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Dennis Severs

The Knitting Circle: History

Biography,writing,press cuttings.

US museum creator in Britain.

His parents were Earl and Helen Severs of Escondito.

Dennis Severs visited England in 1965 and moved to London in 1967 after his high school graduation.

He first planned to become a barrister, but changed his plans, and in the late 1960s he was running horse-drawn open carriage tours around Hyde Park and the West End. However, this business came to an end when his stable near Gloucester Road was demolished by a developer.

In 1979 he bought the brick George I terraced house, built in 1724, at 18 Folgate Street, Spitalfields, on the edge of London's East End. He developed this as a living museum. At the time there was a campaign to restore Hawksmoor's church nearby. The Spitalfields Historic Buildings Trust were fighting to conserve the inner suburb.Gilbert and Georgehad already moved into Fournier Street. Also nearby lived Raphael Samuel whose bookTheatres of Memorycelebrated the restoration of the past.

Dennis Severs began by sleeping in each of the house's ten rooms to judge their atmospheres. He invented a family of Huguenot silk weavers called Jervis who he pretended had lived in the house for five generations. Paying visitors were entertained by re-created rooms with taped sound effects, but those who did not take it seriously were ejected. His unpublished guide to the house wasThe Space Between.

Dennis Severs had been diagnosed as HIV-positive for some years before he died at the Mildmay Hospice of cancer of the lymph glands at the age of 51. On 6th. January 2000 a service was held at Christ Church, Spitalfields, and he was buried in Norfolk.

The house had been bought by the Spitalfields Trust, but there was some doubt about whether it could be conserved in the same way. The Dutchman Mick Pedroli became the house manager after the death of Dennis Severs.

• Secret House at 18 Folgate Street, 1999, Ebury Press, ISBN 0091753716 (hardcover).

• 18 Folgate Street: The tale of a house in Spitalfields, 2001, published by Chatto and Windus, 276 pages, ISBN 0 701 17279 7.

  • Mysteries of the Eastby Gregory Dart inThe Times Literary Supplement, 8th. March, 2002, page 12. "e;To enter into the spirit of the house properly, Severs insists, you have to leave your critical faculties at the door. The motto throughout is 'either you see it or you don't'. Severs had good reason to fear the operations of the sceptical intelligence, for although the house is full of authentic pieces, much of the decor and layout of 18 Folgate Street is of dubious historical accuracy, being far too elaborate and eccentric for an eighteenth-century townhouse. The owner's whim was always paramount, as he himself was the first to admit. Is it a misuse of such a genuinely historic building that Severs should have let his imagination run riot in this way? Not necessarily. For there is a sense in which, in spite of its historical waywardness, 18 Folgate Street does give us a special kind of insight into the past."e;

• Dennis SeversObituary by Gavin Stamp inThe Guardian, 10th. January, 2000, page 16. A photograph of Dennis Severs standing in his home is reproduced in black and white. "e;Although sneered at by many who suffer from what he would have dismissed as 'pigeonholed styles of intelligence' inhibiting creativity, Severs was a true original, an artist of perverse genius who created a three-dimensional historical novel out of bricks and mortar and timber and the objects he picked up for a song on countless stalls. The social historian Raphael Samuel considered it 'a magical mystery tour which dazzles the visitor with a succession of scenes more crowded with memorable incident than the mere facsimile of what passes in the museums as a period room'."e;

  "e;Dennis was one of those Americans in England who seemed to have arrived from nowhere, to have no past, no roots and who, so irritatingly, could not be placed socially."e;

  "e;But Dennis was not a blazer and Brooks Brothers stereotype American Anglophile; he was humorous, generous, passionate, altogether unpretentious and engagingly camp."e;

• Dennis Severs 1948-1999by Michael Murphy inQX International, 12th. January, 2000, issue 262, page 6. A photograph of Dennis Severs sitting in his home is reproduced in colour. "e;I first met Dennis while queuing to use a toilet cubicle at Trade some seven years ago. I had been waiting so long that I decided to knock on a few doors to hurry-up those already in use. Dennis alighted from one of these cubicles bearing a bundle of papers and books, apologising for taking so long. He explained that he was editing a manuscript for a book he was writing about his 18th Century house, and that he used the toilets at Trade for an hour each week to do his editing prior to his partying as he had no central heating at home - 'the cubicles were warmer', he later told me."e;

• Once upon a time ...by Antonio Pasolini inAXM, June, 2001, Volume 4, Issue 4, pages, 96-97. "e;Knock on the door at number 18 Folgate Street, London E1 and you'll be greeted by a boyish looking Dutchman called Mick Pedroli who will give an induction on how to behave so as to make the most of the house. 'Feel the house' is the gist of what he will say to first timers patiently 'and remain silent'."e;

Biography,writing,press cuttings.

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The Knitting Circle

First uploaded 18th. January, 2000.

Last altered 7th. March, 2002