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Whatever niche topic you’re into, London probably has a museum for it. There’s a museum dedicated to the post office, another one centred around gardening, one all about fans and others that are focused on Sigmund Freud, sewing machines, toys and vaginas. But among all of its weird and wonderful attractions, London still doesn’t have a museum dedicated to one of its most well-known and most catastrophic events – the Great Fire of London 1666.
That could soon change, though. Plans have been submitted to turn a disused toilet in the City of London into a mini-museum dedicated to the event. The toilet (built in the early 2000s) sits close to the Monument – the landmark that was erected in 1677 to commemorate the blaze – and resembles a glass box. At the moment, there isn’t enough space around the Monument to display detailed information about the fire, so the idea is that the new museum will supplement that.
Eastern City BID is the organisation behind the proposal, although its the City of London Corporation that actually owns the property. According to the plans, the new ‘micro-museum’ would house ‘interpretive material, displays, and digital content’ that’ll tell the story of the Monument and the Great Fire.
Proposed designs show colourful graphics all over the exterior of the building, but none of the designs are fully set in stone yet. At this stage, the priority is to get planning permission for change of use, then the concept can be developed properly.
The planning document reads: ‘The proposal will transform the existing space into a micro museum for the Monument to the Great Fire of London. It offers a great opportunity to provide a publicly accessible cultural space with unique historic interpretation of the Monument and it’s [sic] many layered stories. Big stories told, in a tiny space!’
Mapped: the Great Fire of London on top of the modern day city.
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