36 Craven Street (AW18)

Welcome to the lively London lodgings of Dr Benjamin Franklin! Number 36, now Benjamin Franklin House, just off Trafalgar Square, was home to one of America’s greatest heroes - author, inventor, revolutionary, printer, politician, scientist, diplomat - for sixteen years over an eighteen year period, from 1757 to 1775. Franklin occupied the first floor which became a magnet for the great and the good, from politicians to artists, from musicians to plotting revolutionaries. The landlady’s daughter Polly stands at the door, her physician husband, Dr William Hewson, contemplates a skull. Other occupants include landlady Mrs Stevenson and Peter and King, Franklin’s servants.