18 Stafford Terrace

Formerly known as Linley Sambourne House, the Kensington address where from 1875 Punch cartoonist Edward Linley Sambourne lived with his wife and two children provides a chance to see a late-Victorian, middle-class home that has survived largely unchanged. The house was passed on from one generation of the family to the next and almost all the original decoration remains intact, the rooms filled with the furniture and personal possessions the Sambournes left behind. A huge archive of diaries, papers, bills and letters also survived, providing an exceptionally detailed picture of daily life in the house. Visits are by guided tour only on Wednesday (11.15am, 2.15pm), Saturday and Sunday (11.15am, 1pm, 2.15pm, 3.30pm). Tours on weekend afternoons are led by a costumed actor. The house closes for two months each summer for maintenance and restoration.