Dennis Severs’ House
Nestled away on 18 Folgate Street, Spittalfields, is a place known as Dennis Severs’ House. It’s a building which contains within its traditional terraced walls various rooms charting the course of one family’s life from the 1700s through to late 1800s, and prides itself on not being a traditional museum, but rather a sort of still life drama, in which every room has the feeling of having just been vacated. This can occasionally be annoying – a lack of information coupled with occasional notes telling the viewer to ‘feel’ the past grates after a while – but mostly, it’s a strange, interesting and entirely engaging wander through history, including the sounds and smells of the past, and I recommend it! You have to book to visit in advance, and there is nothing to mark it out from anything around it except the address and perhaps the silhouette of a 18th century lady in the window above…
