24 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, SW3 5HL

Phone:

020-7352 7087

Website:

www.nationaltrust.org.uk/carlyles-house

Opening times:

Wed–Sun 11:00-16:30

How to get there:

Tube: Sloane Square, then bus 11, 19, 22. Bus 239 from Victoria

Entry fee:

Admission charge

Additional information:

No disabled access

Off Cheyne Walk in this sedate corner of old Chelsea is the 1708 Queen Anne terraced house which was the home of the great historian, essayist and social thinker Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881), ‘the sage of Chelsea’. Carlyle and his wife Jane (1801–66), known for her beauty, intelligence and wit, moved here from Scotland in 1834; the couple remained here until their deaths. The house is substantially unchanged and, though their highly-charged relationship was often tempestuous, an atmosphere of quiet and dignified simplicity remains. It was here that Carlyle, a difficult, irritable and habitually melancholy man, wrote his epic works: The French Revolution (1837); the influential On Heroes, Hero Worship and the Heroic in History (1841), in which he outlined his theories on the importance of powerful and conviction-led individuals; and biographies of his personal heroes, Oliver Cromwell (1845) and Frederick the Great (1858–65). The freehold of the house was purchased by public subscription in May 1895, and a trust formed to administer it. In 1936 it passed to the National Trust. The rooms contain much of the original furnishings, including portraits, photographs, books, manuscripts and many other personal relics. Carlyle’s statue (1882) by Sir Joseph Edgar Boehm is nearby, in the gardens on the Embankment.

The Sitting Room, or Parlour, is furnished much as it appears in Robert Tait’s painting, A Chelsea Interior (c. 1857), which hangs in the room. Mrs Carlyle was much irritated that Tait had made her dog Nero look the size of a sheep; she also commented on the ‘wrong perspective’ and ‘frightful table-cover’. Among the photographs and portraits is Boehm’s plaster maquette for his seated statue of Carlyle. The Back Dining Room, the rear of the room, contains James Archer’s 1869 portrait of Carlyle and one of Frederick the Great of Prussia, whose biography Carlyle had recently completed when his wife bought it in 1866, the day before she died (suddenly, of an attack brought on by the shock of Nero escaping from the carriage at Hyde Park Corner). Chico the canary lived in the birdcage. Downstairs, the kitchen is little altered. Here Carlyle would smoke in the company of Tennyson, and it was also where Mrs Carlyle’s domestic servant (she was a difficult woman to work for and got through several) slept. Up the stairs, passing portraits (another of Frederick the Great; one of Cromwell) and photographs of Carlyle by the pioneer Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, is the Library, or Drawing Room, where Carlyle wrote The French Revolution and his wife entertained such figures as Dickens, Browning, Thackeray, Darwin and Ruskin. Carlyle died here on 5th February 1881. In Mrs Carlyle’s Bedroom is a chest of drawers with Carlyle’s dressing-gown, waistcoats and smoking cap. The Attic Study was built for Carlyle by the firm of Cubitt in 1853 as a sound-proof retreat from noise which distracted him from his work. Unfortunately the room actually had the effect of amplifying sounds from the nearby Thames, but nevertheless Carlyle used it for 12 years, until his biography of Frederick the Great was complete. In the room are books and personal items, including some of his famous ‘notekins’ to his wife. The garden, with its walnut and cherry trees and lilac bushes, is much as it would have been in Carlyle’s day. Mrs Carlyle’s dog Nero is buried about 5ft from the southeast corner of the garden.

Arkwright Road, NW3 6DG

Phone:

020-7472 5500

Website:

www.camdenartscentre.org

Opening times:

Tue-Sun 10:00-18:00, Wed 10:00-21:00

How to get there:

Tube: Finchley Road/Hampstead

Entry fee:

Free

Additional information:

Café and shop

Camden Arts Centre is a well known exhibition venue for modern and contemporary visual art. Its active exhibition programme includes painting, sculpture, film, video, design and graphic art and features the work of established and influential artists as well as lesser known names, mainly British and Continental European. The building, a late 19th-century Grade II listed former public library, has recently been refurbished, but many of the architecturally clean, modernised galleries retain their large, handsome windows and parquet floors. Artist residencies and educational courses and events go hand-in-hand with exhibitions. The centre has a bookshop, a reading room, a café and an architect-designed garden.

Clive Steps, King Charles Street, SW1A 2AQ

Phone:

020-7930 6961

Website:

www.cwr.iwm.org.uk

Opening times:

Daily 9:30-18:00

How to get there:

Tube: Westminster

Entry fee:

Admission charge

Additional information:

Café and shop

The Cabinet War Rooms occupy the basement of the vast New Government Offices, built in 1899–1915, which span an area between Horse Guards Road to the west and Parliament Street to the east. An airless subterranean warren over two floors, the rooms are 10ft underground with reinforced concrete above. Constructed between June 1938 and August 1939 (completed a week before Britain’s declaration of war), they were the operations headquarters from which, secure from air raids, Britain’s Second World War effort was directed: here, Churchill, the War Cabinet, the Chiefs of Staff and their advisors planned British strategy. The rooms remain almost exactly as they were at the height of the war, with tin hats and gas masks still on their pegs. The books, maps and wall charts in the Map Room occupy the same positions as they did when the room was closed down on 16 August 1947. The Cabinet Room, used for War Cabinet meetings, remains uncannily intact, with Churchill’s chair, blotters and ‘utility’ pencils, as does Churchill’s bedroom and office, from where he made his stirring wartime radio broadcasts. The Transatlantic Telephone Room was where Churchill discussed crucial strategy with President Roosevelt.

In 2003 a suite of nine further rooms was opened—faithfully restored and reconstructed from wartime photographs—which had been used by Churchill’s wife and his private office staff, and which also included his private dining room. In February 2005, to mark the 40th anniversary of Churchill’s death, the Churchill Museum opened. At its heart is an interactive ‘lifeline’, surrounded by sections on, for instance, Churchill as War Leader and as a Cold War statesman.

Burgh House, New End Square, Hampstead, NW3 1LT

Phone:

020-7431 0144

Website:

www.burghhouse.org.uk

Opening times:

Wed, Thu, Fri, Sun 12:00–17:00

How to get there:

Tube: Hampstead

Entry fee:

Free

Additional information:

Toilet for disabled visitors, buttery open Wed–Fri 11:00–17:30

A handsome Grade I listed Queen Anne house built in 1704, Burgh House is set behind attractive wrought iron gates in the heart of old Hampstead village, overlooking Well Walk. Over the centuries it has been occupied by a succession of interesting professionals, including, from 1720, Dr William Gibbons, physician of the Hampstead Wells Spa, much frequented in the 18th century for the supposed medicinal properties of its foul-tasting chalybeate waters; from 1822 the Rev. Allston Burgh, vicar of St Lawrence Jewry, from whom the house takes its name; in 1906–24 the eminent art historian and specialist on portrait miniatures, Dr George Williamson; and in 1933–37 Rudyard Kipling’s daughter, Elsie Bambridge. The house, which retains many of its original internal features including its carved staircase, is now run by the Burgh House Trust and was opened as a museum and community arts centre in 1979. Local art exhibitions take place on the ground floor while the first floor is occupied by the Hampstead Museum of local history. Displays explain the history of Hampstead and its famous inhabitants, including the artist John Constable—who made his famous cloud studies on Hampstead Heath—and the Victorian watercolourist Helen Allingham (d. 1888), items relating to her life and work having been bequeathed to the museum in 1989. The museum also possesses an Isokon Long Chair, designed by the Hungarian-born architect Marcel Breuer (a director of the Bauhaus and later partner of Walter Gropius in America) for the ‘Isobar’ at the Isokon flats, Lawn Road, in 1936. Its clean, bent plywood design was the most famous item marketed by Isokon, the modern design firm established in the early 1930s. The Buttery serves lunch and tea—on its pleasant garden terrace in summer, and at other times in the basement.

Ticket office at Canada Gate, Green Park, W1 (open 9:00–16:00)

Phone:

020-7766 7300; 020-7766 7324 for disabled visitors

Website:

www.royalcollection.org.uk

Opening times:

Daily 9:30-19:30 (August), 9:30-18:30 (September)

How to get there:

Tube: Victoria/St James’s Park

Entry fee:

Admission charge

Additional information:

Shop

Buckingham Palace, impressively situated at the west end of the Mall, is the official residence of the British monarch (when the Queen is in residence the Royal Standard flies from the top of the flagpole on the palace roof). It is the Mall façade, from the balcony of which the Queen waves on great public occasions, that is best known to the world. A picturesque view of it, framed by trees, can be had from the bridge over the lake in nearby St James’s Park. The façade in fact dates only from 1913 and was designed by Sir Aston Webb, who was also responsible for the spacious circus in front of the palace with its radiating avenues and the Victoria Memorial at its centre. The Memorial, executed by Sir Thomas Brock in 1911, shows Queen Victoria seated on the east side with groups representing Truth, Motherhood and Justice on the others and is crowned by a gilded bronze figure of Victory. On the wide palace forecourt, behind the ornamental railings, the Changing of the Guard ceremony takes place (11.30am, daily April–end June, otherwise alternate days, weather permitting). The new guard, accompanied by a band with pipes and drums, marches from the nearby Wellington Barracks to relieve the old guard assembled on the forecourt. When the officers of the old and new guards advance and touch left hands, symbolising the handing over of the keys, the guard is ‘changed’.

The Building
Buckingham Palace was originally Buckingham House, a private mansion built by John Sheffield, 1st Duke of Buckingham in 1702–05. In 1762 the house was purchased by George III and it became the chief residence of Queen Charlotte, who had it enlarged and altered by Sir William Chambers. It was for George IV that the building was transformed into a palace; on his accession the new king signalled his intention to vacate his magnificent home, Carlton House, and to rebuild Buckingham House on a grand and regal scale. Parliament voted £250,000 for the project, John Nash was the chosen architect, and building work began in 1825. On the king’s death in 1830, with the palace still unfinished and costs having spiralled to £600,000, Nash was dismissed and Edward Blore, considered a safe pair of hands, was appointed in his place. Blore removed Nash’s insubstantial and much criticised dome, added an attic storey, and in 1846–50 created the east wing across the forecourt, now hidden behind Webb’s 1913 refacing. The new wing necessitated the removal of Nash’s Marble Arch, designed as a ceremonial gateway to the palace: in 1850–51 it was relocated to its present site, on the edge of Hyde Park at the junction of Park Lane and Oxford Street.

The palace was first opened to the public in 1993 to help fund the restoration of the then fire-damaged Windsor Castle, and has remained open to visitors in the summer ever since. For obvious reasons, not all areas of the palace are accessible but the tour takes in the main State Rooms, the majority of them opulently conceived by Nash in the 1820s and completed by Blore. Nash’s inventive interiors, with their gilded plaster ceilings, heavily decorated coves, wall hangings in richly coloured silks and use of expensive materials (Carrara marble; gilt bronze) offered the unsurpassed grandeur sought by George IV. Many of the rooms were partially designed around the king’s magnificent collection of pictures, furniture and porcelain from Carlton House, several items from which, together with other items from the Royal Collection—a private collection unrivalled in its size, scope and importance—still furnish them.

Tour of the Palace
Visitors enter the palace via the Ambassador’s Entrance on Buckingham Gate, which leads to the Courtyard behind the east wing. Here, Nash’s building, in warm Bath stone, with Blore’s alterations, is revealed. The sculptural theme is British sea power: in the pediment Britannia Acclaimed by Neptune, designed by Flaxman and executed by E.H. Baily in 1828; and inside Nash’s two-storey columned portico J.E. Carew’s The Progress of Navigation. The friezes in the attic storey, The Death of Nelson and The Meeting of Blücher and Wellington, both by Westmacott, were added by Blore and were originally intended for the Marble Arch. The portico entrance leads into the Grand Hall, actually relatively low-ceilinged, with mahogany hall furniture from Carlton House and Brighton Pavilion. From here, visitors approach the magnificent Grand Staircase, one straight flight leading to a landing and branching into two to the upper floor. The stairs are of Carrara marble, the intricate balustrade, supplied by Samuel Parker 1828–30 for £3,900, of gilt bronze. Parker also made the gilt metal mounts for the mirror-plated doors which occur throughout the State Rooms. The small but ornate Guard Room, with an apsed end, Carrara marble columns and rich plaster ceiling in white and gold, contains full-length sculptures of Queen Victoria—the first monarch to occupy the palace—and her consort Prince Albert.

The Green Drawing Room serves as an anteroom to the Throne Room and occupies the site of Queen Charlotte’s Saloon, designed by Chambers. The deeply coved and bracketed ceiling, set off by the green silk hangings, is Nash’s. The room contains items from George IV’s priceless collection of Sèvres porcelain, the finest in the world, much of which was purchased from the French Royal Collection, sold during the French Revolution. The Throne Room itself, with red silk wall hangings and another rich ceiling, the cove of which is decorated with heraldic shields and garter stars, was intended for investitures and ceremonial receptions. The throne (the chairs were made for the Queen’s Coronation Ceremony of 1953) is divided from the rest of the room by a proscenium with two winged Victories holding garlands, modelled by Francis Bernasconi, the chief plasterer employed at the palace. The classical sculptural frieze, designed by Stothard, has a medieval theme: the Wars of the Roses.

The Picture Gallery, 155ft long, was designed by Nash for George IV’s outstanding collection of Dutch and Flemish art but was much altered, and tempered, in 1914. Nash’s hammerbeam design for the roof was replaced by the present arrangement, more practical for lighting the pictures. Some of the greatest works from the Royal Collection usually hang here, including van Dyck’s equestrian portrait Charles I with Monsieur de St-Antoine (1633); van Dyck’s ‘greate peece’, Charles I and Henrietta Maria with their Two Eldest Children (1632); and Rubens’ Landscape with St George and the Dragon.

The East Gallery is the first of the rooms in the new block added by Queen Victoria in 1853–55 to designs by James Pennethorne, which added a magnificent new Ballroom, the previous one having been considered too small. The interior decoration was overseen by the Prince Consort although it is now much altered. Of the pictures usually on show, the most important is the familiar Franz Xaver Winterhalter’s Family of Queen Victoria (1846). Further rooms lead to the actual Ballroom, 37.5m (123ft) long, where present-day investitures and other official receptions take place. The State Dining Room has a heavy and elaborate ceiling by Blore, with three saucer-domed compartments and large roundels in the cove. The series of full-length Hanoverian royal portraits was hung here by Queen Victoria. The room is used for official luncheons and dinners. Examples from George IV’s magnificent silver-gilt service by Rundell, Bridge & Rundell are on show. The Blue Drawing Room was formerly the Ballroom. It is a magnificent, pure Nash interior, one of the finest in the Palace, with wide, flaring ceiling coves and coupled columns painted in imitation onyx. The delicate plasterwork reliefs show the apotheoses of Shakespeare, Spenser and Milton. The gilt sofas and armchairs are from Carlton House and the ‘Table of the Grand Commanders’, commissioned by Napoleon in 1806–12, with a top of hard-paste Sèvres porcelain with the head of Alexander the Great in the centre, was presented to George IV by Louis XVIII.

The Music Room is the most beautiful interior in the palace. Completed by Nash in 1831 and not much altered, it has a coffered domed ceiling and occupies the bow window, the central feature of Nash’s west front, with views over the palace’s private gardens. The large plate glass windows were an innovation of the 1820s. Between the windows and mirrors are lapis lazuli scagliola columns. The parquet floor is by Seddon and the magnificent early 19th-century cut glass and gilt bronze chandeliers are from Carlton House. The White Drawing Room, with its innovative convex ceiling and white and gold damask wall hangings, has Siena scagliola pilasters with capitals incorporating the garter star. The Minister’s Stairs, redecorated in white and gold by Edward VII, as was much of the Palace, leads to the Marble Hall, George IV’s sculpture gallery which runs underneath the Picture Gallery. It is dominated by Canova’s Mars and Venus, commissioned by George IV for Carlton House.

From here, via the Bow Room, visitors pass out to the Gardens, landscaped by Nash and W.T. Aiton of Kew Gardens, and including an ornamental lake, fed by the Serpentine. It is on these spacious lawns that the Queen’s public garden parties take place. Nash’s garden façade itself, a hidden and less familiar view of the palace, is worth a backward glance. Above the central bow is Westmacott’s Fame Displaying Britain’s Triumphs. The ‘King Alfred’ frieze, designed by Flaxman, is also by Westmacott. Visitors exit this peaceful seclusion onto the heavy traffic of Buckingham Palace Road, where the Royal Mews and the Queen’s Gallery can also be visited.

John Nash (1752–1835) ‘His style lacks grandeur, and great monotony is produced by his persistent use of stucco.’ Thus the Dictionary of National Biography dismisses John Nash, the millwright’s son who became one of the most distinctive of all British architects, whose grand, aspirational creations add character to much of London. There is more behind the portentous façades than meets the eye. Nash was a brilliant engineer and gifted town planner. He was chosen by the Prince Regent as architect of an ambitious project: developing a tract of former farmland into a graceful ‘garden city’, with a ceremonial avenue linking it with the prince’s residence at Carlton House. Regent’s Park, the layout of Trafalgar Square, and the graceful sweep of Regent Street (though altered since) are all legacies of this splendid scheme. When George became king, he retained Nash to transform Buckingham House into a palace of a splendour to rival Napoleon’s Paris. Napoleon, by his own account, approved of what he saw, remarking that Nash had made London appear ‘for the first time like a royal residence, no longer a sprawling city for shopkeepers’. Though Nash longed for a knighthood, he never received one. Wellington, the prime minister, refused to grant it so long as Buckingham Palace remained unfinished. And Nash never completed it.

Railway Avenue, Rotherhithe, SE16 4LF

Phone:

020-7231 3840

Website:

www.brunel-museum.org.uk

Opening times:

Daily 10:00–17:00

How to get there:

Tube: Rotherhithe

Entry fee:

Admission charge

Additional information:

Partial disabled access, café and shop

This small museum, close to Rotherhithe Station, is set up in the engine house used by the great civil engineer Marc Isambard Brunel (1769–1849) and his son Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806–59) when they were building the Thames Tunnel (1825–43), which linked Rotherhithe with Wapping. The tunnel, a monumental feat of engineering hailed in its day as the Eighth Wonder of the World, was the world’s first under-river thoroughfare. The two tubes, one intended for pedestrians, the other for road traffic, are 406m (1,506ft) long and cost £468,249 to build amid financial crises, devastating accidents (flood and fire), several fatalities and dangerous and uncomfortable working conditions. Two previous attempts to tunnel the Thames had failed, but Marc Brunel’s invention of the tunnelling shield (patented 1818) was able to overcome the river’s liquefied sediment. The tunnel opened to pedestrians in 1843 and in 1869 re-opened as a railway. It is still in use today by the East London Line, part of the London Underground network.

The simple red brick building with its elegant chimney, a roofless ruin in 1975, housed the engines which pumped water from the tunnel. It now features a small exhibition explaining the history and significance of the tunnel, including an image of a great banquet which took place in it on 10th November 1827.

Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, WC1H 0XG

Phone:

020-7898 4046

Website:

www.soas.ac.uk/gallery

Opening times:

Tue-Sat 10:30–17:00, Thu until 20:00

How to get there:

Tube: Russell Square/Goodge Street

Entry fee:

Free

Additional information:

Shop

Opened in 1995 with a generous benefaction from the Sultan of Brunei, the Brunei Gallery, administered by the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)—part of the University of London—has a programme of historical and contemporary exhibitions on subjects and from regions with which the school is concerned, namely Africa and Asia. Past exhibitions include Chinese textiles; art of the Ottoman Empire and contemporary Syrian art. The building (Nicholas Hare Architects), off Thornhaugh St on the northwest corner of Russell Square, opposite the entrance to SOAS, has three floors linked by a glass staircase and a Japanese Roof Garden, redesigned in 2001.

42 Craven Street, WC2N 5NG

Phone:

020-7766 4353

Website:

www.college-optometrists.org/college/museum

Opening times:

Mon–Fri 9:30–17:00 (phone ahead)

How to get there:

Tube: Charing Cross

Entry fee:

Basic tour is free, extended costs £5 per person.

Additional information:

Limited disabled access

This small museum (founded 1901) within the College of Optometrists’ building has a fascinating collection of optical-related items: over 3,000 pairs of spectacles dating from the 17th century onwards; eye glasses; pince-nez; lorgnettes; and monocles. There is also a collection of fans with spy glasses in the handles, instruments used by opticians and a collection of glass eyes. Dr Johnson’s spectacles can be seen, as can C.P. Snow’s, late Mother Queen’s and a pair of 17th-century green-tinted ones, similar to those described by Samuel Pepys in his diary. Pepys was afraid that he was losing his sight, and reported some benefit to his eyes from the wearing of green-tinted lenses. Among the paintings is a portrait of the famous American statesman and scientist Benjamin Franklin, wearing silver folding nose spectacles. Franklin lived a few doors down, at no. 36. He is usually credited with the invention of bifocals. As well as the museum, a pre-booked tour of the College Meeting Rooms is possible, which includes the Council Chamber and anteroom, the Panelled Room and the Print Room. The latter’s walls are covered with a dense hang of prints showing scientists, historical optical instruments, and famous people wearing spectacles. Such a display was the wish of J.H. Sutcliffe, Secretary of the British Optical Association from 1895. The museum is open most weekdays but pre-booking is essential as the college is a working building and the Meeting Rooms will sometimes be in use.