At Dennis Severs' house

At Dennis Severs’ house

To Spitalfields yesterday on the longest night of the year and 18 Folgate St, house of the late Dennis Severs. The house is kept as it was lived in through the 18th, 19th and early twentieth centuries. It is kept so not as a museum, but as a performance. Fires burn softly in their grates, a kitchen sideboard glitters by candlelight with jellies and cakes, an unfinished meal has yet to be cleared away. The deliberate effect is of stepping into a painting.

We were there an hour; the space, candle-lit and quiet, remains with me. Then home through the fog by bike.

» Wikipedia article
» Dennis Severs’ House