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 The entrance area in 2019 | |
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Former name | Museum of London |
|---|---|
| Established | December 1976; 48 years ago (1976-12) |
| Location | 150London Wall Barbican,London,EC2Y 5HN United Kingdom |
| Coordinates | 51°31′4″N0°6′17″W / 51.51778°N 0.10472°W /51.51778; -0.10472 |
| Type | History museum |
| Collection size | 7,000,000[1] |
| Visitors | 141,835 (2021)[2] |
| Director | Sharon Ament |
| Public transit access | Barbican;St Paul's |
| Website | londonmuseum.org.uk |
London Museum (formerly known as theMuseum of London) is a museum in London, covering the history of the city fromprehistoric to modern times, with a particular focus on social history. The Museum of London was formed in 1976 by amalgamating the collection previously held by the City Corporation at theGuildhall Museum (founded in 1826) and that of theLondon Museum (founded in 1911). From 1976 to 2022, its main site was in theCity of London onLondon Wall, close to theBarbican Centre, part of the Barbican complex of buildings created in the 1960s and '70s to redevelop a bomb-damaged area of the city. In 2015, the museum revealed plans to move to the General Market Building at the nearbySmithfield site. Reasons for the proposed move included the claim that the current site was difficult for visitors to find, and that by expanding, from 17,000 square metres to 27,000, a greater proportion of the museum's collection could be placed on display. In December 2022, the museum permanently closed its site at London Wall in preparation for reopening in 2026 at Smithfield Market. The museum changed its name and branding to "London Museum" in July 2024 in advance of the move.[3]
The museum has the largest urban history collection in the world, with more than six million objects.[4] It is primarily concerned with the social history of London and its inhabitants throughout time. Its collections include archaeological material, such as flint handaxes from the prehistoric Thames Valley, marble statues from a Roman temple called theLondon Mithraeum, and a cache of Elizabethan and Jacobean jewellery called theCheapside Hoard. Its modern collections include large amounts of decorative objects, clothing and costumes, paintings, prints and drawings, social history objects, and oral histories. The museum continues to collect contemporary objects, such as theWhitechapel fatberg and theTrump baby blimp.
The museum is part of a group that also includes two other locations:London Museum Docklands, which is based inWest India Quay and remains open to the public; and the Museum of London Archaeological Archive, based atMortimer Wheeler House. The museum is jointly controlled and funded by theCity of London Corporation and theGreater London Authority. Its current director is Sharon Ament.
One of the two museums that were merged to form the Museum of London was the Guildhall Museum, founded by theCity of London Corporation in 1826 when it received the gift of a Roman mosaic from Tower Street[5] as "a suitable place for the reception of such Antiquities as relate to the City of London and Suburbs".[6] As the collection grew, it was given a room in theLondon Guildhall. The museum focused on archaeological remains from the city, and objects linked to the corporation, and had a particularly strong collection of Roman objects. It was mostly inaccessible to the public until 1872, when work was begun on dedicated premises in Basinghall Street. During World War II, the museum closed so that the corporation could use the building for other purposes, and after the war, in 1955, it re-opened in theRoyal Exchange. However, this was not seen as a satisfactory long-term solution, and in 1960 the museum seriously started to engage with the scheme to merge with the London Museum.[5]
The museum has its origins in, and derives much of its collection from, the London Museum, founded in 1911 byViscount Esher andLewis Harcourt, 1st Viscount Harcourt and originally based in the State Apartments ofKensington Palace.[7] It first opened to the public on 8 April 1912. Harcourt became the first Commissioner of Works, and the first Keeper wasGuy Francis Laking. In 1913, it became a National Museum.
In 1914, it moved toLancaster House, which had been bought byWilliam Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme, soap magnate and founder of the model town ofPort Sunlight, and given to the nation as a home for the London Museum.[8] Visitors travelled through a mostly chronological route, entering the Prehistoric Room, the Roman Room, the Saxon and Early Norman Gallery, the Mediaeval Room, and finally a Jewellery Room before heading to the upper floor. Here, they would find the Tudor Room, the Early Seventeenth Century, the Late Seventeenth Century, a room with a large collection ofporcelain, the Late Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Room, and finally, the Costume Gallery.[9] The museum also contained a basement which contained come exhibits from all eras, some of which were too large for the main galleries, and which could serve as an introduction to the collections. It included a Roman boat, a carriage belonging to theArthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, a parlour decorated in the Stuart style, and prison cells.[10]
The Keeper of the London Museum from 1926 to 1944,Sir Mortimer Wheeler, proposed merging the London Museum with the Guildhall Museum as early as 1927, as the two museums had a significant overlap in their collections, but the scheme wasn't given serious thought until after both museums had been forced to close duringWorld War II.[11]
During the war, the museum closed, and in 1945 it vacated Lancaster House so that the government could use the space for hospitality events. The trustees considered several sites for the new museum, includingHolland House and various sites on theSouth Bank. However, in the end, KingGeorge VI leased part of Kensington Palace for the museum to move back in. The new site opened in 1951.[7]
The Kensington Palace museum kept a generally chronological structure to its layout, but alongside the rooms devoted to various time periods, there were separate galleries for historical shop fronts; prints; theatre; glass; paintings, toys and games; and royal costume. The glass room included Sir Richard Garton's collection of 437 pieces of 17th-19th century table glass, including goblets, wine glasses, bowls, candlesticks and decanters. The Print Room comprised around 3,000 watercolours and drawings and 7,000 prints, including a view of Whitehall and Westminster byHendrick Danckerts made c.1675,The Cries of London byPaul Sandby, and works byThomas Rowlandson,Wenceslaus Hollar, andJames Abbott McNeill Whistler. The Theatre room included many theatrical costumes, several on loan from the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. These includedHenry Irving's costumes for Malvolio and King Lear, the dressAnna Pavlova wore asThe Dying Swan, andIvor Novello's costume fromThe King's Rhapsody. There was also a clown costume worn by the comedy pioneerJoseph Grimaldi, a piano belonging toW. S. Gilbert, a death mask ofDavid Garrick, and Walter Lambert'sPopularity, a painting of dozens of music hall and variety stars. By the 1970s, multiple coronation robes were on display, from 1838, 1902, 1911, and 1937. There were also other items of royal clothing belonging toCharles I, a collection ofQueen Victoria's dresses, andPrincess Margaret's wedding dress designed byNorman Hartnell.[12]
| Museum of London Act 1965 | |
|---|---|
| Act of Parliament | |
 | |
| Long title | An Act to establish a Board of Governors of the Museum of London; to transfer to them the collections of the London Museum and of the Guildhall Museum and the benefit of certain funds; to define the functions of that Board, and to provide for purposes connected with the matters aforesaid. |
| Citation | 1965 c. 17 |
| Dates | |
| Royal assent | 2 June 1965 |
| Text of statute as originally enacted | |
| Text of the Museum of London Act 1965 as in force today (including any amendments) within the United Kingdom, fromlegislation.gov.uk. | |
In 1960, a plan was formed to merge the London Museum with the Guildhall Museum, to be funded jointly by the government, theCity of London Corporation, and theGreater London Council. An act of Parliament, theMuseum of London Act 1965 (c. 17), was passed to this effect in 1965.[13][14] The City of London Corporation provided a site near what is now theBarbican Centre.
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The new site for the museum was at the corner of London Wall and Aldersgate Street, an area that had almost entirely been flattened by bombing inThe Blitz. The architects appointed to oversee the construction of the new museum building werePhilip Powell andHidalgo Moya, who designed a complex with four main parts: a tower block containing offices and not open to the public; two floors of exhibition space arranged around a courtyard; a lecture theatre and education wing; and a rotunda containing a small garden and restaurant. With the museum galleries themselves, Powell and Moya adopted an innovative approach to museum design, whereby the galleries were laid out so that there was only one route through the museum – from the prehistoric period to the modern galleries. As in the previous incarnation of the museum, the galleries would be set out in a roughly chronological order.[15] The building also incorporated a viewing window out onto one of the remaining pieces ofLondon's city wall, originally built by the Romans around three sides of the city. Construction began in April 1971, with the foundation stone laid by theQueen Mother on 29 March 1973, and the museum was opened in December 1976 byQueen Elizabeth II as part of theBarbican Estate.[16]
As in the London Museum, visitors entered a series of rooms set out in chronological order, moving anti-clockwise around the main courtyard on the upper floor through London's history up to theGreat Fire in 1666, and then descending to the lower level and moving clockwise around the courtyard up to the present day. Visitors would finish their visit by theLord Mayor of London's State Coach.[17]
In November 2002, the previousThe Thames In Prehistory gallery was replaced with an entirely new display titledLondon Before London.[18]
A £20 million redevelopment called the "Galleries of Modern London" was completed in May 2010, the museum's biggest investment since opening in 1976. The redesign, by London-based architectsWilkinson Eyre, comprised the entire lower floor of the main galleries, covering the period from the 1670s to the present day. The Galleries of Modern London displayed a total of 7,000 objects. Star exhibits included amummified cat, a 1928Art Deco lift fromSelfridges department store onOxford Street, and a complete 18th centurydebtors' prison cell covered in graffiti.[19]
The transformation included four new galleries. TheExpanding City gallery covered the period 1670–1850.People's City addressed 1850-1940s, including a "Victorian Walk" displaying some of the museum's real office and shop frontages and interiors; objects relating to thesuffragette movement; and pages ofCharles Booth's 1888 "poverty map", colour-coding London's streets according to the relative wealth of their inhabitants.[20]World City was the gallery containing objects dating from the 1950s to the present day, including 1950s suits, aMary Quant dress from the 1960s,Biba fashion in the 1970s, outfits from London'spunk scene, and a pashmina fromAlexander McQueen's 2008 collection. Finally, theCity Gallery featured large, street-level windows along London Wall that allowed passers-by to view theLord Mayor of London's State Coach, which takes to the streets each November for theLord Mayor's Show.[21]
In 2014, the museum opened a new gallery displaying thecauldron from the2012 Summer Olympics. The cauldron was made up of 204 steel stems, each tipped with a copper "petal", which could be raised or lowered to create various formations. When all the petals were raised to their full height, they together formed the shape of a cauldron. The gallery featured 97 of the original stems, wooden moulds for the copper petals, Great Britain'sParalympic petal, and footage showing the cauldron in use during the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympiad. The room also showed interviews with some of the creators, including lead designerThomas Heatherwick and an engineer called Gemma Webster.[22]
In 2016, the museum announced it would be closing its London Wall site and moving to a set of disused market buildings in West Smithfield in 2021.[23] The new site will increase the museum's size from 17,000 square metres to over 27,000.[24] Museum director Sharon Ament said that one reason for the move was "a failing building with problematic entrances and a location which is difficult to find". A competition was held to find an architectural firm to design the new building, with over 70 firms taking part. Six were shortlisted, and their initial designs released to the public in 2016.[25]Stanton Williams and Asif Khan were chosen as the final architects.
The site at Smithfield includes part of the Thameslink train line running intoFarringdon Station, and from an early point in the process, the museum expressed interest in creating a see-through section of tunnel for commuters to glimpse inside the museum and visitors to see the train go by.[26] It also includes theRiver Fleet, a tributary of the Thames which has long since become buried underground due to the high volume of construction work around it. One early plan for the new museum, since scrapped, included creating a well reaching down to the Fleet, which has been completely covered since the 1870s. Another idea for the new museum is to revive the ancient St Bartholomew's Fair, which took place on the site regularly in the medieval period until being shut down by authorities in 1855. The museum will also feature spiral escalators taking visitors to the underground storage rooms which will function as the main historical galleries.[27]
In 2019, further plans were released, which showed late-night queues outside the museum frontage and visitors perusing real items from the museum's collection. Ament announced that workers had found the remains of a Victorian café called the Temperance Cocoa Room, complete with original tiling, and that the museum intended to re-open this section as a café.
The scheme was originally set to cost £250 million and open in 2021; current estimates are that it will cost £337 million and open in 2026. Ament blamed the rising cost on the difficulty of working with an old building: "It is to do with things like waterproofing a building that hasn't needed to be water-proofed, it is to do with engineering".[28]
In August 2022, the museum announced that a previously unknown freshwater spring had been found underneath the new site. Tests revealed that it was safe to drink, and Ament claimed that she hoped visitors would be able to "fill up their water bottles from it".[29]
On 4 December 2022, the museum closed its site at London Wall ahead of the move. It was also announced that when the new site opened in 2026, it would be called the London Museum.[30]
Once the museum has vacated the London Wall site, it will revert to theCity of London Corporation. In 2019, plans were revealed to use the site to house a London Centre For Music, a £288m concert hall for use by the London Symphony Orchestra.[31] However, in 2022, the Corporation submitted plans to demolish the building, including the Bastion House office block above, and replace it with a 780,000 sq. ft office block, citing dangerous structural issues, poor energy performance, fire safety and limited possible uses as reasons in favour of demolition.[32] In May 2024, demolition remained the likely option after theSecretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and CommunitiesMichael Gove decided not to intervene,[33] and in November 2024Historic England issued aCertificate of Immunity from Listing, guaranteeing that the building would not bestatutorily listed within the next five years.[34]
The museum holds in its collections objects covering 10,000 years of London's history, totalling around 7 million objects.[35] It combines the original collections of both the Guildhall Museum and London Museum, plus objects that the Museum of London acquired since its foundation in the 1970s, such as archaeological finds, photographs, oral histories, and video games.[6]
In particular, the museum owns a large collection of objects relating to London's docks, leading to the opening of a secondary site, theLondon Museum Docklands, in 2003.[6]
The museum has over 13,000 prehistoric objects,[36] including theHavering Hoard, the largest Bronze Age hoard thus far discovered in London, and the third-largest of its kind in the UK. It includes 453 bronze objects, such as axe heads, spearheards and knives made between 900 and 800 BCE, which had almost all been broken or damaged, and buried carefully in four separate groups around the site. The museum put on a temporary exhibition of the hoard at its Docklands site in 2020.[37]
The Roman collection totals over 47,000 objects, mostly from the Roman-occupied areas of the City of London andSouthwark, including the UK's largest collection ofterra sigillata (samianware). It also includes entire wall paintings and floors such as the Bucklersbury Mosaic; metalwork such ashipposandals, cutlery, jewellery and tweezers; four leather "bikini bottoms", possibly worn by female acrobats; and a wooden ladder.[38] In September 1954, a Roman temple to the god Mithras was discovered in the City of London. An estimated 400,000 members of the public visited the site while it was being excavated,[39] a job which was mostly carried out by archaeology students led by the then director of the London Museum,W. F. Grimes. The building stones of the temple have been reconstructed on their original site at theLondon Mithraeum, while the marble carvings found inside are part of the collections of the London Museum.[40]
The museum owns around 12,000medieval objects, including 700 from theSaxon period, and over 1,350 pewterpilgrim badges.[41]
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The museum holds over 1,500 pieces ofTudor andStuart cutlery, mostly recovered from the Thames, and some purchased from the private collection ofHilton Price.[43] One of the most well-known and popular groups in the museum's collection from this period is theCheapside Hoard, a hoard of almost 500 Tudor andJacobean pieces of jewellery found in 1912 onCheapside in the City of London. The entire hoard went on display for the first time as a temporary exhibition at the museum in 2013.[44] In 2017, it was announced that theWorshipful Company of Goldsmiths would donate £10 million to the museum in order to secure a permanent display for the Cheapside Hoard at the new museum site in West Smithfield.[45]
Demonstrating London's manufacturing prowess has been one of the museum's goals since the inception of the London Museum in 1911.To that end, the museum has pieces from London manufacturers likeJames Powell and Sons, also known as Whitefriars Glass; andMartin Brothers; and objects related to trades such as clockmaking, coopering, silk-weaving, engraving, and silversmithing. Donors such asJoan Evans,Catherine d'Erlanger,Mary of Teck, Jane Anne Gordon and Lady Cory have enlarged the museum's collection of jewellery, particularly mourning jewellery,chatelaines and costume jewellery.[46]
The museum also collects more general social and working history objects relating to the everyday lives and trade of ordinary Londoners. This includes shop fronts, food packaging, telephone kiosks, vehicles, and a large collection of "penny toys"- toys costing a penny. The museum holds an internationally important collection of suffragette material, largely from the archive of the suffrage group, theWomen's Social and Political Union; the archives of the Whitefriars Glassworks, and papers relating toKibbo Kift,[47] and a substantial amount of material relating to London's port and the River Thames, much of which is on display at the museum's secondary site, theLondon Museum Docklands.[48] The museum holds over 5,000 hours of oral histories;[49] and the archives of thePort of London Authority[50] and the supermarket chainSainsbury's.[51]
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The museum also collects contemporary objects, including those connected to national news stories. During the2012 London Summer Olympics, the Museum of London collected tweets using the hashtag #citizencurators, both by the public and by a select group of 18 contributors from across the city.[52]
In 2016, the museum attempted to buy a water-cannon truck bought by then-Mayor of LondonBoris Johnson. In the summer of 2014, Johnson bought three water cannon trucks from the German federal police for £218,000 in order to combat civil unrest.[53] These were then banned for use in the UK by Home SecretaryTheresa May, and could not be deployed. Johnson attempted to sell them. The museum tried to buy one, but the trucks were only available to European policing or civil protection organisations. Unable to find a buyer, the trucks were sold to a reclamation yard in 2018 for £3,675 each. The museum's director, Sharon Ament, expressed interest in collecting some of the scrap or salvage, but no part of the trucks has yet entered the museum's collection.[54]
In 2018, the museum displayed a section of the Whitechapelfatberg, a solid lump of fat and grease that had formed in the sewer network underneath Whitechapel.[55] After being on display for several months, the chunk was removed from the galleries and placed in a freezer, where fans could view it around the clock on a live webcam.[56]
In January 2021, the museum acquired a giant inflatable blimp depictingformer US President Donald Trump as a giant baby. The 6 metre-high blimp was designed by Matt Bonner to protest Trump's visit to the UK in 2018, and has since been flown around the world in protest of the president's regime.[57]
In April 2020, the museum put out a call for donations of objects and oral histories connected to the globalCOVID-19 pandemic.[58] As part of the Collecting Covid project,London Zoo donated a large illuminated sign showing the logo of the UK'sNational Health Service surrounded by hearts, which was hung outside their giraffe house duringlockdown in March 2020.[59] In July 2020, sound designers String and Tins made recordings of soundscapes in London streets that had become deserted due to pandemic lockdowns for the museum's collection.[60] In October 2020,Arsenal football playerPierre-Emerick Aubameyang donated his shirt featuring aBlack Lives Matter logo, which had been worn by him during games that season. The logo had been added to allPremier League shirts for the summer 2020 season following widespread protests against racial violence in London and around the world.[61]
During celebrations for the Islamic festival ofRamadan, the museum collected thousands of messages from a WhatsApp group made up of five Muslim women in West London sharing their reflections on celebrating during lockdown.[62] In January 2021, the museum announced the acquisition of thirteen tweets made by Londoners during lockdown.[63] In February 2021, Mayor of Lambeth Philip Normal donated his chain of office, which he had made from card and t-shirt fabric while the real one was locked up in the town hall. Normal had a virtual appointment ceremony to the role in April 2020.[64] The museum also asked volunteers to describe their "pandemic dreams" to collect oral histories of how the pandemic affected Londoners' sleep cycles.[65]
The museum has 23,000 pieces of dress and textiles. The London Museum was the first British museum to produce a catalogue of its costume collection, in 1933. The museum's collection includes pieces byLucile,Hardy Amies,Norman Hartnell,Victor Stiebel,Mary Quant,Katharine Hamnett, andVivienne Westwood. It also includes several pieces of royal clothing, including a shirt thought to have belonged toCharles I; many theatrical, ballet, circus, music hall, and opera costumes; and silk garments woven in Spitalfields. Outside of clothing, the museum holds banners and sashes related to thefemale suffrage campaign of the early 20th century, theKindred of the Kibbo Kift, and dockworker trade unions.[66] The dress collection includes several objects examined by fashion historianJanet Arnold in her book seriesPatterns of Fashion.[67]
The museum holds over 100,000 paintings, prints and drawings, including works byWenceslaus Hollar,Paul Sandby,Canaletto,William Powell Frith,George Elgar Hicks,Walter Greaves,Henry Moore,Graham Sutherland,Thomas Rowlandson,C. R. W. Nevinson, andSpencer Gore. The museum's collection also contains portraits of London figures such as military leader and politicianOliver Cromwell and suffrage campaigner and activistSylvia Pankhurst;[68] and several panoramas and views of London such as theRhinebeck Panorama, an 180° aerial view made around 1806, looking west from where Tower Bridge stands today.[69]
The London Museum has collected around 150,000 photographs focussing on everyday life in London. The earliest example dates from c.1845 and shows a view of the then-newly openedHungerford Bridge taken byHenry Fox Talbot. Other photographs include views of London dating back to c.1855 byRoger Fenton;Bill Brandt's series taken inside World War IIair raid shelters; scenes of the building of the first line of what is now the London Underground transport network; pictures of suffragette protests taken by pioneering female photographerChristina Broom; and works by British photographerHenry Grant. The largest work in this collection is acamera obscura print made byVera Lutter showingBattersea Power Station, at 7 feet (2.1m) high.[70]
In 2003, the museum opened the Museum in Docklands (later renamed the Museum of London Docklands and thenLondon Museum Docklands) in a 19th-century grade I listed warehouse nearCanary Wharf on theIsle of Dogs.[93] The London Museum Docklands charts the history of London as a port, beginning 2,000 years ago with the Roman trading post set up on the banks of the Thames and following London's expansion into the biggest port the world had ever known.[94] In November 2007, it opened the capital's first permanent gallery examining London's involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, "London, Sugar & Slavery".[95]
Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) is an archaeology and built heritage practice that was originally part of the Museum of London, but became an independent charity in November 2011, regulated by the Charity Commission for England and Wales.[96] It employs 310 staff[97] and works not just in London, but across the UK and internationally. It is based at Mortimer Wheeler House in Shoreditch.[98]
The London Museum and London Museum Docklands are part of the same group. Since 1 April 2008, the museum has been jointly controlled and funded by theCity of London Corporation and theGreater London Authority. Prior to this, the museum had been jointly controlled by the City of London and theDepartment for Culture, Media and Sport. It is headed by a director.
Media related toMuseum of London at Wikimedia Commons
