The Dennis Severs' House

Artist David Hockney described visiting this house (above and below) as one of the world's five greatest experiences.

Dennis Severs was an eccentric California man fascinated by English history.

In the 1970s he moved to London and bought, for 20,000 pounds, a decrepit Georgian house in the then–dangerous Spitalfields Market area.

Instead of modernizing his new home, as most buyers of such properties do, Severs did the opposite: he restored it to be as true to the 1740s, when it was built, as he could.

There is no electricity and no indoor plumbing.

Jane Black wrote effusively of her visit to the house in an article that appeared in the June 26 Washington Post.