Dennis Severs' House

Walking down Liverpool Street on a bleak February Friday during a particularly gloomy London winter, it can be hard to conjure up any romantic notions about the city.

- INDIA BLOCK

But step away from the thoroughfare of chain restaurants and looming skyscrapers down a side street towards Spitalfields and you could stumble across a portal to the East End of old or at least a fanciful version of it.

Dennis Severs' House is like nothing else in London. Tucked away on Folgate Street, this Grade II-listed Georgian home is testament to the singular vision of its late owner. The young Dennis Severs relocated from sunny California, where his parents Earl and Helen Severs owned a gas station, in pursuit of his dreams of English nostalgia and a new life as an openly gay man.

Following a stint running madcap horse-drawn carriage tours around London, he purchased the run-down terraced house at 16 Folgate Street for £18,000 in 1979 (£140,000 or so in today's money, but still a veritable steal considering a house on the same street went for £2.8 million a few years ago). It was the hip thing to do at the time; artist duo Gilbert & George had refurbished a similar house nearby.

Severs set about restoring the house, or rather reinventing it, one room at a time using friends' artistic efforts and items he found in flea markets. Each room is set in a different point in the house's history, which he conjured around a fictional family of characters that had lived there since its construction in 1724. Artists get a look-in too; one parlour is arranged to evoke Hogarthian excess, while the attic recalls Dickensian London.