You have just a couple of weeks to visit the Museum of the Home before it closes part of the building to revamp its famous Rooms Through Time displays.
The 1915 room
The historic rooms in the recently restored former almshouses will remain as they are, showing how the dining rooms of the rich from Tudor to Victorian times could have looked. However, the museum has a 1990 extension, the Branson Coates wing, which will be closing so that the more modern room displays can be revamped.
The changing of the rooms aims to make the displays more relevant, as they have typically focused on a typical middle-class white household, and overlooked the diverse societies that London has long had in its midst.
The Branson Coates wing
The new rooms will include a Jewish tenement from 1911, an Irish couple’s house in the 1950s, LGBTQ+ renters sharing an ex-council home in the 2000s, a British-Vietnamese contemporary home, and The Future Room, which will explore real homes amid challenges such as climate change and technological advances.
They’ll also expand the 1870s Parlour and Front Room in 1976 to become more interactive.
That does mean though that you have just a couple of weeks to see the modern Rooms Through Time before they close forever.
The 1870s room
Now is also a double-good time to visit as the rooms are decorated for Christmas, showing the changing traditions over the centuries.
They’ve also restored one room to it original layout as a millennial yuppie flat, which rather oddly was described as an unrealistically luxurious housing association flat last year, which was just so wrong. Yay for yuppies.
The Millennium flat
I’ve also been told that when they reopen, the new rooms won’t be redecorated for Christmas in the future, so this year is also the last time to see the modern extension rooms in their Christmas attire. It was pretty apt that on my visit, the tape deck in the consultation room played The End by The Doors.
The modern Rooms Through Time space will close on Sunday 7th January 2024, and reopens in the summer with the new displays.
The Museum of the Home is next to Hoxton station on the London Overground and is free to visit.
The museum is open Tuesday to Sunday from 10am to 5pm (last entry 4pm), but will be closed on 24th to 26th December 2023 and 1st January 2024.
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