The London Traveler

The Geffrye Museum doesn’t sound like a major draw. A museum about furniture. How interesting is that?

Actually, it’s a lot more fun than it sounds. First of all, the setting is lovely. Just a few minutes by bus from Liverpool Street, the museum is set back from the road, with a fine garden in front. Mature trees provide shade, and a herb garden scatters its scent.

The museum is housed in a fine set of eighteenth century brick almshouses. Go inside (entrance is free), and you’ll find a set of rooms, each one designed in the style of a particular period – Elizabethan, Georgian, Victorian, even 1960s. It’s like taking a journey in a TARDIS as you flick rapidly through the centuries.

If you’re a connoisseur or an antiques collector or an artist, it’s a treasure house. There are some really marvellous works here – my favourite is the cabinet made for John Evelyn, a seventeenth century writer. It’s sobersides Puritan black on the outside – but open it up and there’s a resplendent red interior. When you know that Evelyn was a royalist who went abroad to avoid being drawn into the Civil War, you realise that this piece of furniture is similarly evasive – a nice piece of misdirection.

The Geffrye Museum is a nice size, too – you can see it in a lunchtime, unlike the British Museum which has been known to swallow tourists whole! And if you happen to be peckish, it has a nice little restaurant.

Just one warning – the museum is closed on Mondays. The rest of the week, it’s open 10-5.

Geffrye Museum, Kingsland Road, E2 – 149 or 242 bus from Liverpool Street .

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