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Sambourne House

The house of Punch's chief cartoonist, kept as his family had it, and one of the most complete Aesthetic interiors anywhere.

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Linley Sambourne drew for Punch for most of his working life and ended as its chief cartoonist, which meant a full-page political drawing every week for decades. He and Marion Herapath married in 1874 and took this house in Kensington shortly afterwards, then decorated it in the manner their generation called the House Beautiful: dark paint, stained glass, blue-and-white china, pictures hung frame to frame, and Morris's Fruit wallpaper.

Almost none of it was changed afterwards, and that is the reason to come. This is not a reconstruction of how a comfortable Victorian family lived. It is what they actually had, still where they put it.

Sambourne worked from photographs rather than from life and took them himself, obsessively, including with a detective camera made to be used without anybody noticing. The cameras and his cyanotypes are in the house. There is a sound installation in the dining room now, which sounds like a gimmick and is not.

Wednesday to Sunday, ticketed, with the last entry an hour before it shuts.

Where
18 Stafford Terrace, W8 7BH
Nearest station
High Street Kensington · 4 min walk

Hours

MondayClosed
TuesdayClosed
Wednesday10:00 – 17:30
Thursday10:00 – 17:30
Friday10:00 – 17:30
Saturday10:00 – 17:30
Sunday10:00 – 17:30

Hours from the page that lists them, checked 18 September 2026.

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