Restoration

The Handel House Trust has restored as faithfully as possible the early Georgian interiors of Handel's occupancy to 25 Brook Street.

One of the few surviving features from the period is the original staircase with its exquisite tread ends. Elsewhere, walls were removed and reinstated according to the early Georgian sequence of rooms on the first and second floors. 27/29 Brook Street, which retains much of the detail of the original Barnes development, was used as the prototype for panelling profiles, cornices, shutters, dados and window seats. Three marble fire surrounds salvaged from the eighteenth-century Tom's coffee house in Covent Garden were installed in the front and middle rooms on the first floor and the bedroom. The floors were patched in with second-hand boards, which were limed and waxed, and lime plaster ceilings were reinstated.

Paint analysis shows that the original colour of the interiors was a lead grey with a dark chocolate brown subsequently applied to the doors. As was common place in early Georgian interiors, areas which became grubby through use, such as doors and skirtings were tidied up with this dark brown.

One vital document for the display of the interiors is the inventory taken in the August after Handel's death. Although valuable items may already have been given away, it provides a good indication of the type of furniture and soft furnishings contained within the house. Examples that fit the description of the inventory are displayed giving an idea of how the rooms functioned during Handel's occupancy. This includes a full tester (or canopied) bed dressed in crimson harateen and a double manual harpsichord commissioned to the specifications of the instrument Handel would have owned.

The interiors of 25 Brook Street as they are now presented are a scholarly recreation, using all available documentation, prototypes and archaeological evidence. As such they are as close as we are ever likely to get to the interiors that Handel would have known.