London Museums

Bank of England Museum

The Bank of England, in the heart of the City of London, was established in 1694 to provide William III with finance to fight the French.  Over the years the bank grew to become Britain's central bank, with the authority to print and issue currency notes. 

The museum, within the Bank of England itself, covers the 300 years of the bank's history.  The museum centres on the a reconstruction of Soane's Bank Stock Office of 1793, complete with waxwork figures in period costume.  The Bank Stock Office is considered to be the finest neo-classical interior in Europe.   The museum illustrates the work of the Bank of England and the story of England's financial system using interactive videos and displays, including a modern dealing desk. 

Threadneedle Street,  EC2R 8AH  Tel: 020 7601 5491

Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood

Britain's only museum highlighting the life of children through the centuries and houses one of the largest and most fascinating collections of children's toys in the country. The ground floor is full of delightful playthings, ranging from dolls' houses, games and teddy bears, to toy soldiers and trains, dating from the 17th century to the present day.

Cambridge Heath Road, London, E2 9PA Tel: 020 8980 2415

Bramah Tea and Coffee Museum

Everything you ever wanted to know about the importation and consumption of tea and coffee in the UK. The museum tells the commercial and social 400 year old history of two of the world's most important commodities since their arrival in Europe from the Far East and Africa.

The Clove Building, 40 Southwark  St, SE1 1UN   Tel: 020 7403 5650  Email

British Museum

With over 4 million exhibits this is Britain's most popular museum  The British Museum, founded in 1753, contains world-famous collections of antiquities from Egypt, Western Asia, Greece and Rome, as well as Prehistoric and Romano-British, Medieval, Renaissance, Modern and Oriental collections; Prints and Drawings; Coins, Medals and Banknotes. The Museum’s collections number some six-and-a-half million objects ranging in size from shreds to colossal statues. The collections are maintained both for exhibition and as a research resource for some 30,000 enquiries from professional academics, school-children, tourists each year. The Museum site covers 5.4 hectares. The main building has six main levels and a number of mezzanines - there are 94 permanent and temporary exhibition galleries displaying Museum objects covering some 18,415m.

Great Russell St, WC1B 3DG  Tel: 020 7580 1788   Email

Cabaret Mechanical Theatre

A baffling collection of wooden automata, some of which are for sale.Nearly all of the work in the theatre is humourous. As well as the smaller machines in the theatre there are about 20 coin-operated, larger scale pieces. It is also a shop selling handmade automata, mechanical wooden kits and card cutouts, books and videos. We sell via mail order and the internet to customers all over the world.

33-34 The Market, Covent Garden, WC2E 8RE Tel:020 8516 3134  Email

Cabinet War Rooms & The Churchill Museum

The underground rooms used by Winston Churchill and the War Cabinet during World War II. The museum is dedicated to life of Winston Churchill, is a permanent exhibition housed within the unique setting of the historic Cabinet War Rooms. Entry tickets will admit visitors to both the Cabinet War Rooms and the Churchill Museum.

Clive Steps King Charles Street SW1A 2AQ    Tel: (0171) 930 6961

Church Farmhouse Museum

A 17th century farmhouse with Victorian period furnished rooms. The museum holds four exhibitions each year. Admission is free
 
Greyhound Hill, Hendon, NW4 4JR    Tel: 020 8203 0130  Email

Clink Prison

A harrowing vision of prisons of the past from the gaol that gave us the term 'the clink'.

1 Clink Street, London, SE1 9DG Tel: 020 7403 0900

Design Museum

Sir Terence Conran inspired museum 'demonstrates the social, cultural and economic reasons for design'.

Shad Thames, London, SE1 2YD Tel: 0870 909 9009

Dickens House Museum

The world's most important collection of material relating to the great Victorian novelist and social commentator. The only surviving London home of Dickens (from 1837 until 1839) was opened as a Museum in 1925 and is still welcoming visitors from all over the world in an authentic and inspiring surrounding

48 Doughty Street, London, WC1N 2LF   Tel: 020 7405 2127

Freud Museum

Museum in house where Sigmund Freud once lived and practised psychoanalysis

20 Maresfield Gardens, London, NW3 5SX  Tel: 020 7435 2002   Email

The Geffrye Museum

One of London’s best-loved museums. It shows the changing style of the English domestic interior in a series of period rooms from 1600 to the present day
 
Kingsland Road,  E2 8EA  Tel: 020 7739 9893  Email

Handel House Museum

Home to the baroque composer George Frideric Handel from 1723 until his death in 1759. It was here that he composed some of the greatest music in history, including Messiah, Zadok the Priest and Fireworks Music. The Museum celebrates Handel's life and works, displaying portraits of Handel and his contemporaries in finely restored Georgian interiors and bringing live music back to his house.

25 Brook Street, Mayfair W1K 4HB Tel: 020 7495 1685   Email

Horniman Museum

Victorian tea trader Frederick John Horniman began collecting specimens and artefacts from around the World in the 1860's. The Museum opened in 1901. The original collections comprised natural history specimens, cultural artefacts and musical instruments. Over the last 100 years the Museum has added significantly to the original bequest.

100 London Road, Forest Hill, SE23 3PQ  Tel: 020 8699 1872   Email

Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons

On 21 December 2002 the Hunterian and Odontological Museums closed to all visitors for two years for major refurbishment work. The collections previously housed in these two museums will be brought together to form a new public museum through the Hunterian Museum Project. The new Hunterian Museum is scheduled to open in February 2005.  The new project will deliver a publicly accessible museum that encourages a wider audience to explore the scientific, cultural and historical importance of the museum collections. The project will enable a greater number and more diverse range of visitors to share the wealth of material that has been a source of inspiration to surgeons, scientists and artists for over two hundred years.

35 – 43 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, WC2A 3PE  Tel: 020 7869 6560   Email

Imperial War Museum

Extensive war museum on the site of the infamous Bedlam lunatic asylum. From the First World War to the present day. It seeks to provide for, and to encourage, the study and understanding of the history of modern war and ‘war-time experience’.

Lambeth Road   SE1 6HZ  Tel: 020 7416 5320   Email

Dr Johnson's House

Built in 1700, it was a home and workplace for Samuel Johnson from 1748-1759, and it was here that he  compiled the first comprehensive English Dictionary.  Now restored to its original  condition, the house contains panelled rooms, a pine staircase, and a collection of period furniture, prints and portraits

17 Gough Square, London, EC4A 3DE  Tel: 020 7353 3745   Email

Leighton House Museum   

The House was the home of Frederic, Lord Leighton, (1830-1896), the great classical painter and President of the Royal Academy. The house was built between 1864-79 to designs by George Aitchison, the house was extended and embellished over the next thirty years, evolving into Leighton's private palace of art

Holland Park Road, Kensington, W14 8LZ  Tel: 020 7602 3316   Email

London Canal Museum

At London Canal Museum you can see inside a narrowboat cabin, learn about the history of London's canals, about the cargoes carried, the people who lived and worked on the waterways, and the horses that pulled their boats.

12-13 New Wharf Road, N1 9RT. Tel: 020 7713 0836  Email

London Transport Museum

Uncover over 200 years of London's public transport with displays of buses, trains, trams and trollybuses and a regular programme of exhibitions and events. Buses, trains and trams abound in child friendly environment

Covent Garden Piazza, WC2E 7BB Tel: 020 7565 7299   Email

Museum of Docklands

Opened iin 2002 and is in an early-19th century warehouse. The museum shows the history of London's river, port and it's people The story goes from Roman times, through medieval times to it's role as the home port of the British Empire, the bombings of WWII and it's recent regeneration

No 1 Warehouse, West India Quay, Hertsmere road, E14 4AL  Tel: 0870 444 3857   Email

The Museum of Garden History
 
The world's first Museum of Garden History is at the restored church of St Mary-at-Lambeth next to Lambeth Palace, the London residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury just across from the Tate Gallery and Palace of Westminster. The museum collections fall into 3 main areas: tools, ephemera and library.

Lambeth Palace Road, SE17 7LB  Tel: 020 7401 8865   Email

Museum of London
 
The largest, most comprehensive city museum in the world, telling the fascinating story of London from prehistoric times to the present day. All vividly displayed in text, pictures and exhibits.

London Wall, EC2Y 5HN Tel: 0870 444 3852   Email

Natural History Museum

Housed in one of the most beautiful buildings in London, both inside and out, this museum should be top of your list particularly if you are visiting with your family. Children love the full size moving dinosaur displays and clamber to experience the earthquake simulator. The museum has played an important part in expanding our understanding of the natural world. The Earth Galleries, adjacent to the main museum provide a grounding in physical geography and geology

Cromwell Road, South Kensington SW7 5BD  Tel: 020 7942 5000

Florence Nightingale Museum

The Museum is situated inside St Thomas' Hospital and devoted to the world's most famous nurse. Such was gratitude for Florence Nightingale's Crimea War work that a public subscription raised the equivalent of £2m before anyone knew how the money would be spent. It gives a revealing portrait of the 'mother of all nurses' Nightingale and the history of nursing in general.

St Thomas's Hospital, 2 Lambeth Palace Road, SE1 7EW Tel: 020 7620 0374  Email

Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art

London's largest collection of Chinese artefacts

53 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD  Tel: 020 7387 3909   Email

Petrie Museum

A University of London museum. It was set up as a teaching resource for the Department of Egyptian Archaeology and Philology at University College London (UCL). Both the department and the museum were created in 1892 through the bequest of the writer Amelia Edwards (1831-1892).  She donated her collection of several hundred Egyptian antiquities, many of historical importance. However, the collection grew to international stature in scope and scale thanks mainly to the extraordinary excavating career of the first Edwards Professor, William Flinders Petrie (1853-1942).

University College London,  Malet Place, WC1E 6BT Tel: 020 7679 2884   Email

Royal Observatory, National Maritime
Museum & Queen's House

The Maritime Geenwich is a World Heritage site set in Greenwich Park and comprises three distinct sites: the Maritime Museum which houses the central maritime displays and the library  the 17th-century Queen's House; and the Old Royal Observatory built in the reign of Charles II as the home and workplace of the Astronomers Royal.

The Observatory defines the prime meridian of longitude as 0º. You can see the Astronomer Royal’s appartments, the 1833 time ball and Harrison’s timekeepers.

The museum has 20 galleries that follow Britain’s history of seafaring. The queen’s house is Inigo Jone’s first classical house in England and designed by him for Anne of Denmark. The house has fine art displays with porraits and seascapes.

Park Row, Greenwich SE10 9NF   Tel: 020 8858 4422  

The Science Museum

Scope impressive, letdown by piecemeal refurbishment. The Museum contains more than 10,000 exhibits from the nation's collection ranging from the Panhard et Lavassor car to the Apollo 10 Command module

Exhibition Road, South Kensington, SW7 2DD   Tel: 0870 870 4868

Sir John Soane's Museum

One of the most unusual museums in London, the museum is the former home of the famous architect Sir John Soane. The house has been left exactly as it was when his wife died in 1815 and has attracted students and curious tourists ever since. If you want a museum off the tourist trail, this is the ideal attraction for you.

13 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, WC2A 3BP   Tel: 0207 405 2107   Email

Museum of the Order of St John

The Museum of the Order of St. John is found inside St. John’s Gate, built in 1504 and once the entrance to the Knights’ English Priory. Treasures on show include arms and armour, a 15th century Flemish altar piece and decorative drug jars from the monks’ pharmacy. On the tour, visitors see fine collections of painting, furniture and silver from the order’s time on Malta, and the Library which contains manuscripts dating back to the 12th century.
  
St. John's Gate St. John's Lane Clerkenwell EC1M 4DA  Tel. 020 7324 4070

Theatre Museum

The National Museum of the Performing Arts. The Museum is situated in the heart of Theatrelan and houses the world's largest collection of material relating to performance. Interactive exhibitions on the British stage and its stars from Shakespeare's time to the present feature stage models, costumes, paintings, prints and audio-visual displays, with reconstructions of early theatres including the 1614 Globe.

Russell Street, Covent Garden, WC2E 7PA Tel: 020 7943 4700   Email

Victoria & Albert Museum

The V&A is the world's greatest museum of art and design.  Whether your passion is glass, ceramics, sculpture, textiles, silver, fashion or photography there's something for you - and don't miss the magnificent British Galleries 1500-1900.   Admission to the V&A is free. A separate charge may apply to some special exhibitions and events.

Cromwell Road South Kensington  SW7 2RL  Tel: 020 7942 2000   Email

Wallace Collection

Both a national museum and a prestigious private collection of art bequeathed by Lady Wallace in 1897, this attraction features one of the world's best collections of French 18th-century pictures, porcelain and furniture, plus a fantastic array of 17th-century paintings with works by Titian, Poussin, Rembrandt and Rubens.

Hertford House, Manchester Square, London, W1M 6BN Tel: 020 7563 9500   Email

Wellington Museum

Contained in the home to the first Duke of Wellington in one of London’s finest houses,  ten restored rooms are open to the public as the Wellington Museum.
It has  sumptuous interiors and house the Duke's collection of paintings, silver, porcelain and sculpture and was recently voted London Tourist Board Small Visitor Attraction of the Year 2001

Hyde Park Corner, W1J 9NT  Tel: 020 7499 5676

Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum

Comprehensive exhibition covering the entire history of English tennis set within Centre Court.

All England Club, Church Road, Wimbledon, SW19 5AE  Tel: 020 8946 6131