The Linley Sambourne House in Kensington

Linley Samburne House, 18 Stafford Terrace, Kensington, London

Note: If you receive this post via email, and are unable to view the videos, please click through to the blog itself.

What first struck me about the Linley Sambourne House was the time capsule element. What next struck me was the contrast between it and the nearby Leighton House Museum.

Edward Linley Sambourne (but nobody ever called him by his first name) was a famous Victorian era illustrator, perhaps best known for his work for the satirical magazine, Punch. While both he and Leighton were artists living in an enclave of artists and writers in Kensington, their work, circumstances, and abodes were altogether different.

The house at No. 18 Stafford Terrace was a revelation. We had been staying in a flat in a Victorian-era house. Ours, like so many, had retained only a few of its original features—which makes sense, given the development of things like indoor plumbing, electricity, etc., since the 1850s (when many of these houses were built in Kensington).

However, at Sambourne House, thanks to Mr. Sambourne’s descendants, time stands still for the most part, allowing us to time travel to a middle-class Victorian household. While this was the home of an artist, and reflects that fact, the layout and a great deal of the decoration reflects the taste of the time. And it gave me, finally, a clear sense of the way a London townhouse would be laid out in the 19th century. Yes, I look at floor plans and photos, but nothing compares to being there, and a little imagination allows one to extrapolate from the 1870s to the 1830s.

Since the house was so interesting, and rather like Ham House, a rare survivor, I have many images, which means our tour will be in two parts.

The lavatory under the stairs is a great example of the time capsule element. In most houses, areas like this have been modernized. Also, the level of design was so impressive. The Victorians and their predecessors wanted everyday items to be beautiful as well as functional.

This reel takes us through the entrance hall into the dining room.

The dining room is much as it was in 1877, and like so many other parts of the house, needs video to truly give you a sense of the place.

Collecting the blue and white porcelain plates was a fashion craze among artists in the 1870s. The glass case fitted to the window is a rare survivor. Cultivating ferns and other plants in these cases was another Victorian fashion. Similar cases were once attached to the Drawing Room windows on the floor above—which I’ll get to in the next blog post.

The Morning Room reel completes our tour of the ground floor. This was primarily Marion Sambourne’s domain. This wall, like that of the Dining Room, is divided into three tiers, and the faded paper comes closest to showing what the house would have looked like in the 1870s. Right after purchasing the house, the Sambournes knocked out the rear wall and installed the beautiful window.

In the next blog post, we’ll look at the first and second floors (U.S. second and third floors ).

Leighton House Museum

George Frederic Watts RA, Portrait of Frederic, Lord Leighton, P.R.A, 1888.

Note: If you receive this blog post via email and cannot see the video, please follow this link to the blog itself.

Though the artist Frederick Leighton belongs to the late Victorian era, rather than the time of my stories, I decided to visit his house in Kensington again (we’d toured it several years ago) because artists’ residences are interesting, especially those of 19th century artists. Not all were starving in garrets, as Leighton House demonstrates.

Born to wealth, Leighton was one who did not fret about where his next meal was coming from. He was able to furnish his house with treasures from around the world. One of several additions was the Arab Hall: "More expensive to build than the whole of the original house, on completion in 1882 it caused a sensation,” according to the museum’s brochure. It still does.

To my great regret, I can’t offer a reel of the Arab Hall, thanks to a miscommunication at the time of our visit. However, these images at the museum website should give you an idea.

Still, I think the Staircase Hall (reel below) is pretty impressive, too.

Video of the Staircase Hall at Leighton House

Below are a few other images, to give you an idea of Leighton’s taste. #1 & #2 Architect George Atchinson, with whom Leighton worked on the house from the time he acquired the empty plot until shortly before his death; #3 a pair of marble columns on the ground (U.S. first) floor; #4 the Drawing Room (since Leighton’s studio was his reception room, this infrequently used room was the “withdrawing room” for Leighton’s women guests, after dinner); #5 & #6 the Drawing Room’s Murano glass chandelier; #7 & #8 Leighton’s painting, Eucharis (Girl with a Basket of Fruit); #9 & #10 one of the pair of beautiful bookcases in the first floor (U.S. second floor) Studio; #11 & #12 the German marquety table, also in the Studio; #13, #14, #15 the Antechamber, containing a mashrabiya, a pierced wooden screen; #16 Loretta showing off in the Silk Room, the last change Leighton made to his house, and which he used as a gallery for pictures by his artist friends.

If you’d like to see what his house was like when Leighton was alive, you might take a look at this Strand Magazine article of 1892.

Ham House Part 2

Ham House, Richmond

Note: If you receive this post as an email, and can’t see the videos, please click on this link to my blog.

I’ve offered a few views of the North Drawing Room in the previous blog post, but reels give a better sense of the environment. The tapestries show farming activities during the year. Milking in April, Sheep-Shearing and Hay-Making in June & July, Reaping in May and August, Plowing and Sowing in September, and Wine-making in October. Though they were woven between 1699 and 1719, they were not hung in this room until early in the 20th century. According to the guidebook, the tapestries hanging in this room in the 1600s depicted the story of Phaeton, and “Tapestry was then the ultimate form of luxury room decoration.”

The Queen’s Bedchamber gets a reel, too. It stopped being a bedchamber and turned into a drawing room in the 1740s.

The Queen’s Closet did not get that kind of makeover. It’s very much as it was originally. The oval image is on the ceiling. Only the most honored guests would be invited here. I don’t know whose shoes these are—the guidebook is silent, because things get moved around, and this layout is a little different from the guidebook—but I assume they date to the 17th century.

The ebony cabinet stands in the Duke’s Dressing Room. The other two images are of the Duke’s Closet, a much smaller and more private room. The original upholstery and wall hangings were, according to the guidebook, “black and olive damask with a scarlet fringe and silver and black edging.”

People are always curious about cleanliness in past times. While they didn’t bathe according to our standards, our ancestors kept as clean as they could, given their circumstances. They changed their undergarments frequently, because these could be easily laundered. People took daily sponge baths—if they could. Cleanliness did depend on economics. If you’re a pauper, your first concern is staying alive. If, on the other hand, you’re a duchess, you’ve got servants to fill your bathtub and make everything pleasant for you. And certainly, as is the case today, some people simply won’t bother. For instance, the 11th Duke of Norfolk (1746-1815) had an aversion to soap and water. The servants had to wait until he was dead drunk in order to bathe him. One of his wives died in childbirth and the other one went insane. But he had mistresses! They must have had strong stomachs.