Carlyle’s House (National Trust)

Address: | 24 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, SW3 5HL |
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Phone: | 020-7352 7087 |
Website: | |
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. |
Camden Arts Centre

Address: | Arkwright Road, NW3 6DG |
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Phone: | 020-7472 5500 |
Website: | |
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. |
Cabinet War Rooms & Churchill Museum (Imperial War Museum)

Address: | Clive Steps, King Charles Street, SW1A 2AQ |
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Phone: | 020-7930 6961 |
Website: | |
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. |
Burgh House - The Hampstead Museum

Address: | Burgh House, New End Square, Hampstead, NW3 1LT |
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Phone: | 020-7431 0144 |
Website: | |
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. |
Buckingham Palace

Address: | Ticket office at Canada Gate, Green Park, W1 (open 9:00–16:00) |
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Phone: | 020-7766 7300; 020-7766 7324 for disabled visitors |
Website: | |
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’. |
Brunel Engine House

Address: | Railway Avenue, Rotherhithe, SE16 4LF |
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Phone: | 020-7231 3840 |
Website: | |
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. |
Brunei Gallery SOAS

Address: | Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, WC1H 0XG |
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Phone: | 020-7898 4046 |
Website: | |
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. |
British Optical Association Museum

Address: | 42 Craven Street, WC2N 5NG |
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Phone: | 020-7766 4353 |
Website: | |
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. |
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.