Museums

Dennis Severs' House

Ten candlelit rooms left as if a family of Huguenot silk weavers had just walked out of them, which they never did, because Dennis Severs invented them.

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Dennis Severs, an American who bought the derelict house in 1979 and lived in it by candlelight, spent twenty years turning it into what he called a still-life drama: the home of the Jervises, an imagined family of Huguenot silk weavers, followed from 1724 to 1914 room by room, with the bread half cut, the fire lit and the family always just out of sight. You go round in silence, by day or by candlelight, and are asked to look rather than read; there are no labels. Severs left the house to the Spitalfields Trust when he died in 1999, and it is kept as he set it.

Where

18 Folgate Street, E1 6BX

Nearest station

Shoreditch High Street · 4 min walk

Hours

Hours from the page that lists them, checked 6 September 2026.

Timed, booked visits of 45 minutes: day visits Friday to Sunday from 12:00, last entry 15:15, £16; candlelit Silent Night visits, £25, and the actor-led Dennis Severs' Tour, £75, on the evenings the calendar shows. No photography inside.

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