Geffrye Museum

The Geffrye Museum of the Home
Location of the Geffrye Museum in London
Established 1914
Location 136, Kingsland Road,
Shoreditch, London
Coordinates 51°31′54″N 0°04′36″W / 51.531742°N 0.076630°W
Visitors 103,000 a year
Director David Dewing
Website

Founded in 1914, the Geffrye Museum is a museum specialising in the history of the English domestic interior.[1] Named after Sir Robert Geffrye, a former Lord Mayor of London and Master of the Ironmongers' Company, it is located on Kingsland Road in Shoreditch, London. The main body of the museum is housed in the Grade I-listed almshouses of the Ironmongers' Company, built in 1714 thanks to a bequest by Geffrye.[2] The museum was extended in 1998 with an innovative yet architecturally sympathetic new wing designed by Branson Coates Architects.[3]

The museum shows the changing style of the English domestic interior in a series of eleven displayed period rooms from 1600 to the present day. The emphasis is on the furnishings, pictures, and ornaments of the urban middle classes of London.[4]

The museum routinely holds exhibitions and seminars, both in the museum itself and in its walled herb garden. An annual event is the Christmas Past exhibition, which sees rooms of each period adorned as they would have been at Christmas.[5]

In addition, the museum has some eighteenth and nineteenth-century almshouse rooms on display, showing part of the building in its original guise as accommodation for the deserving poor.[6]

In 2011 the Geffrye Museum secured funding of £13.2million from the Heritage Lottery Fund to build an extension which is due to open in 2015.[7]

Transport connections

Service Station/Stop Lines/Routes served
London Buses London Buses Hoxton Station / Geffrye Museum 67, 149, 242, 243, 394
London Overground London Underground Hoxton London Overground

References

  1. ↑ Rhonda Siddall, '5 family days out in London this winter', in The Times (London newspaper), 15 December 2008
  2. ↑ Paula Deitz, 'A Furnished Time Machine', in The New York Times, 13 March 1988
  3. ↑ Ian McCurrach, 'Days Out: The Geffrye Museum, Shoreditch, London' in The Independent (London newspaper), 15 October 2006
  4. ↑ Paula Deitz, 'A Furnished Time Machine', in The New York Times, 13 March 1988
  5. ↑ K. C. Summers, 'Christmas in London', in The Washington Post (US newspaper), 9 October 2008
  6. ↑ Paula Deitz, 'A Furnished Time Machine', in The New York Times, 13 March 1988
  7. ↑ Julia Gregory, 'Shoreditch museum celebrates £500,000 building grant' in The Hackney Gazette (London newspaper), 11 May 2011

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Geffrye Museum.

Coordinates: 51°31′54.26″N 00°04′34.39″W / 51.5317389°N 0.0762194°W