At Sutton House

This Sunday 10th May, you can visit Sutton House as part of Hackney History Festival. There is a whole day of lectures on subjects of local interest including a talk by Tessa Hunkin about Hackney Mosaic Project at 4pm. Click here for all tickets I love to visit dark old houses on bright sunny days. There is something delicious about stepping from the light of the day into the dark of the interior, almost as if the transition from one zone to another was that of time travel, from the present into another era. I wonder if this notion is a residue of my childhood, when my parents took me on holiday trips to visit stately homes, so that now I associate these charismatically crumbling old piles of architecture with bright English afternoons. Such were my feelings when visiting Sutton House, the oldest house in the East End, recently. It made me think of the country mansions of city burghers that once filled Spitalfields before the streets were laid out and the terraces built up. Built…