Museum of London Docklands Reviews (London, England)

A great museum to visit

by missj1981

London, England, United Kingdom

April 13, 2012

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The Museum of Docklands is located in the city of London. It's not one of the main attractions of Londen and that's mainly due it's not located in the city centre. The museum is worth visiting, as we thought when we looked at their website. We were ...Read more The Museum of Docklands is located in the city of London. It's not one of the main attractions of Londen and that's mainly due it's not located in the city centre. The museum is worth visiting, as we thought when we looked at their website. We were in London just for a couple of days and since we have been there before we wanted to visit some other attractions then the main ones like Big Ben.

The museum is best reached by the tube but also by boat, bus and even by car. When you come with car there is plenty of paid parking available. Since we went with the tube i can't really comment on how expensive the parking was. With the tube the museum is very easy to reach. You need to get off at the station West India Quay and then it's just a short walk.

The museum is housed in a large warehouse which you can't miss. The warehouse looked old from the outside but you can clearly see it has been redone and while looking old it's all perfectly in order. The inside of the warehouse is just the same. You have the old ordaments and features while you can see it has been repainted just a few years ago. What striked me was the very large windows and the exposed brickwork. Of course the high ceilings are beautifull too.

When you enter you will see there is a small cafe there were you can have food and drinks. Outside the building were also a few tables were you could sit down, which looked nice but it was simply too cold for us.

At the museum you can visit eleven permanent galleries which all tell the story about London, being more specific about the Docklands, River Thames and all about the past of London. The exhibtions are divided over several floors but are clearly layout and easy to follow. There is normally one temperaly exhibition which is only there for a few months. I have to say that our favourite was the Sailor town which had a reconstruction of the full size dark winding streets of Victoria Wapping.

A great thing is that the museum is free to visit and only the special exhibitions costs a fee. The museum is worth the visit and you can easily spend the afternoon here. Five stars! Close

From journal England 2012

Docking at the Musuems in the Docklands

by duskmaiden

London, United Kingdom

June 27, 2009

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Best of IgoUgo The regeneration of London's Docklands has been a huge success. Derelict warehouses have been converted into swanky bars and restaurant, shipping companies have been superseded by financial institutions housed in shimmering ultra modern sky scrapers ...Read more The regeneration of London's Docklands has been a huge success. Derelict warehouses have been converted into swanky bars and restaurant, shipping companies have been superseded by financial institutions housed in shimmering ultra modern sky scrapers and traditional worker's houses have been replaced by Legoland waterfront apartments. Its a fascinating area but I find it a bit soulless and toy town especially with the DLR gliding along like a model rail. During a recent visits to docklands I decided to visits the Museum in the Docklands to explore the area's past, present and future.
The Museum in Docklands is a branch of one of my favourite museums in London, the Museum of London. I love the Museum of London as it is like a huge local museum with all the same collections such as pottery, skeletons etc. but it is presented in a better and more interesting way. The Museum in the Docklands uses the same format to tell the story of the Port of London and the Thames from the Roman era to the present. It is quite easy to find. You can either get the Jubilee Line to Canary Wharf and walk five minutes or you can get the DLR to West India Quay. It is housed in an old warehouse at the en of a row of various bars and restaurants.
Unlike its parent museum there is an entrance fee for the Museum in the Docklands. Adults are £5 but this is for an annual pass, so it is very good value for money especially if you intend to visit for special exhibitions. Concessions are £3 whilst NUS card holders, under 16s and carers are free. I got in free of charge, since I work in the same sector I took along my staff pass and cheekily asked to get in free and to my surprise they granted my request (I had let one of their member's of staff in for free so the motto of the story is one good turn deserves another). I found the staff that I encountered to be friendly and helpful although I had minimum contact with them.
The museum is spread out on five floors with the main exhibition areas chronologically arranged on the top two floors. There's a learning centre on the first floor and an education centre in the basement neither of which I visited. So with the free map in hand I made my way by lift up to the third floor to begin my journey back in time. I arrived in AD 43 just in time for the Romans to found the city of Londinium. I found this the least interesting part of the museum as it consisted mostly of archaeological remains in glass cases and very well written and thought out interpretation boards. I did like the short films by Tony Robinson explaining the development of the various Ports of London through Roman, Saxon, Viking and Norman London. There were plenty of nice touches on the first floor that covered he history of the Port of London up until the 18th century. I liked the large model of London Bridge in the 15th and 17th centuries and I thought the huge jawbone of a whale being used for the entrance to an exhibition on Greenland Dock and the whaling trade to be a nice touch. At the end of the level there was an exhibition on sugar and the slave trade. I tliked the huge interpretation board containing the records of the slave ships to be extremely powerful and effective.
The second floor carries on where the third floor left off with the history of the docks in the 19th 20th and 21st centuries. Here we got industry, strikes, social condition and the ubiquitous Second World War leading onto the regeneration and redevelopment of the current Docklands and the coming of the Jubilee Line and DLR. The museum is very information rich and I think I spent a good couple of hours in the gallerias. By the end I found myself getting a bit restless and would certainly return to concentrate on the latter half of the second floor.
The museum uses a number of methods of interpretation to present their artefacts including reconstructions of areas of the docks such as the Justice Quays on the top floor and a19th century Sailortown and an air raid shelter on the second floor. They also used overhead audio sound effects to create more of an atmosphere. These can be good but in a fairly open plan museum like this they often get jumbled up to create a bit of a cacophony. Sailortown was particularity effective as the ceilings were low to represent the winding narrow alleys. What was not so effective was the use of smell which is that unpleasant one used to signify bad sanitation and rotting rubbish in the street used everywhere from Yorvik Viking Centre to the London Dungeon.
I visited the museum on a Monday lunchtime and it was extremely quiet. It is slightly off the beaten track and unknown compared to larger museums such as the Natural History Museum, the British Museum or the V and A. I'm not sure how child friendly it would be. There are touch screens but these are more adult orientated and there is a lack of dressing up clothes or activities in the main galleries, although there was a tin hat in the air raid shelter. On the ground floor there is an area for the under 12 called Mudlarks, which I did not visit. There seemed to be a lot of yummy mummies and their pre schoolers there, so I deduced it must be the place to go on the Docklands. On closer inspection of the website the number of toddlers was due to a free play session every Monday.
After wandering round the galleries I was feeling a little peckish so headed down to the Ground floor where all the facilities are. You can not fault ease of location for the toilets (an important one for families I know), as they are located to the right of the reception desk and the symbols are enormous. At the front of the museum is the shop which is quite small and sells mostly books themed around water and London alongside little African drums (to tie in with the Sugar and slavery exhibition I suppose).
Food wise the Museum in the Docklands caters for various budgets in its two eateries. The 1802 is a more formal restaurant, which also has a separate outside entrance which is open until 11pm on weekday evenings to cater for the business market. I had a quick look at the menu which looked good using the best of British but I did not want a full meal and it was too pricy for what I wanted. Instead I went to the cafe which sold a nice range of sandwiches drinks and light meals. I thought the prices were extremely reasonable for a museum cafe. I had a mug of Mocha for £1.50, which was nice but it could have been slightly stringer and more chocolatey. To eat I had rustic chips, which cost £2.50. It was advertised as rustic chips with aeoli (in layman's terms garlic mayonnaise) however mine arrived with a nice dollop of tomato ketchup to dip them in. The chips arrive in a decent sized bowl and they certainly were rustic as each chip must have been a quarter of a potato at least. No skinny French fries here. They were delicious and finished off a nice couple of hours at the Museum in the Docklands.
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From journal Musings on London's Museums

The Museum in Docklands

by Idler

Poolesville, Maryland

February 1, 2005

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Best of IgoUgo When the last of the upriver docks and wharves closed in the late 1970’s, the Museum of London targeted a splendid but run-down Georgian warehouse in the West India Docks to be the site of a museum devoted to the story of London’s river and the ...Read more
When the last of the upriver docks and wharves closed in the late 1970’s, the Museum of London targeted a splendid but run-down Georgian warehouse in the West India Docks to be the site of a museum devoted to the story of London’s river and the people who made their livelihood from it. The result, the largest museum to open in London in twenty years, presents 2,000 years of history in exhibits as thought provoking as they are well presented.

If the Museum in Docklands were in Central London, rather than off the tourist radar in Canary Wharf, it would undoubtedly attract throngs of visitors. However, I practically had the place to myself one afternoon after strolling among the gleaming modern buildings of Canary Wharf. The old West India Dock warehouses are a poignant reminder that the mercantile torch has been passed--the sailors and dock workers now replaced by merchant bankers and stock brokers.

Canary Wharf near the Docklands Museum

Throughout the museum, I never lost the sense of being in a warehouse–-the pitch pine timbers and weathered brick were left intact wherever possible. I could imagine what the place had been like in its heyday, rich with the scent of tea and molasses. Everywhere, gleaming wood display cases and brass fittings lent a distinctly maritime feel.

The first few galleries explore the ancient Roman settlements that sprang up along the Thames and trace the growth of the city through medieval times. I found the model of medieval London Bridge of special interest–-for centuries the sole structure spanning the Thames.

There are 16 galleries in the museum, and if pressed I’d have to say that the section devoted to the fate of the East End and dock areas during World War II impressed me most. Footage from the Imperial War Museum of the burning of the docks during the Blitz was one of the most affecting things I’ve ever seen. The ferocity of the fires seemed almost incomprehensible even compared to recent apocalypses.

More peaceably, there are any number of wonderful artifacts to contemplate – wooden ships’ figureheads (including a particularly fine one representing Pocahontas), models of famous clipper ships, maps and panoramas, and all the fascinating paraphernalia of the maritime life. "Sailortown," a reconstruction of a late 18th century Billingsgate area, takes visitors through a series of dark alleys ringing with the sounds of the docks; it’s an artful piece of historical legerdemain.

The last few galleries trace the renaissance of the Docklands. I was impressed by how clearly the exhibits depicted the area’s downward spiral and rocky recovery. It filled in any number of gaps in my understanding of modern eastern London, especially the political strife that accompanied the reshaping of the Docklands.

Before leaving I peeked into the lively "Mudlarks Gallery," sure to be a hit with any visitor under the age of 12. I left at closing, wishing I’d come earlier. This museum was an unexpected pleasure.

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From journal Sweet Thames, Flow Softly

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Museum of London Docklands

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