East London and the Museum of the Home

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Museum of the Home, formerly Geffrye Museum

Another excursion from our November 2022 London trip, a walk through East London from Whitechapel Art Gallery to the Museum of the Home following the route in Insight Guides’ Explore London which explains:

Where once were slums, race riots and Jack the Ripper are now art galleries, trendy bars and urban cool, while Canary Wharf, once the docks of Britain’s imperial trade, now houses the power-architecture of investment banks.

Yes, I guess we saw all that! Emerging from Aldgate East tube station from an exit underneath the former Passmore Edwards Library we admired the outside of the 1901 Whitechapel Gallery (into which the library was incorporated in 2009).

Passmore Edwards Library Building
Original 1901 building

We didn’t go in, but set off walking. In this first gallery are a view of London’s Financial District including the building at 30 St Mary Axe aka The Gherkin; a wall sign for Petticoat Lane Market, a centre for the rag trade for almost 400 years; Christ Church, Spitalfields, one of Nicholas Hawksmoor’s churches built between 1714 and 1729; and Ten Bells, the pub where Jack the Ripper allegedly eyed up his victims before murdering them.

A view of London’s financial district from Spitalfields
Entrance to ‘Petticoat Lane’
Christ Church, Spitalfields
Ten Bells, Spitalfields

We took a short wander round Spitalfields Market, once London’s wholesale fruit and vegetable market, now a much more upmarket creation. We didn’t buy anything, but admired the animal sculptures.

View of old Fruit & Wool Exchange from Spitalfields Market. Only the façade has been retained, new offices lie behind.
Kiasa
Maisha
Elephant group
Mukkoka
I Goat by Kenny Hunter
Christ Church from Spitalfields Market
Together Forever On Wheels

The sculpture of a dog and a rabbit on a Vespa, Together Forever on Wheels, is by Gillie and Marc, as are the elephants. They represent real elephants rescued by the Sheldrake Wildlife Trust. The goat is by Scottish sculptor Kenny Hunter.

The next part of our journey took us down Fournier Street, past fine houses built by Huguenots, originally a group of Protestant refugees from Catholic France, once they had grown wealthy from silk-weaving and silversmithing. We then turned onto Brick Lane, sometimes known as Curry Mile thanks to another immigrant community, this time from Bangladesh. The Old Truman Brewery now houses shops and restaurants.

Huguenot houses in Fournier Street
Huguenot houses in Fournier Street
Brick Lane
Old Truman Brewery
Old Truman Brewery
Old Truman Brewery

On Rivington Street we spotted a ghost sign above The Lighthouse Bar and Club. I could make out Cabinet Makers but had to Google for the rest – T & R Hollington. This area, Shoreditch, was the hub of the British furniture trade from the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries. The two little figures are in Hoxton Square, where playwright Ben Jonson killed Gabriel Spencer in a duel in 1598. The sculpture, created in 2020 by Stik, is called Holding Hands – that’s a much more supportive image to hold on to.

Ghost sign reads T&R Hollington Cabinet Makers
Holding Hands by Stik

We then passed Shoreditch Town Hall before arriving at our final destination.

Shoreditch Town Hall
Progress

The Museum of the Home on Kingsland Road (see header photo as well as galleries below) is located in fourteen almshouses built in 1714 to provide free housing for elderly pensioners. The founder of the almshouses was Sir Robert Geffrye who, when he died in 1704, left most of his money to the Ironmongers’ Company to set them up. Much of his fortune derived from the slave trade – he was involved with both the East India Company and the Royal African Company. Perhaps the thought of the almshouses helped to salve his conscience?

The buildings became a museum of interior decoration in 1914 as a resource for workers in the East End furniture trade. Originally named the Geffrye Museum, it became the Museum of the Home in 2021 after over two years of refurbishment. However, Geffrye is still present – he requested that a monument to him and his wife should be placed in their local church after their deaths. This was later moved to the alsmhouse chapel. There is also a statue on the outside of the building which some wish to be removed, at least from the exterior.

Almshouse Chapel
Geffrye monumnet
Almshouse chapel – Apostle’s Creed
Almshouse chapel – Lord’s Prayer
Statue to Geffrye

The museum’s contents varied greatly from straightforward recreations of interiors of different periods …

Jacobean (?) interior
Drawing room in 1915

… to a variety of exhibits. As you might expect, I was particularly drawn to those which considered the role of women in the home. For example, I rather liked this ironic (I hope!) explanation of What Ladies Do.

What Ladies Do
What Ladies Do

I also liked the selection of posters from the See Red Women’s Workshop which operated from 1974 to 1990 as a silk-screening collective to promote the Women’s Liberation Movement. And given my earlier post on Pepys, I was delighted to find a quotation from his diary (though not so delighted with the content).

See Red Women’s Workshop 1974-1990
Quotation from Pepys

We toured the period gardens behind the museum.

Period gardens
Period gardens

And when we had finished our visit, we found everything beautifully lit up, including the neon sculpture Laxmi by Chila Kumari Singh Burman depicting the Hindu goddess of wealth and purity.

Laxmi by Chila Kumari Singh Burman
Laxmi by Chila Kumari Singh Burman
Evening lights
Evening lights
Evening lights

Handily, Laxmi was at the museum’s Hoxton Station entrance, so it was a quick step from there onto a train and back to our hotel after a very enjoyable visit.

England, UK , , ,

72 Comments »

  4. I’ve just seen this post Anabel and loved it. We always go back to London when we visit. I was born in Shoreditch and my mum and dad Stepney Green and Bethnal Green
    I love those houses in Fournier Street. I haven’t been to that museum so will definitely put that on my list. I’ve also taken many of those photos 😊

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  5. I’ve wandered around there myself a few times when visiting the Whitechapel Gallery. I love that Arts and Crafts style former Library building now incorporated into the gallery. I usually wander up to Hawksmoor’s Christ Church at Spitalfields, another favourite (as are all his churches – Christ’s Church is less weird than most of them, though) and the market across the road – both in your post.
    I’ve never bumped into Jack the Ripper, though.

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  7. Fournier Street is one of my favourite streets in London. I love the architecture and have always wanted to take a sneaky peek inside the houses. I hadn’t realised the Geffrye Museum had a new name and had undergone an extensive refurbishment. The previous incarnation was fascinating, but I’ll have to add the Museum of Home to my ever-growing list of places I need to visit in London as it looks great.

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  11. Thanks for taking me to a part of London I don’t really know (except Canary Wharf). What a fascinating museum. There’s so much to see in London, it could take a lifetime!

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  13. I love the sculpture of a dog and a rabbit on a Vespa, Together Forever on Wheels. And the all lit up Hindu goddess of wealth. It looks like you saw a lot in London and enjoyed the beautiful fall weather.

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  14. Not sure what’s wrong with what ladies do… am I missing something? Mind you you do hope it’s ironic but probably not.
    You certainly picked out some good features on your wanderings. Love the Stik and Lakmi sculptures.

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  16. Interesting walk. Large cities always have plenty to see in them away from the usual tourist hot-spots. I always liked the Gherkin when you could still see it sitting in splendid isolation. I still like it but it’s now swamped by all the newer and higher architectural monstrosities clustered around it. Bob. BSS.

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  20. That was another great tour of so many interesting and unheard of ( by me ) places. Love all the sculptures you found and the Ladies poem and Pepys diary entry made me snort with laughter. The museum looks lovely all lit up. X

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  22. Thank you for the wonderful tour around a part of London that I’ve never been too! So many interesting things and places to see. Good to see that Mrs Pepys had a fighting spirit! I looked up ‘pricklouse’ …means a ‘tailor’ or ‘lousy person’! Pepys’s dad was a tailor!

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  26. Your walk took you along some of my favourite London streets and as Margaret mentions above, we were there together quite recently 🙂 And of course I love the Spitalfields elephants, having visited the orphanage a few years ago! But it’s many years since I was at the Geffrye Museum, certainly not since its reopening (and renaming) – you’ve reminded me that I owe it a visit!

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  29. Thank you for the views of Spitalfields – the setting of a novel I have just finished reading! It is well worth reading about the origins of the Sheldrake Wildlife Trust. They do wonderful work. I am impressed with those elephant sculptures.

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  30. So much of interest here. The Museum of the Home looks lovely in your first photo. I love the elephants and the neon Laxmi, and the dog and rabbit sculpture looks very quirky. I like the quotation from Pepys’ diary, the name his wife called him made me laugh – that must surely have been the ultimate insult in those days 🙂

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