Visit London’s Liverpool Street Station and you will find noise, pollution and crowds of commuters dashing to and fro, while office blocks of glass and steel loom large overhead. Yet cross the road to Folgate Street, and, at No. 18, you will enter a different world entirely.
This 18th-century house was – until his death in 1999 – home to one Dennis Severs. The son of petrol station-owners from California, Severs was, perhaps, born in the wrong time and place. As soon as he graduated high school in 1967, Severs left the US for London, craving an older world enriched by the patina of history. Here he ran tours by horse and carriage; in 1979, he purchased a derelict house in the then-shabby district of Spitalfields.
Above: Delft shoes by Simon Pettet at Dennis Severs' House. Photo: © Lucinda Douglas-Menzies