|
The East End boasts a trio of fascinating museums dispersed across a wide area, all of them open to the public free of charge. The easiest one to get to is the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood (daily 10am-5.50pm, closed Fri; free; www.vam.ac.uk), situated opposite Bethnal Green tube station. The open-plan, wrought-iron hall, originally part of (and still a branch of) the V&A museum, was transported here in the 1860s to bring art to the East End. The variety of exhibits means that there's something here for everyone from three to ninety-three, but the museum's most frequent visitors are children - that said, the displays are not very hands-on. The ground floor is best known for its unique collection of antique dolls' houses dating back to 1673. You'll need a pile of 20p pieces with you to work the automata - Wallace the Lion gobbling up Albert is always a favourite. Elsewhere, there are puppets, a jumble of toys, a vast doll collection and excellent temporary exhibitions. To the south of the Mile End Road, on Copperfield Road, the Ragged School Museum (Wed & Thurs 10am-5pm, first Sun of month 2-5pm; free; www.ics-london.co.uk/rsm; tube Tube: Mile End) occupies a Victorian canalside warehouse. From 1877 to 1908, this was the largest of London's numerous Ragged Schools established by Dr Thomas Barnardo , and provided free education and two meals daily to kids from the local slums. Upstairs, there's a reconstructed Victorian schoolroom, where period-dressed teachers, cane in hand, take today's schoolkids through the rigours of a Victorian lesson; on the top floor you can learn to make a rag rug and take part in wash day. The Geffrye Museum (Tues-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun noon-5pm; free; www.geffr ye-museum.org.uk), set back from Kingsland Road in a peaceful little enclave of eighteenth-century ironmongers' almshouses, is essentially a furniture museum. A series of period living rooms, ranging from the oak-panelled seventeenth century through refined Georgian and cluttered Victorian, leads to the state-of-the-art New Gallery Extension, housing the excellent twentieth-century section and a pleasant cafe/restaurant. To get to the museum, take bus #149 or #242 from Liverpool Street tube.
Your Tip for East End museums
Help other backpackers! Write your own guides and backpacking tips to East End museums - they will appear instantly on this page - Please only write a tip/guide to East End museums - visit the main East End museums forum to ask a question!
Please do not post links to your site here (they won't work) - please use the East End museums webguide section below! Thanks.
|
