Displaying all the curiosities you owned was in vogue during the late 1800s. And 18 Stafford Terrace, once a family home, definitely has the Wunderkammer quality – by modern standards it is like a museum.
Paintings crowd the walls that are furnished with intricate wallpaper; exotic artefacts are exhibited on marble fireplaces; a warm glow glimmers through stained glass windows. Walking from room to room, it is easy to slip back 100 years and forget the present.
Edward Linley Sambourne, a cartoonist for the weekly satirical magazine Punch, bought the house in 1874 on an 89-year lease with his wife, Marion, for £2,000.
“This is Victorian London as you would read in Charles Dickens’ books,” said Shirley Nicholson, author of the book A Victorian Household, which is based on the diaries of Marion Sambourne.
