Dennis Severs House – A Wonderful Step Back in Time…

Dennis Severs was an artist. He acquired the house back in 1979 and lived there until his death in 1999. On finding the house, he envisioned a family of Huguenot silk weavers living there in the early 18th century and so started creating the house as he felt they would have lived, staging scenes in every room, filling the house with belongings, necessities and playthings of its imagined predecessors. 

He left hints of activity and clues as to what went on behind closed doors – but with every intention of throwing them open for visitors to enjoy.The rules of the house command silence as you walk around, viewing scenes of untold stories, which hint of more. Dennis Severs imagined the house as his canvas and, like a scene in a painting; the things beyond the frame are left to our imagination. This is the ‘art’; the journey in our mind that the house sets us off upon.

If you visit Dennis Severs House, be warned, you will want to come back. The sets – or stories or installations – however you see it – will draw you in like your most intoxicating dreams. If you allow yourself to really look and see the details you might even be lucky enough to feel transported to the very depths of the 18th century. To a warm kitchen filled with delicious treats, a fireplace in the drawing room full of promises of poetry – and stories of adventures past. Or feel the air of desperation in the sparse lodger’s quarters or the taste of hedonism hinted by the rumpled bed sheets and sumptuous dresser of the bedroom with half-drunk glasses of port.

It really is a unique experience to come here, switch off from the outside world and step inside a new time zone and let someone else’s imagination tap into yours…..