Leicester House was a large aristocratic townhouse in Westminster, London, to the north of where Leicester Square now is. Built by the Earl of Leicester and completed in 1635, it was later occupied by Elizabeth Stuart, a British princess and former Queen of Bohemia, and in the 1700s by the two successive Hanoverian princes of Wales.

In British usage, the term townhouse originally referred to the opulent town or city residence of a member of the nobility or gentry, as opposed to their country seat, generally known as a country house or, colloquially, for the larger ones, stately home. The grandest of the London townhouses were stand-alone buildings, but many were terraced buildings.