Carlyle’s House

From 1834 until his death in 1881, the eminent Victorian essayist and historian Thomas Carlyle dwelt in this three-storey terrace house, bought by his parents when it was surrounded by open fields in what was then a deeply unfashionable part of town. The lovely Queen Ann property – built in 1708 – is magnificently preserved as it looked in 1895, when it became London’s first literary shrine. It’s not big but has been left much as it was when Carlyle was living here and Chopin, Tennyson and Dickens came to call.