Travelling back in time at 18 Stafford Terrace

[caption id="attachment_3867" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Robert outside 18 Stafford Terrace[/caption]

London is awash with things to do and see, but sometimes it’s good to go off the beaten track and visit somewhere entirely new. This is how we came to be standing outside a gorgeous Victorian house in Kensington one Sunday morning.

Linley Sambourne’s House appealed to me as I have long wanted to peek into these kinds of properties, and unless you’re a multi-millionaire, that’s unlikely to happen in London. But I didn’t realise there was much more to Sambourne’s own story and the house and guides explain that beautifully.

The House is located at 18 Stafford Terrace, W8, which is a great part of London and perfect for mooching about or getting something to eat, either before or afterwards. You can only see around if you book a tour, which we did, for 11am till 12.15 on a Sunday. We went with Robert, aged 11, but be aware that there is also the option of a specific family-friendly tour with costumed guides, which sounds like terrific fun.

Edward Linley Sambourne was a cartoonist and photographer. He and his wife Marion bought the house in 1874 for £2,000 and lived there for 36 years. The house is pretty much how they left it – with their belongings, photographs, ceramics and paintings, furniture and fittings. You can see many of Linley’s own cartoons on the wall (covering the original wallpaper!) and there are also diaries, bills and letters. The house was turned into a “living museum” by Linley’s granddaughter Anne and opened in 1980.

We arrived a few minutes before the tour was due to start, and were ushered into a room where we watched a short introductory film. It actually revealed a royal connection, because the family of Lord Snowdon (who was married to Princess Margaret, the Queen’s sister) once lived here. Because we entered through the basement, and this is now a shop and visitor area, there are no kitchens or scullery area to be seen, but I don’t think that was a major issue.

After the film, you step back in time as your tour starts properly. It was quite special to see a house that has not been done up like a museum, but actually remains as it looked at the time it was lived in. There was so much clutter – I tried to imagine trying to keep all of it clean and dust-free, but think that must have been impossible – and it was quite dark too. And in fact, although it’s in an area where houses sell for millions of pounds, it was quite narrow and nowhere near as big as I would have expected.

The Sambournes collected a lot of art from Japan, China and the Middle East, which was the fashion at the time, and you can see this on the walls. Linley himself also became very interested in photography and there are many photographs on the walls, some quite risqué, in the bathroom (which has a fantastic old bath).

The couple had two children (plus live-in servants). It was interesting to find out that the children were basically kept up in the nursery (at the top of the house), although this later became Linley’s photographic/art studio. Our son found this really surprising, but I think that the Victorian way – out of sight, out of mind.

[caption id="attachment_3870" align="alignnone" width="1200"] One of the servant's rooms[/caption]

Some of the rooms have been modernised as the house was lived in after Linley and his wife died.

We thoroughly enjoyed our visit, which was something completely different for us. If you have younger children, you may want to try the costumed tour, and if you have problems walking up and down stairs, then this isn’t for you. But we thought it was a great way to spend a few hours in London, learning something new and travelling back to the past.

18 Stafford Terrace is open to the public on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays. The costumed tour is on a Saturday at 11 till 12.15 and we did a “conventional” tour on a Sunday at 11am. You can visit without taking a tour, from 2pm till 5.30pm on these days. This will cost you £7 for adults and £5 for children. We paid £10 per adults and £8 for Robert, for our tour. There are also family costume tours in the holidays – check the Linley Sambourne’s House for details

More London gems

Linley Sambourne’s House

The Ceremony of the Keys

From Karl Marx to Jeremy Beadle: a trip to Highgate Cemetery

[caption id="attachment_2199" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Karl Marx's grave at Highgate Cemetery[/caption]

A cemetery is not the most obvious tourist destination but Highgate Cemetery is not your normal burial ground. That doesn’t mean you can rush through, making noise and posing for pictures. This is still a place for contemplation, and a memorial for the families who come to visit where their loved ones are buried. But is also a most intriguing place, well worth a trip if you’re in London, not least to see its most famous grave and memorial of all – to Karl Marx.

Highgate Cemetery is in North London, not far from Archway Tube station or a number of buses (visit the website for more on directions). It’s at the end of a residential street, which adds to the sense that you have just stumbled upon a gem. And it’s extremely atmospheric.

The Cemetery is divided into East and West both on different sides of the street, although the West (which is blessed with the most beautiful architecture including the chapel, many Gothic tombs and the remarkable Mausoleum of Julius Beer - based on the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World) can only be visited by guided tours (you have to book these on weekdays, but you can just turn up at weekends). It opened first, in 1839.

Most visitors visit the East Cemetery, built in 1854, which is where Marx is buried – along with so many others, including a number of former Lord Mayors of London and a certain Mary Ann Evans (otherwise known as the novelist George Eliot). It’s open daily, from 10am till 4pm on weekdays and 11am till 4pm on weekends and bank holidays and is really a special place to go. Admission costs £4 for adults with under-18s free. It may not sound like the kind of place where you would take children, but Robert enjoyed our visit. It’s really a special place, full of nature, with lots of little windy paths and overgrown vines and trees.

[caption id="attachment_2200" align="alignnone" width="1200"] a general view of the cemetery[/caption]

There are over 170,000 people buried in Highgate Cemetery, and more than 300 war graves. You can wander around at will, or you can get hold of one of the (free) maps and look for particular graves. We, like so many other visitors, were keen to see that of Karl Marx, but we were also intrigued to see the memorials to Douglas Adams (author of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) which was very moving, with a pot of pens standing right outside it.

[caption id="attachment_2202" align="alignnone" width="900"] A rather dramatic tombstone for Patrick Caulfield, the pop artist[/caption]

We also saw the graves of Sir Ralph Richardson, the impresario Malcolm McLaren (who has a typically flamboyant memorial), the poet Christina Rosetti, the former pop star Ian Dury, and TV presenter Jeremy Beadle. Of course there are lots of graves of people who aren’t famous, but which have beautiful verse or tributes etched onto their headstones.

[caption id="attachment_2201" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Malcolm McLaren's grave[/caption]

The most exciting part of our trip was, of course, Marx’s grave, where the great radical glares out balefully into the distance. He was buried in 1883, and we weren’t sure he would appreciate the flowers laid at his grave, nor the fact that he is interred in such an expensive place (you can still buy plots here, but they run into thousands of pounds). Buried nearby are a number of left-wing politicians or writers, including the campaigning journalist Paul Foot and the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, but it's Marx's grave which really grabs your attention.

[caption id="attachment_2203" align="alignnone" width="1200"] The inscription on Karl Marx's grave at Highgate Cemetery[/caption]

We spent a long time wandering around the cemetery, which is quiet and feels like being in the country. It was a beautiful Autumn day and we felt as if we were in a very special place.

Read more on places to visit in North London:

Beautiful Kenwood House in Hampstead (by Jess)