Rooms Through Time
See some of the ways in which homes and home life have evolved in the past 400 years.
The main living space of the home has been many things – a bustling hall, a formal parlour, a cosy living room.
Our Rooms Through Time are based on real London homes and their owners would have had enough money to decorate and live comfortably.
These rooms change throughout the year, as the stories and objects within them are re-styled buy our curators to coincide with Festival of Home, which runs throughout the summer and has a different theme every year, and our Winter Festival, which runs from October to late January every year. It's worth visiting more than once in the year to see these rooms come alive in different ways.
Highlights
1970s front room
There's 'Saturday Soup' for dinner as everyone has been doing their chores to clean up the front room.
A parlour in 1870
Anne and Daniel have invited a professional medium to hold a séance for their close friends.
Our other Rooms Through Time
A hall in 1630
All of the household, including servants, will sit down to eat together.
A parlour in 1745
The mistress is expecting guests round for tea and she wants the parlour to be sparkling clean.
A parlour in 1790
Everyone is full from dinner, and they have settled down to play cards.
A drawing room in 1830
The eldest daughter is practising her watercolours, while the younger daughter is writing a letter to her cousin.
A drawing room in 1915
Mother and daughter are knitting socks to send to soldiers at the Front to keep them warm.
A living room in 1937
A maid is coming to collect the resident's half-eaten meal and dust the room.
Loft-style apartment 1998
The couple who own this apartment have friends over for drinks after work.
Domestic Game Changers
These everyday objects might not look very special, but they have had a huge impact on our home lives.
Real Rooms
There are many stories and voices missing from our Rooms Through Time. We want to work with our visitors and communities to understand what the rooms could look like if we were to rethink who they are about.