Housed in a set of Grade I-listed eighteenth-century almshouses and formerly known as the Geffrye Museum after their patron, the merchant and slave trader Sir Robert Geffrye, this lovely little Hoxton museum has for more than a century offered a vivid physical history of the English interior.
Having closed for two and a half years, the museum reopened in summer 2021 after an £18 million refurbishment that added 80 per cent more exhibition space, including a new lower-ground gallerya new lower-ground floor gallery and 80 per cent more exhibition space.
Displaying original furniture, paintings, textiles and decorative arts, the museum’s permanent Rooms Through Time exhibits display a sequence of typical middle-class living rooms based on real London homes dating from 1600 to the present. There’s a Victorian parlour set up to host a séance, a drawing room from 1915 decorated in the Arts & Crafts style, a parlour from the 1790s in which a family have seemingly been playing cards, and a loft-style Shoreditch apartment owned by a gay couple in 1998. It’s an oddly interesting way to take in domestic history, with any number of intriguing details to catch your eye, from a bell jar of stuffed birds to a particular decorative flourish on a chair.
On the ground floor you’ll find an airy café overlooking the lovely gardens, which feature a walled plot for herbs and the Gardens Through Time exhibit displaying a series in different historical garden styles.
The museum also hosts temporary exhibitions and art installations, and stages daily guided tours, as well as an eclectic events programme encompassing family fun days, film screenings, craft markets, creative workshops and performances.
Read about our favourite seven exhibits at the museum
