Linley Sambourne House, 18 Stafford Terrace, Kensington

The museum states on the cover of the guide, that Linley Sambourne House is ‘A hidden gem in the heart of London’, and this statement couldn’t be more true; indeed a visiting journalist writing for Winter’s Weekly on the 25th August 1894, stated “Stafford Terrace lies at the back of the busy whirl of Kensington High Road, and here, in modest retirement, unpretentious of exterior but exquisitely decorative and elegant of interior is situated the beautiful house of Mr Linley Sambourne”. This was the home of Punch cartoonist Edward Linley Sambourne and his wife Marion from 1875 until 1910, and today is a uniquely preserved example of a middle class Victorian home. The interior rooms strongly show a taste for the ‘Aesthetic’ movement, a style defined by lightness, harmony and selectivity, showing William Morris wallpaper, gilded mirrors and collected foreign vases and ornaments. Special features to look out for include the only bathroom of the house, one of the first to have a bath with running water and featuring a pull-out shelf to hold various bottled chemicals, as Linley Sambourne used the bath to develop his photographs to then sketch over. Some of the doors of the rooms were painted dark green with botanical images by Linley Sambourne himself, and the intricate stained glass windows were his design.