A visit to the Geffrye Museum in London

I last visited the Geffrye Museum in around 1972 and have been meaning to go back ever since! Finally, last week I made it. It is on the Kingsland Road in London next to Hoxton Overground and not far from Hoxton Square. Walking along from Old Street tube station it  is hard to believe that the museum is there. The road is busy, noisy and yet when you turn into the gates and look at the green area in front of the 18th century almshouses and the beautiful plane trees it is like entering a different world. The gardens are a lovely place to relax and sit. The London plane trees, replacing pleached lime trees, were planted in the 19th century and remain there today.

The museum opened in 1914 and was mainly used for the display of period furniture related to the local furniture industry. It was owned by the London County Council at that time. It now consists of a number of period rooms from the 1600s to the present day. Since the 1990s it has been owned by an independent charitable trust and has been extended and the gardens around the back of the museum have been developed. The period living rooms are designed to show how the urban middle classes lived from the 1600s to the1990s. The museum is free to enter and there are only charges for special exhibitions.

There is information on fabrics, floor coverings, furniture and all aspects of social history as well as quizzes for younger children. The more modern rooms are very nostalgic and often have familiar plates or other objects in them. The cafe,which I can recommend overlooks a very attractive herbaceous border which has Hoxton overground station just behind it.
Around the back of the almshouses is a herb garden which has places to sit and there are period gardens as well. The Victorian garden had a pyramid of red pelargoniums which looked quite dramatic and was based on a design from the time. The gardens are open from April to October. The wooden extension in the picture below is a garden reading room where there are books for you to read or look at. At Christmas the period rooms are decorated accordingly. I will try not to leave it so long before visiting again.