a fashionable home for the budding lawyer and his family

London, the City ca 1576. 

- In 1522 Thomas Cromwell and his young family moved into their new home at Broad Street, a house located against the gates of the Catholic priory of Austin Friars.
By all accounts it was a friendly household where Thomas could host small parties and also
discuss business over dinner.
The house was gradually enlarged as his prestige and influence in the King's court developed. 

Here he entertained his acquaintances of merchants, officials, reformers and creative intellectuals.
An affluent neighbourhood surrounded him with nearby tenements leased to wealthy Italian merchants, Ambassador Eustace Chapuys, and even Erasmus (who eventually moved out without paying his rent.)

Thomas retained the church and bishopric in the adjoining premises, i.e., where the ancient friary had first been established in the 1200s.

From 'Wolf Hall'. Elizabeth Cromwell (Natasha Little) with
                                                          Anne and Grace, at Austin Friars.         [BBC-2/PBS]                                                                                     

Austin Friars is situated within the ancient London wall and although the home would later be lost after Cromwell's spectacular fall from grace in 1540, it was a remarkable achievement for a man who had risen from the obscurity of his parent's house at Putney, several miles to the southwest in Wimbledon Manor.
That dwelling and his early life were a universe away from St James Palace and Westminster, and a son of a ne'er-do-well alehouse proprietor could not have made this astonishing leap into the City without first taking himself to the Continent. From the age of about nineteen he would spend some nine years in Europe in various roles including as a mercenary in Italy, an agent of a wealthy Florentine banker, and as a thriving wool merchant in Antwerp. When Thomas returned to England he personified the Age of the Renaissance.

                                       [present-day City of London. Copyright Google Images]

Sources:
- Beckingsale, B.W. Thomas Cromwell, Tudor Minister. London: The Macmillan Press Ltd,  1978. pp. 5-7.
- Loades, D. Thomas Cromwell: Servant to Henry VIII. Gloucestershire: Amberley              Publishing, 2014. p. 47.
- Patton, M. 'The Wards of Old London: Broad Street - Thomas Cromwell and his Neighbours', July 31st, 2016.                http://mark-patton.blogspot.com.au/2016/07/the-wards-of-old-london-broad-street.html