WORD OF MOUTH SECRET CITY
Time travel DENNIS SEVERS’ HOUSE SHELTERS AN ARTIST’S VISION AND A LIVING TESTAMENT TO LONDON’S PAST
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IMAGE | KATHERINE JACK
alking down Folgate Street to number 18, I approach an early Georgian townhouse with striking red shutters, a black door and a heavy knocker. As I walk inside, logs crackle in the fireplace and a black kitten climbs onto the windowsill. I wander up the creaking staircase into the master bedroom and as I take in the rumpled bed sheets and half-eaten boiled egg with an unfinished cup of coffee, I have the distinct feeling that I had intruded on somebody’s breakfast. Dennis Severs was a Californian artist who moved to London in the 1970s. He bought 18 Folgate Street in 1979, a time when East London had become a bohemian enclave, and turned the house into what he described as “a still life drama”. Historical accuracy was not his goal, but instead recreating a sense of time. “Inside that frame is where I live and taking people in there is how I make my living,” he would say.
The house, as Severs would explain, is the setting for “an adventure of the imagination”. Silence is a rule. As I quietly wander from room to room, everything that I see, hear or smell encourages me to believe that its 18th Century residents are close by. Far from any museum experience, the house feels alive and lived-in; Severs himself stayed there for 20 years living without modern conveniences. Spitalfields is located at the heart of the fashionable East End of London. Over hundreds of years, the area has continually re-invented itself as waves of migrants arrived from different parts of the world. In the 17th Century, Huguenots fled France and came to live here. Among them was a family of silkweavers called Jervis. At 18 Folgate Street, Severs created a fictional re-enactment for this family in meticulous detail. The ten rooms in the house take visitors from 1724 to 1914, accompanied by different generations of the Jervis family. Around Mrs
Jervis’ bedroom are her personal belongings – elegantly handwritten notes, lead powder for whitening her face and a dress marked at the waist “take in here”. In contrast to the earlier, more affluent 18th Century rooms below, the attic feels cold and impoverished. In Victorian times a change in fashion meant that the silk trade was near collapse. While Mr and Mrs Jervis’ bedroom has a delicious scent of orange-cloves, the attic stinks of rotting vegetables. On my way downstairs I have to be careful not to trip over the children’s toys, lying as if they had been abandoned upon my approach. I notice that some passers-by have stopped to peer in through the window, delighted by the magical interior they have chanced upon. “Everyone’s reaction to the house is different,” says Mick Pedroli, the house manager. “If someone is not talkative afterwards, I know that the experience has moved them.” WWW.DENNISSEVERSHOUSE.CO.UK
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