an important missing source in this research. Hans Corneel de Roos repeats the attribution in a 2018 essay, but another repetition is not independent proof. Reports of an earlier 1973 proposal by Art Ronnie also need checking against the original article.
Reading 2: 107 Piccadilly
No. 107, occupied by the Savile Club in Bram’s period, is much closer to the Junior Constitutional Club. An alternative proposed in a reader’s comment on Exploring London makes this proximity central to its case. A later description in London: An Intimate Picture mentions its yellow exterior and bay window, giving a useful lead for further architectural research.
The Rothschild Archive records the house’s ownership by the Rothschild family and its passage through Hannah de Rothschild to the Rosebery family. Those facts help establish its history, but a resemblance between the fictional owner’s name and Lord Rosebery’s does not establish a deliberate allusion.
The house was an occupied club, whereas Bram describes an empty mansion. That is a difficulty for a literal identification, but would not prevent Bram borrowing its appearance. Historic photographs and plans are needed to test the steps, balcony and rear stable arrangement. The building no longer survives.
Reading 3: 128 Piccadilly
Lester Hillman, writing for the Friends of the Intelligence Corps Museum, tentatively suggests No. 128, now the RAF Club. Its stone frontage and projecting bays make it worth comparing. Historic England dates the work to 1888 and says the building, together with the western part of No. 127, originally formed three private mansions. Today’s address should therefore not be treated as one unchanged Victorian house.
The RAF Club’s history records the acquisition of No. 128 and separate premises at No. 6 Park Lane containing livery yards and carriage stables. This establishes nearby stabling, but not the exact connection Bram describes. A 1919 photograph in the Historic England Archive, reference BL24625, offers a useful earlier view of the entrance and frontage.
This reading needs a more precise match between an original mansion and its rear access. It is a possibility to investigate, not evidence that Bram selected the RAF Club building.
A family theory: shifting the digits
Richard, a great-great-grandson of Bram Stoker who, like Stoker, has a mathematical background, has suggested a way the number 347 could have been made to disguise 138. Each digit of 138 moves by a small step:
| Digit | actual | Shift | disguised |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hundreds | 1 | up 2 | 3 |
| Tens | 3 | up 1 | 4 |
| Units | 8 | down 1 | 7 |
Up 2, up 1 and down 1 would be a simple way of changing a number
Another analogy would be a combination lock: turn the first dial two places up, the second one place up and the third one place down, and 138 becomes 347.
The idea fits what is known of Stoker, who studied mathematics at Trinity College Dublin, and it would explain why the invented number is not random. It is a hypothesis from the family, not a documented one. No letter, note or manuscript found so far says that Stoker disguised the address this way, and any three-digit number can be reached from another by some set of small steps, so the theory is best read as a suggestion that happens to fit 138, not as evidence for it.
The arguments are reported secondhand here. Davies's own account was not found in a primary source.
Why the argument continues
There are three distinct possibilities. Bram may have described one particular house while disguising its number. He may have combined the position of one house with the appearance of another. Or he may have invented a convincing Piccadilly mansion from familiar features. The surviving evidence examined so far does not decide between them.
The fictional address is not a reliable measuring tool. Piccadilly uses consecutive numbering along one side and back along the other, rather than a simple odd-and-even division. Historical renumbering must be checked locally and by date; an earlier change elsewhere on the street does not prove that every candidate had a different number in the 1890s.
The novel itself also contains small inconsistencies. The agents’ letter is dated 1 October although Harker’s enquiry is narrated on 2 October. Such a discrepancy does not invalidate all the geographical clues, but it cautions against assuming that every detail is part of an exact code.
Mina, Harker and the jeweller
The house is not the Count’s first appearance on this street. In Chapter 13, Mina and Jonathan take a bus to Hyde Park Corner and walk along Piccadilly. Near the jeweller’s shop, Jonathan recognises Dracula watching a young woman. Carlo Giuliano’s shop was at 115 Piccadilly; the name appears as “Guiliano’s” in commonly used transcriptions. This is a separate scene from the later discovery of the house.
Van Helsing’s Berkeley Hotel supplies another real-world anchor. The original hotel stood at the corner of Berkeley Street and Piccadilly. The present Berkeley in Knightsbridge is a later location. Our London walk links the candidate houses, the London Library, the jeweller’s former site and the original hotel corner.
What would strengthen the case?
We would give most weight to a note or letter in which Bram identifies a building; a dated plan matching the whole escape route; or an early, clearly sourced explanation of the identification. Modern resemblance and interesting neighbours are useful starting points, but weaker evidence of intention.
The next checks are the published facsimile of Bram’s working notes, Davies’s original account, contemporary directories and large-scale maps. Plans should be checked against the relevant date, especially where houses were refaced, combined or demolished. The Estate’s present view is that all three proposals deserve examination, while none has been demonstrated.
Research updated 30 October 2026. This account remains open to additional documentary evidence.
Reference documents and further reading
- Bram Stoker, Dracula, especially Chapters 13, 20, 22 and 23. Quotations above follow the public-domain text; punctuation and spelling differ between editions.
- Historic England: 138 Piccadilly; 128 Piccadilly; 1919 photograph of No. 128.
- Exploring London (2017), including the reader’s alternative proposal; Lester Hillman, “Chicksanguine”; Ian Farrington, “Dracula’s London: Piccadilly” (2025). These are accounts and interpretations, not statements by Bram.
- Hans Corneel de Roos, “Dracula’s Best-Kept Secret” (2018), for the Davies attribution; the underlying reference remains to be followed up.
- Robert Eighteen-Bisang and Elizabeth Miller, eds., Bram Stoker’s Notes for Dracula: A Facsimile Edition (2008). The notes survive at the Rosenbach; the facsimile has not yet been fully examined for this enquiry.
- Visit the Piccadilly stop on the London walking tour or continue with Where is Castle Dracula?.