Photo: londondrum.comUseful things to know before your visit
Address: Benjamin Franklin House, 36 Craven Street, Westminster WC2N 5NF. Telephone: 0207 839 2006. Website: benjaminfranklinhouse.org
How much do the tickets cost?
Self-guided tour: Adult £8, seniors (aged 65+) from £6, and children (12+ years) from £6, and children (under-12) are free – History & Architecture tour: Adult £10, seniors (aged 65+) from £8. Children (12+) from £10. Children (under-12) are free.
What are the opening hours?
Opening times are Self-guided tour: Every hour from 11am to 4pm (Wed-Thu) – History and Architecture tour: Every hour from 11am to 4pm (Fri).
How much time do you need?
A typical visit to Benjamin Franklin House takes 45 minutes.
Which buses go to Benjamin Franklin House?
Bus routes 6, 9, 11, 13, 15, 23, 77A, 91 and 176 all stop close by.
Which is the closest train station?
The nearest station is Charing Cross, which connects with the Bakerloo and Northern lines. It also serves National Rail trains. It only takes a minute to walk to Benjamin Franklin House.
Which other attractions are nearby?
These attractions are all within 15 minutes walk of Benjamin Franklin House: Nelson’s Column, Trafalgar Square, National Portrait Gallery, National Gallery, Cleopatra’s Needle, Household Cavalry Museum, Horse Guards, Banqueting House, Leicester Square, Covent Garden, Downing Street, Transport Museum, London Eye, Chinatown and Courtauld Gallery.
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Email My review of Benjamin Franklin House
Lots of revolutionaries lived in London. Lenin was over here six times, Karl Marx studied at the British Museum, Ho Chi Minh used to peel potatoes in the Carlton Hotel (he really did!). That’s what living in London does to you: it fills your head with big ideas. It turned Benjamin Franklin from a mild-mannered bureaucrat into the instrument of our own destruction.
When he came over here as a young man Benjamin Franklin worked in St. Bartholomew-the-Great’s Lady Chapel as an apprentice typesetter (a lovely little church that’s still standing now) and when he sailed back to Philadelphia he made his money in the papers, got rich, became important and joined the Masons – so we basically gave him his start in life. From that point on we had to put in a hell of a lot of hard work to turn him against us. Naturally we succeeded.
When he returned to London thirty years later it was as the colonial agent for the Pennsylvania Assembly, lobbying the British government on behalf of his state. He was sort of like a modern-day ambassador I suppose, but with none of their actual powers. America was still British at this point in time, and Franklin was very definitely happy for it to stay that way. That all started to change when he led an effort to get Parliament to repeal the unpopular Stamp Act and he suddenly found himself thrust into the limelight as an overseas spokesman for the entire continent.
One of America’s Founding Fathers
He managed to get hold of some political diatribes that ‘accidentally’ found their way across the Atlantic and inflamed the rebels. The government labelled him an agitator and a year later he was back in America signing the Declaration of Independence as one of America’s Founding Fathers.
And oh yeah, whilst all of this was going on he somehow found time to invent bifocal glasses, lightning rods, urinary catheters and the glass harmonium. So Franklin’s got very interesting backstory, but is his house actually worth visiting?
Photo: londondrum.comIt doesn’t look like much from the outside, and there’s hardly anything inside either. It’s completely empty. It hasn’t even got any dust in it – that’s how empty it is. It’s big pitch is that it still contains the original Georgian floorboards and creaky old staircase that Franklin ran up and down to keep fit, but there’s none of his original furniture on show. No books or belongings or anything like that. It’s literally just a series of empty rooms.
Historical & Architectural Tour
You’re not allowed to walk around the house on your own either. What you have to do is book yourself onto one of their guided tours. There’s an ‘historical’ one, where a costumed landlady leads you round the rooms talking to some voices coming out of the speakers, and an ‘architectural’ one, which is more like a traditional tour, where you get shown around the house by a Benjamin Franklin expert.
If you want to learn a bit about the build-up to the American Revolution then maybe you can give the architectural tour a try, but it’s only worth going for the tour guide’s speech – not for the actual house – because there’s hardly anything to see inside apart from the wooden walls and floorboards.
If you enjoy looking around period houses then you might like Dr. Johnson’s House - the 18th century home of Samuel Johnson, the home of German composer George Frideric Handel, Charles Dickens’ home in Doughty Street and my favourite one of all - the Victorian home of Edward Linley Sambourne
London Squire guidebook – Check out my guidebook available to buy at Amazon, Apple and Kobo. I’ve personally visited 210 London landmarks, attractions and hotels and collected all of my reviews, example itineraries, handy practical info, and advice about using the buses and trains into an eBook, along with 675 original photos
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What do you think? (3)
Ask a question, or share your experience of Benjamin Franklin House
CH Two Americans coming to London and we would like to visit the Benjamin Franklin House. Do you need to book in advance? Does it get very busy? We wouldn’t like to miss it. (reply)
Craig Hi CH. You can book in advance on their website if you want to. I would recommend it if you’re definitely planning on going, because then you can choose the best time slot. If you turn up on the day then the next group might already be full. I’ve been a couple of times and there was only a handful of people each time. (reply)
Pete I found the tour interesting despite not knowing a lot about Franklin before I visited. They played a tune on the glass harmonium which he invented and his experiments with lightning were interesting. He seemed like a very knowledgeable and interesting guy, and didn’t come across as anti-British at all. We were probably fortunate that America had people like him at the top of their political society because our future relationship could have turned out very different. (reply)
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