Museum of London

After paying a visit to Postman’s Park, I headed over to the Museum of London. You enter via an escalator on the right of the road and then across a walkway. Entrance is free, though I did buy a “Highlights” book for £5. The Museum traces the history of London from before the city itself existed right up to the present day.

I didn’t take many photos of the prehistoric/Roman age as understandably a lot of the artifacts were under glass that didn’t photograph particularly well. The Museum is surprisingly large however and there were plenty of other areas to take photographs.

Some of my highlights were the section on the Great Fire of London, The Victorian Walk and Medieval London. Wandering around the Victorian Walk was especially enjoyable – it’s a street of shops and businesses constructed from original Victorian shop fronts and buildings that were saved from destruction. Included is a pub, a tobacconists, a bank office and a toy shop. It really does evoke the period very well – sounds of a bustling London street are played in the background and as it was one of the least crowded areas of the museum I could easily believe myself transported back in time.

There was also an interesting, though brief, section on the Suffragette movement including (not pictured), Emmeline Pankhurst’s hunger strike medal from 1912.

Fun culture items are on display too such as these Bill and Ben the Flower Pot Men puppets

and a brief section on the London 2012 Olympics.

The most impressive single exhibition however has to be that of the Lord Mayor’s Coach. Commissioned in 1757 it is still used every year at the annual Lord Mayor’s Show as the newly elected Lord Mayor parades through the streets of London.

I really enjoyed the museum, there’s plenty to see and do, and I can’t help but feel it gets a little overlooked because it’s not as immediately well-known as other London museums (I was nearly guilty of this myself). There are also other rotating exhibitions as well as the permanent collections – whilst I was there they had a very nice exhibition on Michael Caine and I am definitely going to pop in and visit their Cheapside Hoard Exhibition which opens in October 2013. It’s the first time that the entirety of the hoard of priceless jewels, found buried in a cellar in Cheapside in 1912, will have ever been on display so if you needed another excuse to visit, that will definitely be it.