Museums - I know this great little place in London...

Archive for the ‘Museums’ Category

GLP #9: London’s Great Little Museums…

Thursday, April 22nd, 2010

London is old. With age comes wisdom, wrinkles and museums. Or musea, or whatever it is. London has some of the world’s biggest and best, but also some of the smaller, more out of the ordinary collections. Here’s our pick of the finest:

Central:

1. Sir John Soane’s Museum, Holborn, WC2A 3BP

A huge favourite of GLP’s, you won’t forget your first visit. An eclectic, in places eccentric, but absolutely excellent townhouse on Lincoln’s Inn Fields, left as the former architect and all round winner Soane left it. Be sure to get the guide of the Hogarths, as they tell a fascinating political story, and look for the ceiling on which the iconic British red telephone box is based. Clue below.

2. Pollock’s Toy Museum, Fitzrovia, W1T 2HN

Pollock’s Toy Museum occupies two houses joined together in the heart of Fitzrovia, one 18th century, one 19th. A museum devoted to toys can’t go far wrong, and it doesn’t. The rooms are small and connected by narrow winding staircases, with the whole place exuding character and atmosphere. Literally every corner is filled with little visual delights, bringing back childhood memories of a time before the internet went and ruined everything.

West:

3. Leighton House Museum, Holland Park, W14 8LZ

Newly re-opened after extensive restoration, Leighton House Museum is a really remarkable 19th century house. It was the former home and studio of the Victorian artist Lord Leighton; every inch the chap. Over time it was extended and embellished to become a private palace of art. Inspiration floods in from the Orient and Arabia – you won’t see another place like it.

4. Apsley House, Knightsbridge, W1J 7NT

Otherwise known as Number One London, this is the former London home of the Duke of Wellington. The Waterloo gallery is a spectacular collection of masterpieces, with more paint and gold going on than B&Q and Elizabeth Duke put together.

East:

5. Geffrye Museum, Shoreditch, E2 8EA

Once the centre of the world’s furniture industry, Shoreditch now hosts the Geffyre Museum, showcasing the quintessential style of English middle-class living rooms from 1600 to the present day through a series of period rooms. One of London’s most friendly and charming museums.

6. Museum of Methodism & Wesley’s Chapel, Old Street, EC1Y 1AU

Methodism may not be the first topic you’d seek out the full range of historical artifacts for, but this place is worth a visit just for the building. A neat Georgian affair, it has a gorgeous little courtyard, and the working chapel holds its exhibits down in the crypt. Romantic, no?

North:

7. London Canal Museum, Kings Cross, N1 9RT

A canal museum isn’t the first place you’d think of to find out about the history of ice cream, but at the London Canal Museum that’s what you’ll get – flake and all. In what was once an ice warehouse used by Carlo Gatti for his famous ice cream, alongside the collection featuring the history of the waterways that helped build Britain and the people who worked on them, you’ll find an exhibition on the stuff that is anything but vanilla. Sorry.

8. Freud Museum, Hampstead, NW3 5SX

A beautiful Hampstead house, the inside of which might suggest that the big man Sigmund had a similar level of neuroses to many of his clients. Not only is it left exactly as he left it, but it’s also exactly like the place he fled in Austria in 1938, as he had noted the position of everything in his home so he could recreate it in London. Obviously. Includes the original couch.

South:

9. Old Operating Theatre Museum, Southwark, SE1 9RY

Once the home of grizzly operations of St Thomas’ Hospital, this is Britain’s oldest operating theatre. Think of a time before anaesthetic, biting the bullet and all; well you’ll see all the relevant old surgical instruments here. Shudder. It’s up in the roof of a beautiful English Baroque church, complete with wooden spectator galleries. This is the place to thank God for morphine.