Step back in time and shock your senses at number 18 Folgate Street in London's Spitalfields. The house's creator was artist Dennis Severs who lived in the house as its inhabitants would have done in the 18th century. He created the fictional Jervis family whose things, including half-eaten meals, chamber pots and discarded clothes fill the house. The tour, conducted in silence, takes visitors back to the period 1724 to 1914 and bombards their senses with the sights, sounds and scents of the era. Tours are only available a few days a month.




Dennis Severs' House is not a museum but a private home that opens to the public as a time capsule to London's past.
American Dennis Severs (1948-99) bought this run-down, unmodernized 18th century house in 1979 and decided not to restore it but to "bring it to life". Spitalfields was quite bohemian at the time with other artists moving in too. Severs lived here, without electricity and other home comforts, while also creating a Huguenot silk weaver's home for Mr Isaac Jervis, his family, and their descendants.