Dennis Severs' House

Few museums tickle the senses as much as this townhouse near the City. Designed in the 1970s by the late Dennis Severs, an American eccentric, this place panders to the natural voyeur in everyone. The ten rooms of this 18th- century home are the residence of the Jervis family, an imaginary clan of Huguenot silk weavers, who have lived here for five generations. Visitors quietly putter around the candlelit rooms, absorbing the sounds and smells (creaking floorboards, cooking food) of these historical phantoms.

Overturned tea- cups in the parlour; conversations murmuring in the background; half- made beds and half- full chamber pots: the details are unnervingly convincing. What emerges is a three- dimensional sense of Dickensian London. Candle- lit “Silent Night” tours on Mondays are spine- tingling.

Clearly comforted by the company, Severs lived in the house until his death in 1999.

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Contact Information

Dennis Severs' House
18 Folgate St
EC2 London

Tel. +442072474013

http://www.dennissevershouse.co.uk