Product Description

Growing up in California, Dennis Severs fell in love with the England he saw in old black and white movies. At seventeen, he came to London, looking for a home with a heart. In 1979, he found one, a run-down silk-weaver's house in Spitalfields, and over the next twenty years he transformed it into an enchanted time-capsule, transporting us back to the eighteenth century. From cellar to roof, he filled "18 Folgate Street" with original objects and furniture found in the local markets, lit by candles and chandeliers. More than that, he invented a family to live here, the Jervis family, Huguenot weavers who fled persecution in France in 1688, and bought the house in 1724. Sounds and scents bring their world to life, always just out of sight - floorboards creak, fires cracle, a kettle hisses on the hob. Visitors step through the frame of time, like entering old master painting. As we move from room to room on a tour you will never forget, we follow the Jervis story from the days of the Georges and the Regency to harsher Victorian times - and even to the attic room of Scrooge himself.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #642191 in Books
• Published on: 2002-11-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The innocuous-sounding address of 18 Folgate Street is here the book of the tour of Dennis Severs' extraordinary recreation of a Georgian household in Spitalfields, a piece of theatrical still life, mesmerisingly conjured. Severs died at the end of 1999, but this alternative written version, with the sympathetic editing of Jenny Uglow, a gallery of photographs and an introduction by London's literary curator and, indeed, biographer, Peter Ackroyd, provides a unique posthumous flat-pack tour, time-capsuled for the future curious.

Severs, a more-English-than-thou Californian, bought the house in a derelict street just outside the Square Mile in 1979, and set upon installing himself and his lifelong acquisitions. Friends called it a "restoration comedy", but it was to become a historical drama, with Severs' declaration that "my canvas is your imagination". He installed the fictional Gervais/Jervis family, Huguenot silk weavers, from whose affairs Severs himself weaves his narrative magic. Beginning in the basement larder and kitchen, he takes the visitor-reader on a parade upwards, though the parlour, dining room, drawing room, bedroom, boudoir and attic of the house, summoning drama and narrative from the strategically arranged and decorated rooms, heavy with the air of recent occupation. At its best, it resembles a talking book, each room an episode linking to the next, and with Severs' constant evocation of duality, symmetry and dimension as he finds art in balance rather than chronological fidelity. Taste, however, can be a cruel, haranguing thing, something Severs shares when his singular, proportionate vision of the "Space Between" takes pleasure in reading too much into things. Does it work as well on the page? Inevitably, not fully; the effect is reductive, and contrary to the very principle of Severs' ambition. However, this quirky externalisation of this eccentric Anglophile's life, and its epoch-tripping celebration of etymology, social history, hearth drama and cultural and philosophical commentary, allied to tantalisingly brief snatches of autobiography, serves as the final will and testament of Dennis Severs, who rejuvenated the soul of a house with his own charged, imaginative kindling. Ultimately, the house's motto stands as the book's--"Aut Visum Aut Non": you either see it or you don't. --David Vincent

Jeanette Winterson, The Times
‘This is a book for anyone who like to sit by the fire with a glass of wine and not worry too much about he fashions of the world. '

Sunday Times
‘Reading it is like reading a novel or even watching a film – deeply intriguing and romantic…'

Customer Reviews

Almost as good as a visit
Having been to 18 Folgate Street only a month ago, I can say that the book very much evokes the spirit of the house. The house is awesome on its own, but Severs' "voice" is what is missing. Since it was his private residence, only his own words can truly bring it to life, and the book does that with flair. That he began as a storyteller is evident in his sense of drama.

Sometimes the "space between" concept seems a bit overblown. However, the book explains very readably the fashions of the time, and how 18th-century homeowners viewed their homes (and how Dennis Severs perceived his). There is a good balance between the factual and the atmospheric, and the ambience is well captured by the photographs. 18 Folgate Street is truly a one-of-a-kind place, and even if you don't have the chance to visit the house, this book is a must-read. Turn out the lights, light a few candles and settle in for a good read. It's almost as good as being there.

A Manipulative Time-Trip
Dennis Severs restored 18 Folgate Street to an 18th-century time-warp. In this book, he takes the reader through a room-by-room tour of the house, peopled with imaginary characters.

It's a strange experience, very original and yet somehow frustrating. We never get to truly care about this family...it's all a bit force-fed. There's alot of suggestion verging on manipulation: "you close your eyes", etc. (or words to that effect) and somehow the author rather arrogantly pulls the strings with his "Now you see it, now you don't" (or, as Tim from Big Brother UK 3 might have put it - "comprende?") Some readers might find their sensibilities a little insulted.

Having said that, it's creative and clever and there are some enjoyable aspects, particularly, for example, Severs's analysis of seeing the world in two's and three's. Some of the numerology is fascinating. I only wish the rest of the book had lived up to that standard.