Day 20 London (Easter Saturday 7 April)
After a lot of fiddling with my timetable to allow for things like needing to take it easy with this cold (which is still going great guns, unfortunately), I ended up going today to the Geffrye Museum. This had the advantage of being able to visit their restored 18th etc almshouse (open the first Sat of the month in summer, for small groups, on a first come first served basis).
As has become usual, I didn't breakfast in the hotel. I had an éclair, so as to be able to take my medications. (No, I'm not hungry much; the cold, I imagine.) So when my two buses delivered me to the Geffrye, I had a very good cup of hot chocolate. Which I needed, by then. The Geffrye is a former almshouse, a looong thin building, with two short thin side wings, and a very attractive garden embraced between them. The diagram on their website led me to believe that the entrance was around the back in the middle. So I hiked round there. (No signs in the street.) Passed one set of fire gates. Arrived at another.
Saw two persons who looked like gardeners, in matching polar fleece jackets. Asked despairingly, "How do I get in?" The senior said, "Go around to the front," at which I mimed collapse. Then she said, "It's after ten; I'll be kind and let you in, and you can look at the gardens first." So I can report that the Geffrye's gardens are also long and thin, with a high back wall screening off the Overground across the back street, and have lots of spring-flowering bulbs and other stuff, arranged in square "garden rooms". Enjoyable. In the top corner is a herb garden, where they encourage you to fondle the plants to get the scent (unlike some places, though of course people do it), but ask you not to pick them. Walled in, as an older herb garden might be. Very pleasant.
The entrance to the museum is in the top corner between the side and long wings. One does not book for the almshouse tour there, however; oh no. It's "about half way down". Now, had the bloke on the desk said "in the chapel", which is dead in the middle, behind what used to be the official front door to the almshouses… So I continued down to the bookshop, with the only cash register I could see. Oh no; back up there, in the chapel. Only the lady probably wouldn't be there for the 11 am tour yet. Rolled eyes. By this time I was getting tired of hiking up and down the corridor. Decided to risk the delay in order to have something to drink in the adjacent restaurant (which is quite attractive, a conservatory overlooking the rear gardens). This end of the building is in a modern extension, not thin, more circular, tucked onto the lower back corner, and very nicely done: restaurant, children's play area, shop, and two floors of exhibition galleries.
Should I say that the Geffrye is a museum specialising in the developing/changing houses and practices of the middle classes? Perhaps I should. "The changing style of the English domestic interior in a series of period rooms from 1600 to the present day." So in this long thin building is a series of three-walled rooms, each furnished in the manner of a particular period, with the narrow corridor serving as the fourth wall. I managed to look at a couple of rooms before it was time to return to the chapel and take the tour. Which, naturally, led us back to the entrance, and then down the garden, the full length of the building, to the front end of the other side wing. I was sorry for the lady on crutches, but I was pretty sorry for me too, by then, and not just because I'd left my coat in the cloakroom, not being aware that we were bound for the Great Outdoors.
The bit of the almshouse they had restored was worth the hanging about. There were a couple of information rooms, and then a room on the ground and first floors was furnished in the stye of ~1780 and ~1880, each accommodating one person or couple, plus the basement, with its coal cupboard for each room, the laundry, and those late 19th century innovations, a cold water tap and a toilet for each staircase. The rooms are a very decent size, though one could not say the same for the cooking facilities (on the hob of the tiny fireplace) and for that matter the laundry (with its minute copper that might accommodate one double bed sheet - my grandmother's was at least four times as big, but at least she didn't have to cart water). They still have the ~1880 gas lights above the fireplace, sans the glass mantle invented some eight years later, which made gas lighting much brighter and cleaner. The room guide lit them to demonstrate. I liked the way each room had its tiny storage room off one corner, with built in shelving (and, in the upper, Victorian, room, a birdcage, mousetrap and glass flowerpot). I could wish my hotel room was even half the size.
So then I could hike through the front garden again (the principal reason the London Country Council bought the place when the Ironmongers' Company moved their almshouses out before WWI and moved further into Hampshire later on): the district by then was not the market garden area the Ironmongers had sought out as a pleasant place for the beneficiaries of Sir Robert Geffrye's 18th century bequest! The museum was initiated in 1914. The locals still seem to use the garden - it doesn't look as if Shoreditch is rich in gardens now, either.
I wandered through the period rooms at my leisure, then had a quite good lunch: salmon fish cakes, sitting in a swamp of mixed leek and spinach - lightly creamed, I think - which was tasty. I'll have to try it at home (my salmon fish cakes aren't filled out with mashed potato, though; just aromatics).
Last of all I looked at the 20th century rooms in the modern extension (a bit of a relief not to count more than a dozen different patterns of decoration in each room!), and the small exhibition area. I couldn't help noticing that one of the small paintings in the general area was of a couple in their smart upper floor living room, with the woman in her silver evening dress leaning curiously out the window looking at the arrival of the Jarrow marchers (October 1936 protest march against unemployment). No social commentary attached. A bit too middle class, perhaps. My grandparents (my grandfather also in shipbuilding, but in Ayrshire, not Yorkshire) had taken the boat to Australia ten years earlier, by then.
About 2 pm I set off for Kings Cross, pausing to search for dinner makings in St Pancras International's facilities. The "virgin olive oil" hummus from M&S was extremely satisfactory, thank you, and the ciabatta roll from Sourced ditto. By 4 pm I couldn't stay awake, so I slept for four hours, for all the three noisy young men in the next room could do. (Not only do they shout, they drop things that sound like anvils, but are probably only boots. The whole mob, about 20 of them, went off somewhere about 8 pm, and all of a sudden the place was quiet. However, if I could sleep through their anvils, I expect I shall sleep through their return, too.)
As has become usual, I didn't breakfast in the hotel. I had an éclair, so as to be able to take my medications. (No, I'm not hungry much; the cold, I imagine.) So when my two buses delivered me to the Geffrye, I had a very good cup of hot chocolate. Which I needed, by then. The Geffrye is a former almshouse, a looong thin building, with two short thin side wings, and a very attractive garden embraced between them. The diagram on their website led me to believe that the entrance was around the back in the middle. So I hiked round there. (No signs in the street.) Passed one set of fire gates. Arrived at another.
Saw two persons who looked like gardeners, in matching polar fleece jackets. Asked despairingly, "How do I get in?" The senior said, "Go around to the front," at which I mimed collapse. Then she said, "It's after ten; I'll be kind and let you in, and you can look at the gardens first." So I can report that the Geffrye's gardens are also long and thin, with a high back wall screening off the Overground across the back street, and have lots of spring-flowering bulbs and other stuff, arranged in square "garden rooms". Enjoyable. In the top corner is a herb garden, where they encourage you to fondle the plants to get the scent (unlike some places, though of course people do it), but ask you not to pick them. Walled in, as an older herb garden might be. Very pleasant.
The entrance to the museum is in the top corner between the side and long wings. One does not book for the almshouse tour there, however; oh no. It's "about half way down". Now, had the bloke on the desk said "in the chapel", which is dead in the middle, behind what used to be the official front door to the almshouses… So I continued down to the bookshop, with the only cash register I could see. Oh no; back up there, in the chapel. Only the lady probably wouldn't be there for the 11 am tour yet. Rolled eyes. By this time I was getting tired of hiking up and down the corridor. Decided to risk the delay in order to have something to drink in the adjacent restaurant (which is quite attractive, a conservatory overlooking the rear gardens). This end of the building is in a modern extension, not thin, more circular, tucked onto the lower back corner, and very nicely done: restaurant, children's play area, shop, and two floors of exhibition galleries.
Should I say that the Geffrye is a museum specialising in the developing/changing houses and practices of the middle classes? Perhaps I should. "The changing style of the English domestic interior in a series of period rooms from 1600 to the present day." So in this long thin building is a series of three-walled rooms, each furnished in the manner of a particular period, with the narrow corridor serving as the fourth wall. I managed to look at a couple of rooms before it was time to return to the chapel and take the tour. Which, naturally, led us back to the entrance, and then down the garden, the full length of the building, to the front end of the other side wing. I was sorry for the lady on crutches, but I was pretty sorry for me too, by then, and not just because I'd left my coat in the cloakroom, not being aware that we were bound for the Great Outdoors.
The bit of the almshouse they had restored was worth the hanging about. There were a couple of information rooms, and then a room on the ground and first floors was furnished in the stye of ~1780 and ~1880, each accommodating one person or couple, plus the basement, with its coal cupboard for each room, the laundry, and those late 19th century innovations, a cold water tap and a toilet for each staircase. The rooms are a very decent size, though one could not say the same for the cooking facilities (on the hob of the tiny fireplace) and for that matter the laundry (with its minute copper that might accommodate one double bed sheet - my grandmother's was at least four times as big, but at least she didn't have to cart water). They still have the ~1880 gas lights above the fireplace, sans the glass mantle invented some eight years later, which made gas lighting much brighter and cleaner. The room guide lit them to demonstrate. I liked the way each room had its tiny storage room off one corner, with built in shelving (and, in the upper, Victorian, room, a birdcage, mousetrap and glass flowerpot). I could wish my hotel room was even half the size.
So then I could hike through the front garden again (the principal reason the London Country Council bought the place when the Ironmongers' Company moved their almshouses out before WWI and moved further into Hampshire later on): the district by then was not the market garden area the Ironmongers had sought out as a pleasant place for the beneficiaries of Sir Robert Geffrye's 18th century bequest! The museum was initiated in 1914. The locals still seem to use the garden - it doesn't look as if Shoreditch is rich in gardens now, either.
I wandered through the period rooms at my leisure, then had a quite good lunch: salmon fish cakes, sitting in a swamp of mixed leek and spinach - lightly creamed, I think - which was tasty. I'll have to try it at home (my salmon fish cakes aren't filled out with mashed potato, though; just aromatics).
Last of all I looked at the 20th century rooms in the modern extension (a bit of a relief not to count more than a dozen different patterns of decoration in each room!), and the small exhibition area. I couldn't help noticing that one of the small paintings in the general area was of a couple in their smart upper floor living room, with the woman in her silver evening dress leaning curiously out the window looking at the arrival of the Jarrow marchers (October 1936 protest march against unemployment). No social commentary attached. A bit too middle class, perhaps. My grandparents (my grandfather also in shipbuilding, but in Ayrshire, not Yorkshire) had taken the boat to Australia ten years earlier, by then.
About 2 pm I set off for Kings Cross, pausing to search for dinner makings in St Pancras International's facilities. The "virgin olive oil" hummus from M&S was extremely satisfactory, thank you, and the ciabatta roll from Sourced ditto. By 4 pm I couldn't stay awake, so I slept for four hours, for all the three noisy young men in the next room could do. (Not only do they shout, they drop things that sound like anvils, but are probably only boots. The whole mob, about 20 of them, went off somewhere about 8 pm, and all of a sudden the place was quiet. However, if I could sleep through their anvils, I expect I shall sleep through their return, too.)