Off to London... (part 2)

On my second day in the big city I ventured to Hoxton on the Overground, to go and visit the Geffrye Museum. Described as a museum of homes and gardens, the Geffrye is based around a series of period rooms, ordered chronologically to show how people’s living spaces changed over time. In recent years, these indoor rooms have been complemented with corresponding garden rooms, coving much the same time period.

Things I learned about the Geffrye Museum.

1.      No picnics allowed. The period gardens are seen as very much part of the museum, to be treated and experienced in the same way. Unlike in other (larger) museum gardens, this is not a place to run and play, but to stroll and look, just as you would inside.

The eighteenth century garden

2.      BUT the front lawn is used, and is intended to be, as a social space. Here people (not just museum visitors) gather to sunbathe, chat, eat, play.

3.      It is this green space, rather than the eighteenth century almshouses that the museum is housed in, that saved the site from being demolished. In the early twentieth century the residents were moved out of the almshouses and the area was destined for being built on to provide housing, but the Metropolitan Gardens Association argued that the green space was very important for the local area and community, and it was saved.

4.      The indoor rooms are created from probate inventories, looking at existing rooms, and trying to re-create a generic room from the period. The collecting policy is based around this research. They are not re-created real rooms, but a general idea. The principle is the same in the gardens, they are not reconstructions of a garden that existed, not measured out like London gardens, but the available space is used to interpret the styles of the times.

The herb garden, with Hoxton station in the background. The museum garden provide a little haven in such a busy urban area.

5.      The mixed veg soup in the cafe is full of mushrooms. I do not like mushrooms, I cannot even make myself eat them when I’m trying to be a grown up. The waiter gave me a very strange look when I explained this to him when he came to take away my bowl, empty apart from a pile of carefully avoided mushrooms!