The London borough of Redbridge has boasted a solid mid-tablemuseum since 2000, housed in a bespoke corner on the second floor of Ilford's main library. But it's needed a bit of a refresh for a while so they used lockdown as a chance to start updating it with lottery money and it's been closed ever since. Until now. Originally the plan had been to reopen the museum space in 2022, then early 2023, then late 2023, and it finally reopened last month. Inexplicably there's been zero publicity - not even the museum's Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts have yet noticed - but the earliest date in the visitors book is 30th August so it seems to be a very recent reopening indeed.
Don't head in through what looks like the main entrance off the lift lobby or you'll enter mid-story. Instead advance into the reference section and immediately turn right where you'll find the prehistorical introduction. Ilford, it turns out, is one of the most important Ice Age sites in Britain thanks to the discovery of hundreds of animal bones in the Roding gravels. These include a nationally significant example of a mammoth's skull, although that's in the Natural History Museum so you'll have to make do with smaller bits of jaws and tusk or nip down to the first floor to see a replica. Roman and Saxon remains are much thinner on the ground, this because most of Redbridge was forest at the time, so don't expect to see much more than tiles from a villa in Wanstead and a burial urn excavated near the Redbridge roundabout.
What changed the area from a potato-growing backwater to full-on suburbia were the railways, transforming Ilford into a busy town centre and the fields outside Woodford into crisscrossed avenues. Some rather nice maps show all the old farms your house might have been built on, also the chunk of Hainault Forest the City of London bought up to rein in development, also the line of what became Eastern Avenue snaking across an ill-prepared landscape. Out-of-borough visitors might be more excited by the enamel sign showing the Hainault Loop and the Ongar shuttle, rescued from Chancery Lane station during a refit. Many large country mansions consequently disappeared and these are comprehensively catalogued, along with major institutions like Claybury asylum which were merely repurposed. The level of historic detail is both comprehensive and accessible.
Rooms recreating home life are a staple of many a local museum - here it's Victorian and 30s suburbia - but generally the focus is on explicitly local history. The famous Fairlop Oak is here, at least in spirit, also memories of civic provision like parks, pools and libraries. If you've ever wanted to see the leather gaiters worn by Wanstead Park's parkkeeper or the ceremonial key that commemorated the opening of Ilford Swimming Baths, they're here. I think a lot of these artefacts were in the former incarnation of the museum - my archive of old photos suggests similar themes - just not so well explained or displayed. Two former local persons of note are Winston Churchill, who gets an entire cabinetful, and suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst (whose section you can enjoy from home on a lovely bespoke website knocked up by the curators to spread the word).
Former local businesses very much get the nod, including electrical manufacturer Plessey and instrument makers Kelvin & Hughes. The display of Ilford photographic equipment is both evocative and a masterclass of graphic design, and I learnt that after their factory fled to Basildon in 1976 it was replaced by an enormous Sainsbury's (still present alongside Roden Street). The last sequence of cases brings the Redbridge story up to date, particularly regarding the arrival of other cultures, as is most appropriate in what the census confirms is the UK's 3rd most ethnically diverse district. I particularly liked the spiral-bound books providing additional background detail for each display, for example the DVD of Grandma's House is backed up by the fact that author Simon Amstell and actor Rebecca Front once lived in the same Gants Hill street.
If you live in the borough you really should make the effort to drop in, and everyone else should remember that population-wise Redbridge is larger than Newcastle, Derby or Brighton and Hove, so if you'd make an effort to visit a museum there you should make an effort to visit this one. Opening hours are from 11am five days a week, as befits the upper floor of a flagship library. It's been a terribly long wait but the outcome is well worth it.
And while we're talking Ilford...
Until the end of next week there's a small display downstairs at the National Portrait Gallery inspired by the photographic heritage of Ilford Limited. Redbridge Museum invited hip hop photographer Eddie Otchere to lead a group of young people (for which read 'born in the 21st century') in digging into the archives and shooting photos in the local area. Four portraits of former employees take pride of place, also a stack of film packaging and cameras, though alas there's very little on how the youngsters got to grips with non-digital imaging. The exhibition's only small so you'd get most of the flavour from its webpage, but turning up in person brings the bonus of being able to sit on an Ilford-branded box. I had the whole room to myself, despite the rest of the museum being busy, but then I'd had the whole of Redbridge Museum to myself earlier and I thought both were better that way. One temporary, the other permanent, so take your pick.
