Borough museums: Excluding the City, London has 32 boroughs. Some of these have their own museum devoted to telling the story of the borough's local history, and some don't. By my calculations about 40% don't, which is an unexpectedly high proprtion given that the average London borough has a population the same size as Newcastle, Brighton, Derby or Hull. Or it's an unexpectedly low number given that cash-strapped councils are being forced to make savings, and culture's an easy non-essential to cut.
Here's an updated version of a list I first attempted ten years ago.
★☆☆ Croydon:Museum of Croydon[Croydon CR9 1ET closed Sun, Mon] (free)
Mildly interactive black vault at Croydon Clocktower, which I've never quite enjoyed. [review 2009]
★☆☆ Enfield:Museum of Enfield[Enfield EN2 6DS] (free)
Unwelcoming rump tucked away inside the Dugdale Centre. (FortyHall is much better)
★☆☆ Greenwich:Greenwich Heritage Centre[Woolwich SE18 4DX, closed Sun, Mon] (free)
Well concealed maze of ageing historical displays at the back of Artillery Square ('temporarily' closing in mid-July)
★★★ Hackney:Hackney Museum[Hackney E8 1GQ, closed Sun, Mon] (free)
Large ground floor gallery at whatever the library's called these days, with an immigration focus.
★★★ Harrow:Headstone Manor Museum[Headstone HA2 6PX, closed Monday] (free)
14C manor house, beautifully restored, just reopened, and my top recommendation if you've never been. [review 2018]
★★☆ Havering:Havering Museum[Romford RM1 1JU, closed Sun, Mon, Tue] (£3)
Volunteer-led displays within part of the ground floor of the former Romford Brewery. [review 2011]
☆☆☆ Hillingdon: No borough museum
★★☆ Islington:Islington MuseumFinsbury EC1V 4NB closed Wed, Sun] (free)]
Modern basement under Finsbury Library, with an artefact-led community focus.
☆☆☆ Lambeth: No borough museum
☆☆☆ Lewisham: No borough museum
☆☆☆ Merton: No borough museum
☆☆☆ Newham: No borough museum
★★☆ Redbridge:Redbridge Museum [Ilford IG1 1EA closed Sun, Mon] (free)
Windowless millennial circuit within Ilford Central Library, plus temporary exhibition space. [review 2008]
★★★ Richmond:Museum of Richmond[Richmond TW9 1TP, closed Sun, Mon] (free)
Top class historical repository on the second floor of the Old Town Hall.
☆☆☆ Southwark: No borough museum (ever since the Cuming Museum burnt down)
★★★ Sutton:Honeywood Museum[Carshalton SM5 3NX, closed Mon, Tue] (free)
Restored and reopened in 2012, opposite Carshalton Ponds, with a lovely friendly atmosphere. [review 2012]
☆☆☆ Tower Hamlets: No borough museum
★★★ Waltham Forest:Vestry House Museum[Walthamstow E17 9NH closed Mon, Tue] (free)
Former workhouse, with a focus on transport and the domestic, plus a rather nice small garden.
☆☆☆ Wandsworth: No borough museum (closed 2007)
☆☆☆ Westminster: No borough museum
Last weekend saw the grand reopening of Gunnersbury Park Museum, after a long closure and a splash of Lottery cash. Hurrah!
The History bit: In 1760 a Palladian mansion, a little beyond Chiswick, was bought by George II for his favourite daughter Princess Amelia. She used it as her summer retreat and landscaped the estate, only for the main house to be demolished soon after her death. In its place were built the unimaginatively titled Small Mansion and Large Mansion, the second of which was purchased in 1835 by the financier Nathan Mayer Rothschild. The family lived here at Gunnersbury for the next ninety years, extending the estate and inviting the political establishment and nobility and round to grand parties. They added stables and an Orangery, built a gothic tower by the lake to act as a boathouse, and laid out Japanese and Italian gardens to impress guests. Then in 1925, after the death of the third generation, the Rothschilds moved out. They sold up to Ealing and Acton councils, which helped to protect the estate from being turned into streets of residential housing, and a 200 acre public park was created. Neville Chamberlain came to open it, and in 1929 the Large Mansion was duly reimagined as a museum, which is now under the joint control of Ealing and Hounslow councils.
The Lottery project bit: For years the mansions at Gunnersbury have been looking somewhat worse for wear, and had slipped onto English Heritage's at risk list. Thankfully a £4.7m restoration project got the green light four years back, covering not just the main buildings but the entire park. The Large Mansion was the centrepiece for phase 1, along with general upsprucing for the Orangery, Temple, and Bathhouse. I can confirm they're all looking in much better shape than they used to be. Coming next year is a major outdoor sports hub, including multi-use sports centre, gym, and floodlit artificial grass pitches. But the Small Mansion and Stables remain in a poor state, as councillors seek development partners for what'll likely be commercial ventures.
The museum review bit: For those of us who've been round before, it's quite a change. Entrance is through a bright reception area (with improved gift shop), with steps up to the main galleries and a hallway through to the downstairs rooms. The drawing room, dining room and long gallery have impressive decor, as befitted their status as the Rothschild's entertainment spaces, but are otherwise empty. I assume this enhances their status as hireable spaces, to bring in a bit of revenue as and when. Anyone willing to linger for ten minutes also gets to enjoy an audio-visual experience projected large onto one wall, as five historical vignettes from Gunnersbury's Victorian heyday are played out.
Where the building truly springs to life is in the Historic Kitchens at the far end of the house. These include a top-of-the-range range, some unreliable gas burners, and the extra office the Rothschilds bought for their two French chefs to stop them running away to more prestigious jobs at London hotels. A really nice touch is the use of proper fruit and veg, in bowls and baskets, rather than the usual plate of unconvincing models. For those of us visiting on the opening weekend, a couple of Victorian scullery maids were kept busy explaining how the whole place worked, whereas the virtual butler will give you his rundown on staffing a big house any day of the week.
Which brings us to the galleries. The downstairs one focuses on 'place', with a big map of the combined boroughs of Ealing and Hounslow, plus a video history (which ill-advisedly starts with a big spiel about the land bridge from Europe, rather than anything genuinely local). The 17 main settlements hereabouts are each represented by a historical figure, clearly chosen for their diversity rather than by any independent measure of importance. Just over half are women, from Queen Elizabeth I and Ada Lovelace to a motorsport race engineer (representing Perivale) and Brentford Women's Football Club's first Asian player (representing Cranford).
Further galleries can be found upstairs, accessed off the Skylight Corridor. One focuses on 'home', in a fairly lightweight manner, affording Brentford FC as much importance as various world religions. Another looks at the area's contribution to film and TV, which thanks to Ealing Studios is considerable, and it turns out The Lavender Hill Mob was partly filmed here at Gunnersbury Park. In good news, the photograph of seven Cybermen waiting for the number 65 bus has survived the museum's overhaul, alongside a green mask from The Robots of Death.
Be sure to go to the very top floor for the fashion gallery and my favourite room focusing on industrial heritage. A heck of a lot of stuff was once manufactured hereabouts, from Hoovers to Gillette razors and beer to Lucozade. But that's your lot. Lovely though the new displays were, I got the feeling their combined weight was barely scratching the surface, and there are so many more stories which could be told of life in two boroughs whose combined population exceeds that of Bristol, North Yorkshire or Cambridgeshire.
The outside in the park bit: As the former private estate of a super-affluent Victorian banker, Gunnersbury Park has the edge over your average municipal recreational space. The most formal section is close to the house, with a couple of ornamental lakes, shady lawns and a restored bath house once used by Princess Amelia. The latter is usually locked, but on opening weekend we were allowed inside to meet a costumed character and peer through a flinty arch into her white-tiled pool. Head further out to find the community garden, a lot of long-established woodland and a private fishing lake, plus probably the finest wildflower meadow I have ever seen in London (its lush midsummer display only partially disfigured by stomping photographers unsatisfied by a photo from the perimeter).
The refreshment bit: Yes, there's a new cafe near the main gates. It's been open since March, because nobody likes waiting for coffee and cake, and is being run by upmarket franchise-grabber Benugo. The prices are a lot higher than the homelier cafe it replaced, which has angered several long-term users, but the front terrace was packed out in the weekend sunshine all the same. Nearest station Acton Town, if you're planning on coming down, which if you're a resident of Ealing or Hounslow you definitely should.
Rather than engineer new content about Heathrow's third runway, which MPs voted in favour of last night, allow me to link back to some old stuff I've already written. This is excellent because a) the old stuff is still relevant, b) it allowed me to go down the pub last night rather than write anything new. Also c) I know 99% of you won't bother to click through and read any of it d) the usual crowd will still leave all the same comments they would have written anyway.
» 10 postcards from Runway Three (October 2016): On the day the government confirmed their plans, I visited ten sites in the path of the proposed runway, from Harmondsworth to the Colne Brook. [11 photos]
» A brief history of London's airport expansion (October 2016): From the 1920s to the present day, in handy tabular form.
» A history of the development of Heathrow Airport (December 2013): From the village of Heath Row to the world's busiest airport.
» Walking the Heathrow flight path (December 2017): Life underneath 27R, the existing northern runway. Spoiler: it's extremely loud at times, but great for plane-spotting. [photo]
» Harmondsworth (May 2014): A visit to the semi-doomed medieval village, and its Great Barn.
» The Heathrow Biodiversity Site (June 2015): The eerie publicly accessible greenspace just west of the airport, now due to be swallowed whole.
» Plaistow Airport (May 2012): 10 reasons why London's next runway should be in E13 instead.
» The Isle of Grain (September 2014): A visit to Boris's favourite estuary alternative, on the day his proposals were binned. [40 photos]
» Third Runway scrapped (March 2021): Prime Minister Johnson stalls Heathrow expansion by announcing bold plans for a Channel Bridge.
