The way we lived: an interactive tour of our local domestic history
A parlour in 1790 modelled on an Islington residence with goods imported from Britain's expanding overseas territories - Credit: Chris Ridley (Copyright Geffrye Museum, London)
From Golders Green in 1910 to 1960s Highgate, take an virtual reality tour of 400 years of London’s domestic style at the Geffrye Museum in Hoxton
The Geffrye Museum in Shoreditch - Credit: Geffrye Museum
Fancy taking a look at what your home might have looked like hundreds of years ago? Don’t fancy leaving the comfort of your bed? Hoxton’s Geffrye Museum of the Home is opening up its doors for a brand new, interactive tour through four centuries of London’s urban homes and interiors, from the Great Fire of London in 1666 up to today.
However, the latest exhibition comes with a twist: it’s virtual.
The online tour will introduce online visitors to a multiplicity of styles based on period inspirations. Each room reflects the ways in which the middle classes, who had steadily grown more affluent in the years following the Industrial Revolution, lived at home.
Rooms on display include an Edwardian drawing room based on the style popular in 1910 Golders Green. A ‘living’ room for family use, the space features high gables, steep roofs and casement windows in the Arts and Crafts style. Due to popular demand for antiques, the room is furnished throughout in vintage reproductions, with textiles in ‘Olde English’ or Elizabethan style and Regency armchairs.
Elsewhere, you’ll find a parlour room from 1790s Islington decked out with overseas items such as imported textiles and carpets popular with the wealthy middle classes. Another popular design inspiration was the Classical era, fostering a demand for figurines and decorative urns. The plaster frieze is decorated with honeysuckle flower motifs, ever popular in Ancient Greece and Rome.
More modern is a 1965 informal living room that draws inspiration from the Modernist movement. Based on a small Highgate estate, the small area is open plan with an open-tread staircase, teak-coloured geometric storage solutions, Scandi-style plywood furniture and a television.
The tour can be viewed below, or click here to visit the website.
The Geffrye Museum of the Home, 136 Kingsland Road, E2 8EA is free to visit.
