36 Craven Street, WC2N 5NF

Phone:

020-7839 2006

Website:

www.benjaminfranklinhouse.org

Opening times:

10:30-17:00, everyday except Tuesdays

How to get there:

Tube: Charing Cross

This elegant Georgian town house, built in 1730 and now edging the west side of Charing Cross Station, is the only surviving home of Benjamin Franklin, the great American statesman and scientist, and is where he lived almost continuously from 1757–75. The house was owned by the widow Margaret Stevenson, and Franklin rented the principal rooms. It was here that he sat at the windows ‘air bathing’, learnt to play the harp, guitar and violin, and conducted political negotiations with William Pitt the Elder on the eve of the American Revolution. While in London Franklin forged friendships with many leading intellectuals. He was a member of the Royal Society of Arts, not far from this house, on John Adam Street, and continued with his many writings and experiments, including the invention of the lightning conductor (it is also said that he conducted alarming demonstrations of electricity at dinner parties). When the Friends of Benjamin Franklin House took over the building in the 1970s, it was in a state of dangerous disrepair. The house, which retains its original staircase and much of its panelling, has undergone a meticulous restoration, during which a pit with human remains was discovered in the basement—probably connected to the anatomy school run by Franklin’s friend William Hewson, Margaret Stevenson’s son-in-law. Hewson is said to have died of blood poisoning after cutting himself during a dissection.