Quirky, characterful house museums in London

There’s something irresistible about a house museum. The creak of floorboards, a half-burned candle on the mantelpiece, a sense that someone has just stepped out of the room. London has no shortage of homes once lived in by artists, architects, writers, and eccentrics of every kind. Some are grand and imposing, like Apsley House, still filled with the trappings of aristocracy. Others are wonderfully strange, like the postmodern Cosmic House or Dennis Severs’ candlelit homage to 18th-century Huguenots.

This is a guide to London’s many characterful and quirky house museums.

---

Sir John Soane’s Museum

Holborn

Sir John Soane’s Museum is hard to avoid mentioning. The former home of the architect behind the Bank of England, it's a cabinet of curiosities disguised as a townhouse. No matter how sunny the day, the interior stays dark and slightly mysterious - rooms stacked with antiquities, architectural fragments, and paintings layered on hinged panels that open like a visual trick box to reveal works by Hogarth, Canaletto, and Turner.

In the basement, an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus sits in a crypt-like space that commands a kind of reverence. Upstairs, the butter-yellow drawing room is filled with Soane's architectural drawings. Peek out of the window onto a small courtyard and you'll find a humorous memorial to the family dog: 'Alas, poor Fanny.'

It's a short walk from the British Museum, and both grew from the same Enlightenment impulse to collect and share knowledge. But where the British Museum is vast and public, Soane's is tiny and intensely personal - a playful counterpoint.

Admission is free (donations encouraged), but space is limited to 90 visitors at a time. Visit early or book one of the candlelit 'Soane Lates' to see it at its most atmospheric.

---

Emery Walker's House

Hammersmith

Emery Walker’s House sits right by the river in Hammersmith, a small Arts and Crafts interior preserved almost exactly as it was when Walker lived there. A close friend and collaborator of William Morris, Walker was key to the private press movement.

Visits are by guided tour - the rooms are intimate and filled with delicate objects. What I remember most is the layering: patterns on patterns, textiles and wallpapers all competing gently with each other, and the garden backing onto the Thames. There's a small outbuilding with his restored printing workshop and original typefaces.

---

Leighton House Museum

Holland Park

Leighton House feels like a collision of cultures and centuries, but somehow it holds together. Once the home and studio of painter Frederic Leighton, the house gives equal weight to interior design, painting, and architectural fantasy.

The Arab Hall is the jewel box at its centre - glittering tiles from Syria and Iran, a golden dome, and the soft sound of a fountain murmuring in the large space beneath stained glass. The rest of the house is tied together by saturated colour: deep reds, golds, rich blues moving from room to room. Upstairs, the studio is flooded with light - sun pouring down onto plaster models of Leighton's sculptures and papers scattered across tables.

A recent renovation has opened up new exhibition rooms and added a garden café, but the house keeps its theatrical atmosphere intact.

---

The Cosmic House

Notting Hill

The Cosmic House is one of London's most unusual house museums - and surprisingly playful for something so intellectually dense. Designed by architect and theorist Charles Jencks in the 1980s as his family home, it's a postmodern experiment where swirling geometries, celestial motifs, and philosophical references are built into every surface.

The library has a childlike wonder to it, all strange cosmic shapes and colours. Throughout the house, you can see how seriously Jencks took the idea of integrating cosmological thinking into everyday life - zodiac floor tiles, symbolic staircases, references layered into the architecture. It's fascinating, but also makes you wonder what it would have been like to attend a dinner party there.

The house now operates as a museum and research centre. Visits are by appointment only with tickets released in small batches - join the mailing list if you want to get in.

---

Sambourne House

Kensington

The Sambourne House is a richly preserved snapshot of upper-middle-class life in late Victorian London. Once home to Punch cartoonist Edward Linley Sambourne, the interiors reflect the dense, decorative tastes of the 1890s — all patterned wallpaper, dark wood, and carefully arranged clutter.

Compared to the restrained aestheticism of nearby Leighton House, this is Victorian domesticity in full flourish. But amid the layers of bric-a-brac are elegant Arts and Crafts details and touches of wit that hint at the artistic personality behind the furnishings. Each room is left much as it was, giving the impression that the family might return at any moment.

---

Eltham Palace

Eltham

Eltham Palace is one of London’s most unexpected architectural mash-ups. A medieval royal residence turned 1930s Art Deco fantasy, it was transformed by Stephen and Virginia Courtauld into something that feels part stately home, part luxury ocean liner.

Inside, you’ll find sleek marble bathrooms, bold geometric designs, rich wood panelling, and gilded detailing throughout. The Great Hall retains its original hammerbeam roof, but elsewhere it’s all modern glamour — from Egyptian motifs to built-in technology like underfloor heating and a centralised vacuum system.

---

Dennis Severs House

Spitalfields

The Dennis Severs’ House isn't really a house museum - its an artwork, or maybe more like a stage set without its cast. In the 1980s, American artist Dennis Severs bought this 18th-century house in Spitalfields and transformed it into a theatrical homage to an imagined Huguenot silk-weaving family. The rooms are staged across different time periods, and the texts talk about the family as if they're real. Walking through felt like trespassing - as if someone might appear at any moment asking why I was in their bedroom.

You're asked to remain silent as you move through, which adds enormously to the atmosphere. Bread baking in the kitchen, supper half-eaten in the dining room, creaking floorboards above. The house uses candlelight, sound, and scent to pull you into its fiction. It's especially magical by candlelight in winter, when the rooms glow with festive detail.

---

Apsley House

Marble Arch

Apsley House is opulent in the way of a period drama set - all glittering chandeliers, gilt-framed portraits, and serious aristocratic grandeur. Once home to the Duke of Wellington, it's filled with paintings by Velázquez, Rubens, and Goya, alongside extravagant gifts presented after Waterloo.

The formality is interrupted at the foot of the grand staircase by a colossal nude statue of Napoleon - over 3 metres of marble depicting the defeated Emperor as Mars. Wellington seemed to be revelling in Napoleon's hubris.

Apsley House is remarkably quiet compared to the bustling Marble Arch outside, so good for a break from tourist activities.

---

Red House

Bexleyheath

Red House is where the Arts and Crafts movement took shape in brick and timber. Designed in 1860 by William Morris and architect Philip Webb as Morris's family home, it was a manifesto of sorts: form follows function, craft matters, beauty should be built into everyday life.

The red brick exterior, steep rooflines, and asymmetrical L-shaped plan all rejected Victorian fuss. Inside, you'll find Morris's hand-painted designs and early stained glass, created with the help of like-minded friends. But the house feels more stripped back than other Morris interiors - the original furniture is gone, so you're left with the architecture and decoration itself.

The garden is what brings it alive. The L-shaped plan embraces it on two sides, and the contrast of green against red brick gives the whole place warmth. Morris and his wife Jane planned it with fruit trees, herbs, and informal plantings that continue the spirit of the house.

---

Syon House

Isleworth

Syon House is one of London's grandest stately homes, set within a private estate along the Thames. It's the London seat of the Duke of Northumberland and has been in the Percy family since the 16th century.

The house was remodelled in the 1760s by Robert Adam, and the interiors are some of his best work - neoclassical but with a rococo flourish, all gilt and colour and theatrical proportion. The sequence of rooms moves from the black-and-white marble Grand Hall to the gilded Long Gallery lined with mirrors and classical busts. It makes sense that it's often used as a filming location.

The surrounding parkland was landscaped by Capability Brown.

---

Museum of the Home

Hoxton

Museum of the Home is housed in former 18th-century almshouses and uses a series of period rooms to show how domestic life has changed. You move from a darkly panelled 17th-century hall to a mustard-yellow 1970s sitting room, each one showing how interiors have shifted in style and mood.

What I like is that it doesn't skip the unfashionable eras. A loft apartment from the 2000s, complete with hanging clothes and music posters, sits next to a formal Victorian parlour. It's also good for families - interactive, with plenty of space to explore without feeling like you're in a precious museum.

---

Ham House

Ham House is one of my favourite stately homes in London, and I go back often. Built in 1610 and largely shaped by the Stuart era, it sits just off the Thames in Richmond with a red-brick facade that hides extraordinary interiors.

The corridors are lined with carved marquetry cabinets and shell-shaped wall sconces. In the basement is what's thought to be Britain's first purpose-built bathroom, part of a suite designed in the 17th century for private bathing.

The gardens are worth visiting year-round. In early spring, the lawn is carpeted with crocuses; by May, wisteria cascades over the cafe walls; and in high summer, the lavender garden hums with bees. A working kitchen garden supplies the cafe with herbs and flowers.

---

Osterley Park

Osterley

Osterley Park is one of Robert Adam’s most dazzling interiors — a neoclassical masterpiece tucked behind an unassuming red-brick façade in West London. Originally a Tudor house, it was remodelled in the 1760s into a grand party house for banker Sir Francis Child, designed to impress London’s 18th-century elite.

The pastel-hued interiors are a highlight, from the gilded entrance hall to the exquisite Etruscan dressing room, where Adam’s obsession with antique motifs is on full display. Delicate plasterwork, symmetry, and colour all work together to create a sense of refined theatricality. It’s no surprise that Osterley is a favourite filming location — it feels made for a period drama.

---

London’s house museums are some of my favourite places to spend time. Each one offers a different kind of insight — not just into the people who lived there, but into the ways homes reflect ideas, taste, and identity across time. Some are grand, some eccentric, others quietly domestic. All are worth seeking out.

---