BLOG
Londony stuff.
|
Back in January, I shared a blog on five small London museums that you might not have visited - and it turns out plenty of you had your own favourites to add. Here are my top picks from your suggestions: a mix of the immersive, the unexpected and the easily overlooked. If you’re looking to go a little beyond London’s usual museum circuit, these are well worth your time.  Dennis Severs House Step through the front door of Dennis Severs House and you don’t so much enter a museum as trespass into an imagined family’s 18th and 19th-century life. This narrow Georgian townhouse in Spitalfields was the extraordinary creation of Dennis Severs, an American artist who, in the late 1970s, began conjuring the home of a Huguenot silk-weaving family from thin air. Room by room, floor by floor, he staged their existence and their imagined journey from prosperity to poverty. The house is a living, breathing illusion. Half-drunk cups of tea, unmade beds and lingering scents leave you with the unsettling sense that you’ve arrived moments after the occupants slipped out. It’s theatre without actors, immersive without gimmickry, and entirely unlike anywhere else in London. You won’t just see it – you’ll feel it. Leighton House and Sambourne House Visit Leighton House and Sambourne House and you’ll come away with a fuller picture of Victorian London lives – from the inside. Just a short walk apart in Kensington, these two former homes offer sharply contrasting takes on how the era’s creative figures lived, worked and presented themselves. Leighton House, once home to enigmatic artist Frederic Leighton, is designed to impress. Best known for the Arab Hall, with its intricate tiles, golden mosaics and central fountain, the house is full of bold, decorative choices, from the grand studio to the richly detailed interiors. It’s a space built with visitors and guests in mind, reflecting both artistic ambition and social standing. A few minutes away, Sambourne House tells a quieter story. This is the former home of Punch cartoonist Edward Linley Sambourne and his family, and it has been preserved almost exactly as it was around 1900. The rooms are densely layered with patterned wallpapers, photographs, books and everyday objects, offering a clear sense of how the house functioned as a family home. Seen together, the two make an ideal double bill.   Foundling Museum Tucked away in Bloomsbury, the Foundling Museum sits on the site of the Foundling Hospital, established in 1739 as the UK’s first home for children at risk of abandonment. What began as a radical social experiment, caring for and raising foundlings, became one of the most significant charitable institutions in Georgian London. Today, the museum brings that history to life through a mix of art, objects and personal stories. There are moving reminders of the children themselves, including the tokens mothers left behind in the hope of one day reclaiming them, alongside works connected to early supporters like William Hogarth and George Frideric Handel. If you’re interested in London’s social history, or just want something a little different from the usual circuit, it’s well worth seeking out.  The Old Operating Theatre Hidden away in the attic of a church near London Bridge, the Old Operating Theatre is one of the city’s more unusual museums. Dating back to the early 19th century, it’s the oldest surviving surgical theatre in Europe. Originally used to treat patients from St Thomas’ Hospital before the age of anaesthetics and antiseptics, it is reached via a narrow spiral staircase and feels a world away from modern London. The space itself is small and stark, with wooden benches rising steeply around an operating table where students once gathered to watch procedures carried out in full view. The surrounding garret rooms display surgical instruments, herbs and medical equipment, giving a clear sense of how medicine was practised at the time. It’s not for the squeamish, but it is fascinating - offering a direct, unvarnished look at the realities of early surgery, and a perspective on how far things have come.   London Canal Museum
Tucked into a former ice warehouse near King’s Cross, the London Canal Museum offers a different perspective on the city’s history - one shaped by water rather than streets. Set alongside the Regent’s Canal, it explores the working life of London’s waterways, from the days when canals were vital transport routes to the quieter, more recreational role they play today. The museum focuses on the people and industries that depended on the canals. There are narrowboats to step aboard, displays on cargo and trade, as well as a look at the building’s own past storing imported ice from Norway. It’s compact but well put together, and easy to pair with a walk along the towpath outside. If you’re curious about how goods and communities once moved through the city, it’s a worthwhile stop just off the usual King’s Cross route. I did a video about the ice cream pioneer of Regent’s Canal, Carlo Gatti, and his link to the Canal Museum. Head here to find out more: https://www.tiktok.com/@bowlofchalk/video/7476362546652450070 Two more for the road For something a little off the main circuit, Van Gogh House in Stockwell offers an intimate look at the artist’s early London life, with a small but thoughtful programme of exhibitions. And out in Ealing, Pitzhanger Manor, designed by Sir John Soane, pairs restored historic interiors with contemporary art. Both offer a quieter, more personal alternative to the city’s bigger-name attractions.
0 Comments
If you start noticing London’s public statues and busts (and you absolutely should), you’ll quickly realise something. There are a lot of men. In fact, around 90% of London’s public statues are of men. There are reportedly more statues of named animals in the capital than there are of real or non-mythical women. So, in honour of International Women’s Day, here’s a wander through some of the brilliant women who have made it onto London’s plinths. It’s not exhaustive. But it’s a start. Queen Victoria – The Reigning Champion of Plinth Space If there were an award for “Most Statues in London”, Queen Victoria would win it without breaking a sweat. She has twelve statues in the capital alone. Ten of them are full-length public sculptures. The most famous, of course, is the vast Victoria Memorial outside Buckingham Palace. Whatever you think of the Victorian era, Victoria certainly cornered the market in commemorative stone.  Millicent Fawcett – Courage Calls to Courage Everywhere In 2018, history shifted slightly in Parliament Square. For the first time, a statue of a woman was installed there: Millicent Fawcett. A leading figure in the suffrage movement, Fawcett campaigned for women’s voting rights for over sixty years, favouring debate and persistence over militancy. She’s depicted holding a banner reading: “Courage calls to courage everywhere” - words she spoke after the death of Emily Davison. Fittingly, the statue was created by Turner Prize winning artist, Gillian Wearing - the first statue in Parliament Square made by a woman, too. Read more here.  Florence Nightingale - The Lady with the Lamp A pioneer of modern nursing, Florence Nightingale led teams during the Crimean War, transformed hospital hygiene, and revolutionised medical statistics. Her statue at Waterloo Place shows her as the “Lady with the Lamp”, the nickname earned during her night-time rounds tending to wounded soldiers. There’s another at St Thomas’ Hospital - fittingly close to where generations of nurses have trained in her shadow.  Mary Seacole – A Long Overdue Tribute Installed in 2016 in the grounds of St Thomas’ Hospital, the statue of Mary Seacole honours the Scottish-Jamaican nurse who set up the “British Hotel” during the Crimean War - part convalescent home, part morale-boosting haven. Posthumously voted first in a poll of “100 Great Black Britons”, Seacole’s recognition was long overdue. Noor Inayat Khan – Spy, Hero, Storyteller In Gordon Square Gardens stands a bust of Noor Inayat Khan, the British-Indian Special Operations Executive agent who worked undercover in occupied France during WWII. Captured, tortured, and executed at Dachau in 1944, she was posthumously awarded the George Cross. Her memorial stands close to the Bloomsbury home where she once lived - a quiet square honouring extraordinary courage.  Virginia Woolf – Bloomsbury’s Literary Rebel In Tavistock Square you’ll find a bronze bust of Virginia Woolf. Modernist. Feminist. Literary rule-breaker. A born and bred Londoner and a central figure in the Bloomsbury Group, Woolf lived in the area for over three decades. The bust, unveiled in 2004, quietly marks her long connection with Bloomsbury - a neighbourhood that helped reshape 20th-century culture.  Boudicca – Destroyer of Roman London At the north entrance to Westminster Bridge stands one of London’s most dramatic sculptures: a larger than life-size bronze statue of Boudicca and her daughters in a rearing chariot. Positioned opposite Parliament and close to the Palace of Westminster, there’s a neat irony here: she once led the rebellion that burned Roman London to the ground. Ada Lovelace – Look Up! Always look up in London. On Horseferry Road, high on a modern apartment building, stands Ada Lovelace. Lovelace is celebrated mathematician and technology pioneer, at a time when few women entered those fields. Often described as the world’s first computer programmer for her work with Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine. Today she’s become a symbol for women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM).  Amy Winehouse – Camden’s Daughter In Camden Market stands a bronze of British singer and songwriter, Amy Winehouse, forever mid-stride, hair piled high. Music fans and tourists pose with, and celebrate, the beloved late singer in her former stomping ground of Camden - the part of town where Winehouse also tragically died in 2011, aged 27. The statue was unveiled three years after her death. Mary Wollstonecraft – A Controversial Tribute When a memorial to Mary Wollstonecraft was unveiled on Newington Green in 2020, it caused debate. Rather than a conventional likeness, the sculpture, by Maggi Hambling, shows a silver female figure emerging from a swirl of forms. Its unveiling provoked a backlash from some who have queried the inclusion of a naked female figure. A radical and writer, Wollstonecraft, best known for ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman’ which is seen as one of the earliest feminist works for challenging the contemporary notions that women existed only to please men and championing women’s independence.  Edith Cavell – Duty Without Distinction Just off Trafalgar Square, in St Martin’s Place, stands the memorial to Edith Cavell. A British nurse from Norfolk, Cavell worked in German-occupied Belgium during the First World War. She treated wounded soldiers from both sides without distinction, because, to her, care came before politics. She also helped around 200 Allied soldiers escape. For that, she was arrested and executed by German firing squad in 1915. Her memorial bears the simple word: Humanity. Emmeline Pankhurst – Deeds, Not Words Walk into Victoria Tower Gardens from Parliament Square and you’re immediately greeted by an icon: Emmeline Pankhurst. Leader of the Women’s Social and Political Union, Pankhurst took a far more militant approach than Millicent Fawcett. Her rallying cry? “Deeds, not words.” The statue was unveiled in 1930 by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, just two years after women finally achieved equal voting rights with men. It stands within sight of Parliament. Which, to me, feels exactly right. Still a work in progress. Across the UK, only 2.7% of statues depict real, non-mythical, non-royal women. London is improving, albeit slowly, but it’s still a city of generals, politicians and bewhiskered Victorian gentlemen. So next time you’re out walking, look around, and notice who’s on the plinth - and who isn’t. |
Bowl Of ChalkBowl Of Chalk based shenanigans. Archives
April 2026
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed
