The Museum of the Home in Hoxton has evolved again. It used to be the Geffrye Museum, a linear celebration of historic middle-class interiors. In 1998 it extended beyond the almshouses into a loopy extension with cafe and gift shop. In 2021 they added a thematic basement, shifted the cafe and renamed themselves. And yesterday they opened seven new Rooms Through Time covering the period 1878-2049, simultaneously more of the same and even less of a celebration of historic middle-class interiors.
The rooms look fairly bare by modern standards with limited furniture and none of the clutter that the industrial revolution kickstarted. They continue to be representative of better-off homes, focusing on those with servants rather than the servants themselves, and also reflective of white English society as was the case in rural Hackney in those days. The seven updated rooms are very much a cultural counterbalance.
(cross the entrance foyer, pass the gift shop, enter the extension, maybe sit down and sit on some pebbly things and watch a throbbing cyclorama, maybe not)
» A Townhouse in 1878 An Ayah, Bunoo, is packing up her things in this terraced house on Oakfield Street in Chelsea.
You can sense the leap already. We're specifically in Chelsea, no longer Hackney, and the focus of the scene is an Indian nanny charged with accompanying the family's three children on a voyage home from India. You discern none of this if you just walk up and look at the room, it still looks properly chintzy peak Victorian with its gaslamps, embroidery and floral patterns, indeed very similar to how it looked previously. But look closer and there are pashminas in a small travelling case, toys scattered on the floor... and yes, this is the most understated of the themed rooms. Boxes ticked: ✅ Indian, ✅ Empire, ✅ children
» A Tenement Flat in 1913 On Friday nights the Delinsky family welcome in Shabbos marking the Jewish day of rest, which begins at sundown in a few hours’ time.
Now we're changing rooms. Previously this space housed a smart Arts & Crafts living room with highback chairs and emerald fireplace tiles. Now it's a rather more austere interior representative of a flat on the Rothschild Estate, enough to benefit from a newfangled inside loo but little decorative to shout about. It's only obviously Jewish if you check out the slate shopping list on the kitchen table, scrutinise the ornamentation or read the information panel out front. And here's the real innovation... you can now walk into the room itself and explore it properly, taking on board the iron bedstead and family photos up close, and that's excellent. Boxes ticked: ✅ Jewish, ✅ council housing
» A Room Upstairs in 1956 Newlyweds Kathleen and Jack are getting ready for a big night out at the Galtymore dancehall in Cricklewood.
This too is neverbeforeseen, a bedsit in a postwar newbuild with a cheap wardrobe, one-bar electric fire and woodchip walls. Because the setting is prior to a night out there's perfume on the dressing table and a pair of trousers on the ironing board, and because the young couple are Irish there's a fiddle on the table and a crucifix above the mirror. In common with the other spaces this was curated with the aid of experts, in this case the London Irish Centre, so don't assume anyone's being deliberately stereotypical. I like the really little touches, like the chunky Monopoly box on the upper shelf and the "oooh my nan had one of those" bedside clock, and even better the complete bathroom they've added alongside with its copy of Picture Post and a working radio set. Boxes ticked: ✅ Irish, ✅ white
» A Terraced House in 1978 The family have all gathered around the television for the premiere of Empire Road.
This is another recycled room, previously A Front Room in 1976 but nudged forward a couple of years to coincide with a ground-breaking drama series. Look, BBC2 is playing on the telly. The designers have toned down the wallpaper considerably, which seems a shame, but the carpet and rugs still blaze tropically orange and the iconic Caribbean pineapple is still in pride of place on the drinks trolley. Non-specific period touches include a paraffin heater, a transistor radio and GPO rotary dial telephone, and I see they've removed one of the sofas to enable visitors to walk a little further in. Of all the extension rooms, this unarguably has the most character. Boxes ticked: ✅ Afro-Caribbean, ✅ migrants
» A High-rise Flat in 2005 Nadia, Ashley and Alex have grabbed a paintbrush and are personalising their shared home.
This time we're talking flatshare, a modular space partitioned off into two small bedrooms, shower room and toilet. We're also talking LBGTQI+, although the three lesbians would never have called themselves that back in the day because the curators are framing two decades ago through the lens of the present. The decor is spot on, from queer art on the walls to a glitterball in the toilet, plus a Diva magazine open at the sex toys page and a couple of Greggs pasties on the bed. Other incredibly-of-their-time artefacts include a well-thumbed A-Z, a Pure Evoke digital radio, trailing cables and CDs everywhere, a tower PC running Windows XP and an actual NE London bus map blutacked to the wall. Who knew that 21st century living could be so nostalgic? Boxes ticked: ✅ LBGTQI+, ✅ women
» A Terraced House in 2024 It is Sunday afternoon and the Nguyễn family are spending quality time together, having lunch and singing karaoke.
A 2024 room is technically the easiest to fill and also the most unnecessary, so the big question is how have they chosen to fill it? The answer is with a Vietnamese family and a typically crowded housing association flat, which helps explain the Quang Dũng song playing on the karaoke (but not the Daniel O'Donnell teapot on the crockery shelf). The kitchen at the rear is fantastically done - fully stocked with a colander of noodles on the hob, beansprouts on the chopping board and a half-empty bottle of Tesco washing-up liquid by the sink. As with a lot of the rooms the aim is no longer to resonate with your experience but to encourage you to compare and contrast the way that others live, and I'd say this is an inspired choice. Boxes ticked: ✅ Asian, ✅ family
» A Converted Flat in 2049 The Innovo Room of the Future explores home amid technological and societal changes.
All you can say about this last space is that it's going to be wrong, but it is at least an intriguing glimpse into a potential future. A minimalist room suggests most 'stuff' has gone digital. A set of sparse plates suggests food is very-differently sourced. A wall of fungal insulation suggests the climate is not what it was. And if you look out of the 'window' you'll see automated vehicles in the street, highrise farms, a mini nuclear power plant down the road and a pelican perching on the derelict gasometer, suggesting someone's had a lot of fun devising this. I looked in the backstory book on the dining table and apparently the main family here is a thrupple, because never assume. I suspect a lot of museum visitors will shrug off all of this as fanciful, but who's to say where another 25 years of domestic inequality will take us. Boxes ticked: ✅ climate change, ✅ innovation
It's very apparent that Rooms Through Time now has fewer sampling points, or at least wider gaps as it skates between the selected years. But it'll still fascinate the next time you visit, and because it's more diverse will fascinate a much wider spectrum of visitors than before. I look forward to seeing how they'll dress it up for Christmas.
