6/8 Museums of London

I had been to the Museum of London before and really enjoyed it, so I decided to go again.  While the British Museum focuses on all of Great Britain, the Museum of London is smaller and focuses just on London.  There are exhibits on prehistoric London, Roman London, medieval London, and modern London.  

Did you know that London (aka Londinium) was founded by the Romans in 43 AD at a convenient crossing of the Thames River?  In fact the first London Bridge was built by the Romans.  If you can find the boundaries of what is still called "The City" you can find bits of old Roman wall.  "The City" is the ancient one square mile that was the original Roman City of London.  Click here for some information on Londinium. 

Tucked under this pedestrian walkway near the Museum of London is a piece of that old wall--probably a gate into the city. It is a contrast to the modern office buildings in this part of London.

There are actually two Museums of London.  This one is the original museum located not too far from St. Paul's Cathedral.  The other is the Museum of London Docklands, and I went there as well.  I was happy to find a Pret a Manger right next door, so stopped for a lunch chicken salad.  

One of the newest exhibits is on the Whitechapel "fatberg" that weighed 130 tons and 800' long and was blocking part of the sewers in London.  It took men in special suits using high pressure hoses and jackhammers two weeks to remove it.  They saved a few chunks to be exhibited, and two of them ended up in the Museum of London.  There is a video showing what it looked like and how it formed.   More information can be found in this BBC article:  https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-41238272https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-41238272.

So the point of exhibiting a fatberg is to show us what we should NOT put down the drain!  Here is one chunk of the fatberg. 

Here is one of the sewer workers who had to remove the beast.  Not a fun job, I suspect. 

 One to more pleasant things.  This is the entrance to the Roman Gallery.

This is how they suspect the Thames may have looked like in Roman times.  There is evidence of docks and shipping buildings. 

Some Roman artifacts found in London. 

And a depiction of what part of the Roman city looked like.  And by the way, early Roman maps show the city of London laid out in nice squares with long straight roads.  That lasted only until they left and the native Brits took over and created their incredibly complex road structure existing today, where the average street is only two blocks long and nothing in straight!

There is evidence of Roman baths in London.  But, if you want to see Roman baths that are still observable, you need to go to the city of Bath where baths were built over natural hot springs. 

I posted photos of an exhibit of the remains of Roman shoes when I visited Hadrian's Wall.  They were leather with leather soles, but to make them last longer, they had hobnails in the soles, as shown in this exhibit.  There are some ancient shoes in the lower left corner.

Not all Roman buildings were made of stone, as in Rome.  Some were wood, with wattle and daub, or sticks and mud, as shown here.

This is a reconstruction of the home of a wealthy Roman with an actual tile mosaic floor that was discovered and preserved. 

And Roman coins found in London.

This is the second Museum of London in the Docklands.  The docklands is where British ships brought cargo from all parts of the world, and these are some of the original warehouses.  

Now, however, this once poor and industrial part of London has become an area full of high-rise office buildings and expensive apartment homes.  The area is also known for nightlife and restaurants.  They do still have the remnants of docks, but they are more likely to be filled with private boats than commercial shipping. 

The cranes here are for show only.