The Guildhall Museum (1826–1976) One of the two museums that were merged to form the Museum of London was the Guildhall Museum, founded by the
City of London Corporation in 1826 when it received the gift of a Roman mosaic from Tower Street
The London Museum (1912–1976) The museum has its origins in, and derives much of its collection from, the London Museum, founded in 1911 by
Viscount Esher and
Lewis Harcourt, 1st Viscount Harcourt and originally based in the State Apartments of
Kensington Palace. It first opened to the public on 8 April 1912. Harcourt became the first Commissioner of Works, and the first Keeper was
Guy Francis Laking. In 1913, it became a National Museum. In 1914, it moved to
Lancaster House, which had been bought by
William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme, soap magnate and founder of the model town of
Port Sunlight, and given to the nation as a home for the London Museum. Visitors travelled through a mostly chronological route, entering the Prehistoric Room, the Roman Room, the Saxon and Early Norman Gallery, the Mediaeval Room, and finally a Jewellery Room before heading to the upper floor. Here, they would find the Tudor Room, the Early Seventeenth Century, the Late Seventeenth Century, a room with a large collection of
porcelain, the Late Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Room, and finally, the Costume Gallery. The museum also contained a basement which contained come exhibits from all eras, some of which were too large for the main galleries, and which could serve as an introduction to the collections. It included a Roman boat, a carriage belonging to the
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, a parlour decorated in the Stuart style, and prison cells. The Keeper of the London Museum from 1926 to 1944,
Sir Mortimer Wheeler, proposed merging the London Museum with the Guildhall Museum as early as 1927, as the two museums had a significant overlap in their collections, but the scheme was not given serious thought until after both museums had been forced to close during
World War II. During the war, the museum closed, and in 1945 it vacated Lancaster House so that the government could use the space for hospitality events. The trustees considered several sites for the new museum, including
Holland House and various sites on the
South Bank. However, in the end, King
George VI leased part of Kensington Palace for the museum to move back in. The new site opened in 1951. In 1960, a plan was formed to merge the London Museum with the Guildhall Museum, to be funded jointly by the government, the
City of London Corporation, and the
Greater London Council. An act of Parliament, the '''''' (c. 17), was passed to this effect in 1965. The City of London Corporation provided a site near what is now the
Barbican Centre.
Museum of London (1976–2022) '', a public sculpture by
Christopher Le Brun outside the main entrance to the former Barbican site The new site for the museum was at the corner of London Wall and Aldersgate Street, an area that had almost entirely been flattened by bombing in
The Blitz. The architects appointed to oversee the construction of the new museum building were
Philip Powell and
Hidalgo Moya, who designed a complex with four main parts: a tower block containing offices and not open to the public; two floors of exhibition space arranged around a courtyard; a lecture theatre and education wing; and a rotunda containing a small garden and restaurant. With the museum galleries themselves, Powell and Moya adopted an innovative approach to museum design, whereby the galleries were laid out so that there was only one route through the museum – from the prehistoric period to the modern galleries. As in the previous incarnation of the museum, the galleries would be set out in a roughly chronological order. The building also incorporated a viewing window out onto one of the remaining pieces of
London's city wall, originally built by the Romans around three sides of the city. Construction began in April 1971, with the foundation stone laid by the
Queen Mother on 29 March 1973, and the museum was opened in December 1976 by
Queen Elizabeth II as part of the
Barbican Estate. As in the London Museum, visitors entered a series of rooms set out in chronological order, moving anti-clockwise around the main courtyard on the upper floor through London's history up to the
Great Fire in 1666, and then descending to the lower level and moving clockwise around the courtyard up to the present day. Visitors would finish their visit by the
Lord Mayor of London's State Coach. In November 2002, the previous
The Thames In Prehistory gallery was replaced with an entirely new display titled
London Before London. A £20 million redevelopment called the "Galleries of Modern London" was completed in May 2010, the museum's biggest investment since opening in 1976. The redesign, by London-based architects
Wilkinson Eyre, comprised the entire lower floor of the main galleries, covering the period from the 1670s to the present day. The Galleries of Modern London displayed a total of 7,000 objects. Star exhibits included a
mummified cat, a 1928
Art Deco lift from
Selfridges department store on
Oxford Street, and a complete 18th century
debtors' prison cell covered in graffiti. on display in the Museum's former Barbican galleries The transformation included four new galleries. The
Expanding City gallery covered the period 1670–1850. ''People's City'' addressed 1850–1940s, including a "
Victorian Walk" displaying some of the museum's real office and shop frontages and interiors; objects relating to the
suffragette movement; and pages of
Charles Booth's 1888 "poverty map", colour-coding London's streets according to the relative wealth of their inhabitants.
World City was the gallery containing objects dating from the 1950s to the present day, including 1950s suits, a
Mary Quant dress from the 1960s,
Biba fashion in the 1970s, outfits from London's
punk scene, and a pashmina from
Alexander McQueen's 2008 collection. Finally, the
City Gallery featured large, street-level windows along London Wall that allowed passers-by to view the
Lord Mayor of London's State Coach, which takes to the streets each November for the
Lord Mayor's Show. In 2014, the museum opened a new gallery displaying the
cauldron from the
2012 Summer Olympics. The cauldron was made up of 204 steel stems, each tipped with a copper "petal", which could be raised or lowered to create various formations. When all the petals were raised to their full height, they together formed the shape of a cauldron. The gallery featured 97 of the original stems, wooden moulds for the copper petals, Great Britain's
Paralympic petal, and footage showing the cauldron in use during the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympiad. The room also showed interviews with some of the creators, including lead designer
Thomas Heatherwick and an engineer called Gemma Webster.
London Museum (future) buildings that will be occupied by the museum on its new site In 2016, the museum announced it would be closing its London Wall site and moving to a set of disused market buildings in West Smithfield in 2021. The new site will increase the museum's size from 17,000 square metres to over 27,000. Museum director Sharon Ament said that one reason for the move was "a failing building with problematic entrances and a location which is difficult to find". A competition was held to find an architectural firm to design the new building, with over 70 firms taking part. Six were shortlisted, and their initial designs released to the public in 2016.
Stanton Williams and Asif Khan were chosen as the final architects. The site at Smithfield includes part of the
Thameslink train line running into
Farringdon Station, and from an early point in the process, the museum expressed interest in creating a see-through section of tunnel for commuters to glimpse inside the museum and visitors to see the train go by. It also includes the
River Fleet, a tributary of the Thames which has long since become buried underground due to the high volume of construction work around it. One early plan for the new museum, since scrapped, included creating a well reaching down to the Fleet, which has been completely covered since the 1870s. Another idea for the new museum is to revive the ancient St Bartholomew's Fair, which took place on the site regularly in the medieval period until being shut down by authorities in 1855. The museum will also feature spiral escalators taking visitors to the underground storage rooms which will function as the main historical galleries. In 2019, further plans were released, which showed late-night queues outside the museum frontage and visitors perusing real items from the museum's collection. Ament announced that workers had found the remains of a Victorian café called the Temperance Cocoa Room, complete with original tiling, and that the museum intended to re-open this section as a café. The scheme was originally set to cost £250 million and open in 2021; current estimates are that it will cost £337 million and open in 2026. Ament blamed the rising cost on the difficulty of working with an old building: "It is to do with things like waterproofing a building that hasn't needed to be water-proofed, it is to do with engineering". In August 2022, the museum announced that a previously unknown freshwater spring had been found underneath the new site. Tests revealed that it was safe to drink, and Ament claimed that she hoped visitors would be able to "fill up their water bottles from it". On 4 December 2022, the museum closed its site at London Wall ahead of the move. It was also announced that when the new site opened in 2026, it would be called the London Museum. Once the museum has vacated the London Wall site, it will revert to the
City of London Corporation. In 2019, plans were revealed to use the site to house a London Centre For Music, a £288m concert hall for use by the London Symphony Orchestra. However, in 2022, the Corporation submitted plans to demolish the building, including the Bastion House office block above, and replace it with a 780,000 sq. ft office block, citing dangerous structural issues, poor energy performance, fire safety and limited possible uses as reasons in favour of demolition. In May 2024, demolition remained the likely option after the
Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Michael Gove decided not to intervene, and in November 2024
Historic England issued a
Certificate of Immunity from Listing, guaranteeing that the building would not be
statutorily listed within the next five years. == Collections ==