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Freud Museum

Address: | 20 Maresfield Gardens, Hampstead, NW3 5SX |
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Phone: | 020-7435 2002 |
Website: | |
Opening times: | Wed–Sun 12:00–17:00 |
How to get there: | Tube: Finchley Road |
Entry fee: | Admission charge |
Additional information: | Shop |
In June 1938 Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), the father of psychoanalysis, was forced by Nazi oppression to leave his native Vienna. An anglophile, with a son already living in St John’s Wood, he bought this relatively modern (1920s) house on a quiet tree-lined street of Victorian red-brick mansions in an area popular with Jewish refugees. After his death from cancer of the jaw in September 1939, his wife Martha and daughter Anna continued to occupy the house, keeping it much as it had been left by Freud. On Anna’s death in 1982, it was decided to open the house as a museum, which welcomed its first visitors in 1986. Ground floor In a sense, Freud himself was the first curator of the museum. In preparation for his arrival, the contents of his Viennese home were rearranged here as accurately as possible by his faithful housekeeper. The main room on the ground floor was his working library, where he completed Moses and Monotheism, began his Outline of Psychoanalysis, and continued to see patients until two months before his death. Along with the famous couch, given to him in fact before his development of the ‘talking cure’, while he was still a research neurologist, the centrepiece of the room is his desk and chair. The latter was purpose-built for Freud’s peculiar reading posture—he liked to study books with one knee slung over a chair arm—by architect friend Felix Augenfeld, with arms designed to double as leg rests. His large desk supports a massed array of Greek, Egyptian, Asian and Chinese statuettes and figurines. These form part of his extensive and important private collection of antiquities, carefully positioned in glass cabinets and in every available space around the room. They include Egyptian gods, goddesses and mummy masks, Bodhisattvas and Chinese buddhas (one a rare walking penitent), as well as Greek and Roman sculpture. (There are no explanatory labels because of the need to maintain the display exactly as it was known to the great man.) A small statue of Athena was the mascot of the family’s emigration to England, sent ahead for safe-keeping to Princess Marie Bonaparte in Paris before they left Vienna. While many of the sculptures are exceptional pieces in themselves, what makes them doubly interesting is their meaning for Freud: as Marina Warner says in the preface to the museum guide, they represent the ‘tools of thought’. Up the wide staircase from the hall, filled with natural light in a way that put Freud in mind of a palace, the stairwell is hung with screenprints specially commissioned for the museum by Patrick Caulfield, Cornelia Parker, Claes Oldenburg and other contemporary artists. Pride of place on the landing goes to a portrait sketch of Freud made from life by Salvador Dalí in 1938. Nearby, two paintings by the Wolfman (Russian aristocrat Sergei Pankejeff) depict the dream that gave the artist his name, showing wolves perched on the branches of a leafless tree. In celebration of the centenary of the publication of The Interpretation of Dreams (1999), ‘interventions’ in the form of printed excerpts have been positioned at significant points around the house, encouraging visitors to explore some of the major themes of Freud’s work. |
Foundling Museum

Address: | 40 Brunswick Square, WC1N 1AZ |
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Phone: | 020-7841 3600 |
Website: | |
Opening times: | Tues–Sat 10:00–17:00; Sun 11:00–17:00 |
How to get there: | Tube: Russell Square/King’s Cross |
Entry fee: | Admission charge |
Additional information: | Café and shop |
The Foundling Museum is a remarkable institution which records the foundation, history and continuing work of the Foundling Hospital, a charitable home for illegitimate children established in 1739 by Captain Thomas Coram (1668–1751). A humble Dorset man, Coram was a master mariner who had arrived back from the American colonies to be appalled by the plight of the abandoned, orphaned and destitute children on the streets of London. In 1739, after 17 years of relentless campaigning among the titled, wealthy and influential, Coram persuaded George II to grant a Royal Charter to open ‘A Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children’. An entirely secular organisation, the first of its kind, it was funded through private donations and subscription. History of the Hospital The Hospital opened in 1741, in temporary premises in Hatton Garden. On its first day it was open for the receipt of children until full, 18 boys and 12 girls being accepted. All Foundling children were baptised on admission. The first child was named Thomas Coram, and the first girl Eunice Coram, after Captain Coram’s wife, who had died in 1740. In 1742 the foundation stone of the Hospital’s permanent buildings was laid in Lamb’s Conduit Fields, present-day Coram Fields. Consisting of three wings around a courtyard—the west wing for boys, the Governor’s Court Room and a Picture Gallery, the east wing for girls, and a central chapel—the Hospital was designed by Theodore Jacobsen, an amateur architect and one of the Hospital’s governors. The chapel was begun in 1747. In 1749 Handel, who became a Hospital governor, conducted a concert there to raise funds for its completion, for which he composed the Foundling Hospital Anthem. Fundraising musical concerts became a feature of the Hospital’s calendar, with Handel conducting annual performances of the Messiah. A terracotta bust of him by Roubiliac is in the collection.
The Building and its Exhibits On the ground floor is the exhibition Coram’s Children, which explains the origins and history of the Foundling Hospital, and the social conditions of 18th-century London. The Hospital originally had official appointment days for receiving children, with desperate queues forming outside the gates with more children than could possibly be accommodated. A ballot method was introduced instead. On reception days mothers drew a ball from a bag, its colour deciding the fate of their child. Careful records were made of each child admitted, as well as identifying keepsakes which could be used to reclaim children. Several of these touching Foundling tokens are on show: metal tags with names, ribbons, buttons, lockets and even a hazelnut shell. Handel’s annotated musical score for the Foundling Hospital Anthem, based on Psalm 41, ‘Blessed is he that Considereth the Poor’ is displayed, as is a modern scale model of the original Hospital building and original admissions registers. The Committee Room was where mothers were interviewed before being submitted for the ballot process. Pictures include 19th-century scenes with charitable themes and Hogarth’s great March to Finchley, the scene set in the Tottenham Court Road in the winter of 1745, where a band of guardsmen is moving off to Finchley before marching north against Bonnie Prince Charlie’s rebels. The King’s Head tavern has been commandeered by the notorious brothel-keeper Mother Douglas. Hogarth sold the picture by lottery; 167 of the unsold 2,000 tickets were donated to the Hospital, which won the picture. Set into panelling above the chimneypiece is George Lambert’s Landscape with Figures, his Hospital presentation picture. The Staircase is the original 18th-century boys’ wing oak staircase, originally fitted with a rail and spikes to stop the boys sliding down. Hung on it are paintings with sentimental and moral subjects; portraits of governors; and Benjamin West’s Christ Presenting a Little Child, the Hospital chapel altarpiece. On the first floor landing is Andrea Casali’s Adoration of the Magi, the 1750 altarpiece which West’s replaced in 1801. |
Forty Hall & Estate

Address: | Forty Hill, Enfield, Middlesex, EN2 9HA |
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Phone: | 020-8363 8196 |
Website: | |
Opening times: | Tue–Fri 11:00–17:00, Sat-Sun 12:00-17:00 |
How to get there: | Train: Turkey Street (from Liverpool Street) then a 20-min walk |
Entry fee: | Free |
Additional information: | Café, open Oct–March 11:00–16:30 |
This notable Caroline mansion of red brick was built 1629–32 for Sir Nicholas Rainton, a wealthy haberdasher, Lord Mayor of London and President of St Bartholomew’s Hospital. The architect is not known, although a case has been made for Edward Carter, Chief Clerk of the King’s Works, colleague and successor of Inigo Jones as Surveyor-General. The hipped roof is of particular interest, being advanced for its time and an important early example of this popular style. On Rainton’s death in 1646, the estate passed through several owners, being purchased by Major Henry Bowles, MP for Enfield, in 1895. Internal alterations were carried out around this time. In 1951 Forty Hall was sold to Enfield Council by Derek Parker Bowles. |
Florence Nightingale Museum

Address: | St Thomas’s Hospital, 2 Lambeth Palace Road, SE1 7EW |
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Phone: | 020-7620 0374 |
Website: | |
Opening times: | Mon–Sun 10:00–17:00 |
How to get there: | Tube: Waterloo and Westminster |
Entry fee: | Admission charge |
Additional information: | Shop |
Hidden away beneath the modern blocks of St Thomas’s Hospital, this small museum describes the life and work of Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) and preserves a memorial collection of ‘Nightingalia’, formerly the pride of the Matrons of St Thomas’s. The museum opened here in 1989, on the site of the pioneering nursing school that Nightingale founded in 1860. As the ‘lady with the lamp’ who cared for the sick and wounded in the Crimea (1854–56), she became a reluctant legend in her own lifetime. The marble bust which heads the display was one of the very few portraits of herself that she ever allowed to be taken from life, and then only because it had been commissioned by the soldiers who had been her patients. Nightingale’s careful control of her own image also played an important role in securing the political influence that would enable her to contribute to a complete transformation in the status of nursing, eventually providing many women with a new means of achieving economic independence. |
Firepower: The Royal Artillery Museum

Address: | The Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, SE18 6ST |
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Phone: | 020-8312-7103 |
Website: | |
Opening times: | Tue-Sat 10:00-17:00 |
How to get there: | Station: Woolwich Arsenal (from Charing Cross) |
Entry fee: | Admission charge |
Additional information: | Café and shop |
The museum of artillery was founded in 1776 by Lt Gen. Sir William Congreve as a teaching collection, known as the Royal Military Repository. His son, Col. Sir William Congreve, succeeded his father as Superintendent of the Military Machines at Woolwich, and managed to have the collection installed in the Rotunda (viewable by appointment), a strikingly original building by John Nash (1820). Modelled around the huge tent designed for the meeting of the allied sovereigns at Carlton House Gardens in 1814, and built to celebrate Wellington’s victory at Waterloo the next year, the Rotunda remained the museum’s home until early 2001, when the museum moved into the buildings of the Royal Ordnance Factory at the Royal Arsenal. The Royal Artillery Regiment was founded here in 1741. The displays are introduced by a 15-minute presentation called Field of Fire, an audio-visual display in a large, darkened auditorium that gives visitors a loud and vivid impression of gunners and gunnery in action. The History Gallery, on the balcony level overlooking the main hall, describes the development of artillery pieces from the trebuchet through cannons and mortars to the Maxim machine gun. In 1240 gunpowder was rediscovered by the English monk Roger Bacon, possibly while working with texts captured from the Arab world. He concealed his dangerous secret in code—nevertheless, an explosive combination of saltpetre, nitrate, sulphur and charcoal was in use by the end of the same century. Bacon’s exact formula remained undeciphered until the 20th century, when Lt Col. Hime broke the code. |
Fenton House (National Trust)

Address: | Windmill Hill, Hampstead, NW3 6RT |
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Phone: | 020-7435 3471 |
Website: | |
Opening times: | Wed–Sun 11:00-17:00 |
How to get there: | Tube: Hampstead |
Entry fee: | Admission charge |
Additional information: | Some disabled access |
This handsome red brick William and Mary house, one of the best late 17th-century houses to survive in London, stands at the very top of Hampstead in one of the most attractive parts of the ‘village’. From 1936 until her death in 1952, it was the home of Lady Binning, who bequeathed it to the National Trust. Lady Binning was the beneficiary of George Salting (1835–1909), a celebrated 19th-century connoisseur-collector. Though the finest items from his collection are now in national museums, something of his eclectic taste can still be felt here; the array of Chinese blue and white porcelain is especially striking. Also on display here is the important Benton Fletcher Collection of early musical instruments, given to the Trust in 1937, thus narrowly avoiding destruction in the wartime bombing of Old Devonshire House, Bloomsbury, where it had previously been housed. Music students often play the instruments, and it is a memorable experience to visit this airy house and beautiful garden, and to hear from a distant room the evocative sound of a harpsichord or spinet. Tour of the House The Hall, with original 17th-century panelling, contains an oval portrait of Philip Fenton’s son James. There is also the right-hand part of a diptych by Adriaen Isenbrandt, A Donor with St Christopher, part of Salting’s collection. Thirteen paintings by Sir William Nicholson (best known for his woodcut portrait of Queen Victoria) are on loan to the house from Ramsden Hall, Essex. Two can be seen here. The Rockingham Room takes its name from the china now displayed here. Rockingham ware was produced on Lord Rockingham’s estate near Manchester between the mid-18th and mid-19th centuries. By the fireplace hangs an early print of Dürer’s The Sea Monster (c. 1525). The harpsichord in this room is a Shudi single-manual (i.e. an instrument with a single keyboard) of 1761 that once belonged to the pianist Fanny Davies, a pupil of Clara Schumann. In the small closet is the oldest instrument in the collection, an Italian virginal of 1540, signed Marcus Siculus, with stencilled decoration, the keyboard boxwood with ebony accidentals. |
Fashion and Textile Museum

Address: | 83 Bermondsey Street, SE1 3XF |
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Phone: | 020-7407 8664 |
Website: | |
Opening times: | Tues–Sat 11:00–18:00, Sun 11:00-17:00 |
How to get there: | Tube/Station: London Bridge |
Entry fee: | Admission charge |
Founded in 2003 by fashion designer Zandra Rhodes, this small museum of contemporary fashion and textiles mounts two or three special exhibitions each year. The designer has cited the success of her 1999 San Diego exhibition ‘Fashion Is’ as germane to the museum’s inspiration as a forum for the display, study and practice of contemporary garment design. The centre showcases a programme of changing exhibitions exploring elements of fashion, textile and jewellery as well as courses for creative students and businesses. |
Fan Museum

Address: | 12 Crooms Hill, Greenwich, SE10 8ER |
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Phone: | 020-8305 1441 |
Website: | |
Opening times: | (Museum) Tues–Sat 11:00–17:00, Sun 12:00–17:00 (Orangery for afternoon tea) Tues and Sun from 13:45, Fri and Sat from 12:30 |
How to get there: | Station: Greenwich (from Charing Cross); DLR to Cutty Sark |
Entry fee: | Admission charge |
Additional information: | Afternoon teas, Tues and Sun only. Shop |
This small museum, which occupies two 1721 Georgian town houses, is dedicated to the history of the fan and fan making. It was the brainchild of Hélène Alexander, whose own collection forms the heart of the museum’s over 3,500 items. The collection ranges from the 11th century to the present day and includes fans from all over the world, from India, China and Japan as well as Europe. There is a fine representation of 17th-century French fans from the court of Louis XIV, elaborately painted on vellum, as well as intricate lace fans, a large collection of 18th- and 19th-century European fans, a c. 1889 fan painted by the British artist Walter Sickert, and other rare examples. The collection is shown through a series of exhibitions (three a year) which highlight the ceremonial, social and fashionable use of fans as well as different craftsmanship techniques. The mural-decorated orangery, which is open for afternoon tea, overlooks a Japanese-style garden with a fan-shaped parterre and small pond. |
MUSEUMS & GALLERIES OF LONDON
Details below are taken from our Blue Guide Museums and Galleries of London. This is a 2005 title, here generally updated for website address and opening times, with useful comments from some of the museums themselves. More recent information is given in Emily Barber's magisterial new Blue Guide London, "Exceptional update to a classic and useful guide to this amazing city" (Amazon reader review).
FULL LISTING of CURRENT EXHIBITIONS in London from Apollo Magazine »
Emily Barber recommends five major London museums »
Please do share your comments and updates with us via the form below the entry for each museum.