Product Description

Growing up in California, Dennis Severs fell in love with the England he saw in old black and white films. At 17 he went there, drifting, looking for a home with a heart. In 1979 he found one, a run-down silk-weaver's house in Spitalfields, and over the following years transformed it into a magical time capsule, transporting its visitors back to the 18th century. This text tells the story of the house and its inhabitants.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #488852 in Books
• Published on: 2001-10-18
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 286 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

Review
Dennis Severs, who died in 1999, left a lasting reminder of his life in the form of a house-museum. In the late 1960s, as a teenager, he moved from California to London, and began his love-affair with the past. 'It was a time when young people with dreams were applauded for setting out in search of them,' he writes. 'At the age of fifteen the quest was launched to locate that light... With the money from my after-school paper rounds... and by not eating in order to save my lunch-money, I was able to come to England to find it.' In the 70s, Severs established a horse-drawn carriage tour showing people the sights of London. At the end of the decade he moved into 18 Folgate Street, originally a silk-weaver's house in the near-derelict area of Spitalfields. An inveterate collector, he was fascinated by history. 'I was collecting auras,' he writes, 'signposts to the thinking of other times. I would often stop and begin staring at an object on a stall and, as the dealer kept lowering his price, I would be thinking to myself, Why did this once sell? So ugly, so fine... what, once, was its appeal?' The natural next step was to restore life to his new East End residence by creating an imaginary family to make use of all the ancient bric-a-brac piling up. In this charming and slightly eccentric book he helps the reader move into a different kind of world, just as he did for visitors when he was alive, by employing sensation - touch, taste, feel, sound, sight - to draw the reader into the narrative of the house, and thus create a more vivid understanding of the past. 'The difference of the old light in this house will reintroduce you to instincts and senses with which you were born, but which your education, etiquette and modern pampering have robbed you of,' he writes. Not everyone will get it - after all, the house motto is 'aut visum aut non!' ('you see it or you don't') - but for those who do, it's a delight. (Kirkus UK)

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

Customer Reviews

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.

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.