This chapter reimagines the lost interiors of the of homes of Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820) and Dr William Hunter (1718-1783) as central to an early scientific community in eighteenth-century London. The interiors of both Hunter and Banks acted as centres to the periphery of scientific experiment and exploration, and the contents of their drawing rooms, libraries, herbariums and galleries were directly and physically connected to the wider realms of street, city and empire. The lasting significance of these historical homes, despite their lengthy demise, lies in the formation of such personal collections and stores as products of knowledge, their interiors acted as social markers, and the thresholds of each house reinforced decisions and conventions that verified scientific facts as truthful and authentic, as described by Stephen Shapin (1988). Looking out and in, reimagining these vanished interiors, also means reflecting on broader themes, such as the topographical and geographical aesthetics of the city during this period, particularly the ways in which the complementary studies of anatomy and botany were reflected in the immediate environs of these two substantial houses, in prospective plans for garden squares, symmetrically aligned terraces and monumental vistas. Importantly, the chapter describes affective qualities and lived experiences of these shared domestic and working spaces, filled to capacity with bodies (human and non-human, dead and living), and the tensions between private and public conversations within and without the walls of the houses. Therefore, micro-geographies of such social spaces are also explored in the chapter to reconnect their interiors to the aims of Enlightenment science of improvements in urban settings and to reimagine social interactions between the characters who moved in and around such sites. How historical distance has impressed upon reconstructions and recollections of the houses of Banks and Hunter is considered in the chapter, particularly, as a ‘play of distances’ allows for historical interpretations to be shaped by encounters of form and affect, summoning and understanding; aspects of contemporary approaches to interiors that aim to reveal sensations and sensory knowledge alongside historical facts. As the chapter suggests, architectural plans and sections, drawings, sketches and photographs of historical interiors present the viewer with primary information, but for these eighteenth-century homes that carried such significance and purpose during the period, specifically as witnesses to new experimental sciences, their distinct social meanings can only usefully be understood by reimagining the interaction of bodies that moved in and through them, and beyond their thresholds in the wider situations of the streets and city squares.

• https://radar.gsa.ac.uk/10198
• https://radar.gsa.ac.uk/10203