The area around Liverpool Street station is a grinding jam of skyscrapers, fast-food joints and speed-walking banker types jostling for pavement space with teenaged tourists. But in the heart of all of this, at 18 Folgate Street, there’s a small oasis of stillness.
Photo from www.coolhunting.co.uk
Dennis Severs House is part social history museum, part theatre piece. The late Mr Severs turned his house into a time capsule: a family home through the 18th and 19th centuries. Walking through the ten candle-lit rooms, you’re asked to imagine that the occupants have only just left – much like a land-locked Mary Celeste. In the basement kitchen piles of vegetables lie half-chopped, and upstairs the lady of the house’s unread letters await her return.
In each room’s snapshot of daily life you’re encouraged to look for the “still life drama”; in the chipped Staffordshire tableware, the well-thumbed playing cards and the quill-penned invitations to dine. As you climb to the higher floors, there’s the slow realisation that the house’s time is moving with you, showing the owners’ fortunes changing over 200 years.
You’re asked not to speak throughout your visit and at first this feels strange. It’s a lovely way to explore, though, and you can daydream your own stories about the occupants in the warm silence.
The house is open throughout the year but really comes in to its own at Christmas, when it’s transformed by period decorations and fills with the smell of oranges and cloves. Also on offer are carols by candlelight – check the website for details.
Dennis Severs House, 18 Folgate Street, London E1 6BX
Cost when we visited: £10 each on a Sunday afternoon (visits are priced differently at other times)
Nearest tube / overground: Liverpool Street
Gonerby 