Time-travel adventures in the Museum of London

This article is part of a guide to London from FT Globetrotter

In the 1990s, I used to cycle across London from my Notting Hill flat to an office in the city’s eastern docklands. The eight-mile ride could have been tiresome were it not for the captivating landmarks I’d pass en route: three palaces, a 13th-century abbey packed with the tombs of great Britons, a 3,500-year-old Egyptian obelisk bearing the scars of a 1917 air raid, one of Europe’s best-preserved medieval castles and at least seven major war memorials, to name a few. Among the grand sites were a wealth of more modest but no less interesting memorials, statues and buildings, plus a scattering of quirkier landmarks such as the street behind the Savoy hotel where Bob Dylan made his “Subterranean Homesick Blues” video.

As a history buff who has loved living and working in London on and off for more than 30 years, I’m endlessly fascinated by the layers of the city’s past that helped dictate its modern form. The Museum of London, located in the City near the Barbican complex, is one of my favourite of the more than 170 museums in the UK’s capital, charting its story from prehistoric to modern times. As well as exhibiting items related to the great, famous and powerful, such as Samuel Pepys’ dinner plate, Nelson’s sword and Oliver Cromwell’s death mask, it also offers a glimpse into the lives of other ordinary Londoners, from prehistoric hunter-gatherers to 1970s punk rockers.

Here I’ve outlined a guide to the Museum of London that’s essentially a walk through thousands of years of that history, giving rich historical context to famous London landmarks.

The galleries are arranged in chronological order, so the starting point is the London before London exhibit, which explores the period from 450,000BC until the creation of the Roman city of Londinium around AD50.

Hominids crossed the land bridge from Europe to settle intermittently in the area, the Lower Thames Valley, from about 400,000 years ago. There were marked climate fluctuations: periods when mammoths wandered frozen wastes contrasted with times when hippos wallowed in a very temperate Thames. Homo sapiens became a continuous presence about 12,000 years ago. The gallery’s vast assortment of artefacts was found all over modern London, from Neanderthal flint tools discovered near Heathrow airport and a hippo vertebra found under Regent Street to fine bronze weapons from the area’s tribal societies prior to the Romans’ arrival.

The Romans founded Londinium at a point on the Thames narrow enough to bridge but deep enough for ships. It was also a useful junction of routes to other major settlements.

Their legacy endures. London Bridge still occupies their bridge’s location, city boundaries still follow the path of the Roman wall and their city’s location, the City of London, is still a commercial centre.

In the Roman London gallery, which chronicles the period from AD50-410, sculptures from the Temple of Mithras — an ancient sanctuary that was discovered in 1954 — and gold coins decorated with portraits of various emperors sit with more mundane items such as kitchen utensils to paint a picture of Roman city life.

Upon their empire’s collapse, the Romans abandoned Britain in the fifth century and Medieval London (410-1558) pieces together what happened next.

Saxons from Europe invaded Britain and established kingdoms in the wake of Rome’s departure, but archeologists were long puzzled by the lack of Saxon remains within London’s Roman walls. In the 1980s, they discovered the location of the Saxon trading town of Lundenwic in the Charing Cross and Covent Garden area, to the west of the Roman city. This gallery has gold and silver jewellery and other items reflecting that discovery.

Viking raids culminating in invasion led inhabitants of the Saxon town to retreat inside the Roman fortifications, to be fought over by Saxon and Danish kings until the imposition of Norman rule in 1066. Construction of an abbey and royal palace in Westminster cemented that area’s role as a governmental centre that persists today, but it’s a splendid model of the old St Paul’s Cathedral — which was begun by William the Conqueror in 1087 but not completed for 200 years — that dominates the gallery.

Any cursory look at London’s history shows that triumphs of culture, growth and trade occur despite violence, disaster and crime. The next gallery, War, Plague & Fire, documents the gruelling period from the 1550s until the 1660s. Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries meant many religious buildings passed into private hands. The people of London sided with, and to an extent bankrolled, parliament in the English Civil War, as they fought royalists over issues of England’s governance and religious freedom. Then in 1665 the Great Plague killed 100,000 people, one-fifth of London’s population.

Horrendous mortality rate records sit alongside gemstones believed to magically ward off the disease by desperate Londoners. As the plague subsided, London’s tightly packed network of wooden buildings led to the Great Fire of 1666, destroying much of the medieval city, including Old St Paul’s. A charred Bible and children’s shoes filled with ash hint at this tragedy. Despite hardships, however, London endured and theatres, including those performing Shakespeare plays, flourished.

The Expanding City (1670s-1850s) looks at London’s growth, post-fire, into Europe’s biggest capital with the world’s busiest port — and a centre for manufacturing, culture and ideas. However, with that growth came crime, poverty and public-health problems. While London grew famous for luxury goods such as duelling pistols, jewellery and watches, graffiti scratched into the walls of an east London prison cell by inmates, many of them insolvent debtors, hint at a darker city.

Via the Victorian Walk, a splendid array of late-19th-century shopfronts and interiors, you’ll reach People’s City, which covers the 1850s to the 1940s, when London was the richest and most powerful city in the world. Great contrasts can be seen here. Wealth, confidence and the middle classes’ spread to leafy suburbs thanks to new transport technology are demonstrated by stylish furniture, clothes and household goods, plus a stunning 1908 taxi.

However, there are also items of protest, political struggle, crime, poverty and, ultimately, an existential threat to the capital with the rise of fascism and the terrible Blitz of the second world war.

The final gallery, World City, brings things up to date, covering the period following the devastation of the second world war through swinging 1960s London, driven by youth culture, to today’s diverse metropolis of more than 9mn people. As a graphic designer, I particularly enjoy viewing items from the 1951 Festival of Britain and ephemera related to 1960s and ’70s pop and punk.

The museum itself now illustrates London’s ever-changing nature. At the end of this year, the site will close and move to splendid new premises converted from the old Smithfield Market half a mile west. The new museum is expected to open in 2025, adding its own chapter to London’s story.

What is your favourite museum in London, and why? Tell us in the comments

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