AWCH London: English Light at 18 Folgate Street

You may well think twice before planning a trip to London in view of the recent terrible events there, but if and when you decide to visit this fascinating city I can recommend an intriguing building to explore.

When I was living in Connecticut in the eighties an article in House Beautiful magazine piqued my interest. This article described a derelict house in London, which had been rescued by a Californian visionary named Dennis Severs, and almost twenty years later I finally got to see his creation.

At the age of eleven, Mr. Severs was captivated by what he called” English Light,” which seems strange when one considers the intensity of the sun he must have experienced in Southern California. At fifteen he decided to save up and discover this light at firsthand and within five days of graduating from high school that is what he did.

Two years later the young man had acquired a horse-drawn carriage, drove visitors to London’s quiet squares and told them stories about Britain’s social history. When he wasn’t working he scoured early morning antique markets and salerooms for antiques which he could weave stories around. It was inevitable that he’d buy a piece of the past in the form of a rundown house desperately in need of renovation, and not surprising that he’d move in with only “a candle, a chamber pot and a bedroll.” And, of course, he’d sleep in all of the ten rooms to savour the atmosphere of each.

The house he bought in Folgate Street is in an area of London called Spitalfields. It’s a popular place to live in today, because it’s close to the banking district. In Victorian times, however, it was the haunt of Jack the Ripper, and a century earlier it was home to Huguenot silk weavers who were forced out of their native France. Today, when you step out of Liverpool Street Station and look up at the skyscrapers and office blocks, you wonder how a pretty street from two hundred years ago has managed to escape the demolition ball.

Mr. Severs invented an imaginary family of silk weavers for his house and set about furnishing it as he felt they might have done. He went one or two steps further by adding the sounds and smells of the time and by creating the illusion that a family member has just left the room you are about to enter. This means that a bed has not been made and a (real) cat may be snoozing comfortably on the sheets; there’s an upturned chair and broken china after a mishap with a cup of tea. As time passed, Mr Severs decided that his family fell on hard times and he has furnished the top floor to show their straitened circumstances. It was December when I visited the house and a recording of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” was playing in the bedroom and underscored the bleakness of life for the poor in the season of festivity.

Visiting the house is like stepping through the frame of an Old Master painting and gaining a feeling of everyday life in the Eighteenth century. Mr. Severs spent twenty years creating his time capsule and you can’t fail to be captivated by it. If you wish to visit 18 Folgate Street I suggest you check the website for the house at www.dennissevershouse.co.uk and find out when it’s open. Times vary with the light of the season, as you’d expect in a house lit only by candles. It’s not a place for children and you are asked not to talk as you look around. Mr. Severs wanted to give visitors the unforgettable experience of losing themselves in an earlier world. In my opinion, he’s done exactly that and I’d love you to discover that world too.