The existence of Sir Richard Wynn’s house (Little Syon) has been carefully brought back to light through the hard work of Simon Hadleigh-Sparks, a gardener at Syon Park. In his spare time he spends hours in Syon’s archive uncovering the wealth of documentary evidence kept there. Here he tells us how he first stumbled across Sir Richard Wynn’s House: 

Little Syon was a grand private house situated on London Road, that is now within the grounds of Syon Park land, and that has sadly been forgotten about over time. Many locals and Syon workers will not be at all aware of its existence, even though it played an important part of Syon and Brentford history for 226 years. 

I first heard about the house when I was doing some research on the internet, looking-up another project, when I saw the Little Syon painting (see below; image courtesy of London Metropolitan Archives). I took it upon myself to discover what I could about this little known part of Syon’s history.

Painting of Little Syon, courtesy of London Metropolitan Archives

 You will see from this painting that the frontage has a striking resemblance to Syon House (below) which may explain how it came to be known as Little Syon. 

Syon House

What first sparked my interest was of course the name ‘Little Syon’ and also that it was the only section of land not owned by the Syon Dukes for most of the building’s lifetime. It’s a bit of a mystery why the Little Syon site was separate; a possible reason is the land was given to the Nuns when Mary 1st wanted to rebuild the abbey at Syon (which was dissolved under Henry VIII in 1539). The plot was eventually rejoined with the parkland in 1818 AD, but the house itself was demolished shortly afterwards. 

Even now very little is known of the building and its history but I am honoured that my research and discoveries to date are being used by the Museum of London team and my initial research has been the driving force behind the archaeological project for this year. 

I have done most of my research online and looking through the Duke of Northumberland’s archives and records held here at Syon. It is a treasure trove of information from which I hope to discover more (for example this map of the house, below).

Map of the house © the Collections and Archives Department at Alnwick Castle

I also hope to obtain some more info from the Duke’s Alnwick Castle archives, as they now hold a large amount of Syon’s records. Plus the results of excavation are invaluable! 

Researching Little Syon has only fuelled my interest in Syon Park and the unknown aspects of its history. I will continue to explore and research the parkland, and look forward to my future discoveries! 

Simon Hadleigh-Sparks

Following on from her blogs about William Raban’s film Nightwalks and the key objects within our Dickens and London exhibition, this week PhD student, Joanna Robinson, asks if we can find out more about Dickens’ relatives through the characters in his books than by looking at photographs of them. Joanna is a PhD student working collaboratively with the Museum of London and the English department at King’s College, London.

As you walk into Dickens and London, the first artefacts to greet you, and ease you into a Dickensian state of mind, are a range of photographs of Dickens’ close family and friends. His private life, particularly his scandalous treatment of his wife during his affair with a much younger woman, has been a feature of numerous biographies in recent years. Even the jolly TV programmes on Dickens shown over Christmas 2011 saw presenters referring to this era of his life again and again, and sending the message that the public are not willing to forgive him. Such topics will inevitably be the first thing on people’s minds as they gaze upon the opening images in the exhibition, so that the wall of photographs feels almost like a line-up from a nineteenth century version of Hello magazine. And, similarly to Hello magazine, there is a real sense that these photos do not tell us the full story.

Ellen Ternan © Charles Dickens Museum

There is something eerie in this wall of ghostly faces, and I believe that this is partly because of the way they have been arranged for the exhibition. The problem with the length of Dickens’ career is that it is difficult to tie down any consistent arguments across his texts, and so his friendships can often be better traced through their influence upon his work. For instance, not only is Hard Times dedicated to Thomas Carlyle, but Carlyle’s thinking seems to have significantly shaped the novel. However, Carlyle’s voice does not pervade the whole of Dickens’ oeuvre. By having Dickens’ associates arranged in a line-up it is difficult to differentiate between the contexts in which he knew them, and their various impacts upon his writing career. This sea of faces, with their captioned biographies, is eerie because of their dislocation both from Dickens and each other. I find it helpful to imagine them on a pin board in the style of a police investigation, with different bits of string connecting the dots – but, to be fair, this would not look as nice as the way the exhibition has presented them.

Dickens with his daughters Mary and Kate in the garden at Gad’s Hill Place, 1865 © Charles Dickens Museum

Victorian hip hop artist, Professor Elemental, takes us through a brief history of Steampunk in advance of his performance at The alternative Diamond Jubilee at the Museum of London Docklands on Thursday 31 May.

Having looked at William Raban’s film Nightwalks last week, PhD student, Joanna Robinson takes a closer look at two of the key objects currently on display in our Dickens and London exhibition at the Museum of London. Joanna  is a PhD student working collaboratively with the Museum of London and the English department at King’s College, London.

Tonight, in the blue corner – a real heavyweight on loan from a private collector – Dickens’s desk from Gad’s Hill Place! Aaand in the red corner – on loan from the V&A, and complete with annotations – the manuscript of Bleak House! Both contenders promise to pack a punch with the public… or do they? Perhaps the first question we should ask is can you have an exhibition on a well known literary figure without featuring these kind of artefacts? Dickens’ true heritage is his writing, yet how do you begin to structure an exhibition around something that is so intangible and subjective? In a way, desks and manuscripts seem to provide concrete proof of Dickens’ worth, and so justify his place in the canon and the existence of the exhibition itself. Yet even though they are clearly an expected facet of any display of this sort, it is difficult to know what it is they actually say about Dickens other than, “oh yes, he must have written something then.”

Dickens's Manuscript for Bleak House © V&A images and Victoria and Albert Museum

However, the responses from the public made me wonder whether I was missing something by thinking, “it’s a nice desk – but it is just a desk.” I am tempted to reach for Walter Benjamin as I try to understand its power over the imagination. Perhaps its literary associations have created an aura around it that gives it a palpable sense of uniqueness. One could claim that the desk has more impact because it is not reproducible, whereas Dickens’ words (even samples of his plans and annotations, if you get a good edition) are constantly replicated. Yet I am inclined to believe that its appeal may be even simpler than this. When Victorians emigrated they would take souvenirs to remind them of loved ones, finding a tactile comfort in these objects. The souvenir would somehow lessen their acute awareness of a human-shaped void even though they knew that they would probably never see their loved one again. The desk seems, to me, to constitute a kind of literary souvenir, and similarly provides a physical link between us and someone who is completely out of reach.

Elizabeth Singleton, Host at the Museum of London, introduces our our final Dickens Book Club book for May, David Copperfield.

Hello all, my name is Elizabeth and I work as a Host at the Museum of London.  I must admit that Dickens has always been on the periphery of my literary life. Sure, I have always been acquainted with his work – from the multiple adaptations I have seen on screen and stage – but I have yet, until today, actually delved into the original work.

And what better way to start than with the novel the writer described as his ‘favourite child’, David Copperfield. In the preface to the book Dickens writes that the novel was a result of a two year ‘imaginative task’, and how, having at last finished it, he is so torn between pleasure and regret at its end – his pleasure deriving from  ‘the achievement of a long design’ but his ‘regret in the separation from so many companions’.  I do so love this idea, as I have often felt the same way as a reader at the end of a particularly enjoyable read; I have found that I have lamented the parting of such characters that have taken such an active part in my imagination, but find I am forever grateful to have met them in the first place. This, I believe, is the best thing about starting a new book – the promise of new characters you will meet along the way as the adventure unfolds.

Our historical knowledge of Saxon London until the 1980s was scant. No contemporary histories of the period exist until the writings of the Venerable Bede, an English Monk, in the c.730s AD who mentions the city of Lundenwic: “Its [the province of the East Saxons] chief city is London, which is on [the river Thames] and is an emporium for many nations who come to it by sea and land” (Historia Ecclesiastica). It was considered that this wic or emporium would have been situated within the walls of the old Roman city; however, little evidence was forthcoming. This is reflected in the paucity of the Museum of London’s core collection of Saxon objects from the city, which only number some 700 artefacts. Excavations at Jubilee Hall in 1985 proved new theories by archaeologists Martin Biddle and Alan Vince that Middle Saxon (650 – 850AD) Lundenwic actually existed west of the Roman city, in the modern area of London’s Strand/Covent Garden.

This fourth object will hopefully emphasise how new archaeological discoveries are constantly changing our understanding of London’s history and the difficulties associated with interpreting transitional periods in the archaeological record.

Object 4

Early Saxon (Late C6^th AD) Amber Bead Necklace

These 19 individually polished, red amber beads were excavated from one of the earliest graves belonging to a Saxon Londoner, on site of the London Transport Museum in 2003. This object was one of several grave goods accompanying a somewhat enigmatic burial. The skeleton itself could not be aged or sexed and exhibited no pathology that could be interpreted.

As such we know virtually nothing of this person other than that which can be interpreted from the goods chosen to accompany the body in burial (always a tricky business). A shield-on-tongue buckle could be of Kentish manufacture or an import – the garnet keystone brooch pre-dates any ‘Kentish’ known examples. Two ‘Roman’ artefacts – a glass vessel rim and copper-alloy terret – suggest some form of historical curation by the Saxons, but muddy the picture of this particular Saxon’s ethnic and cultural identity.

The amber beads have been highlighted from this assemblage because of all the grave goods they are the most ‘exotic’, having been sourced and traded from the Baltic. Amber was especially popular in the C5^th and C6^th and favoured in the Anglian and Saxon regions of England (versus Kent). Despite this popularity, this specific jewellery type is the first excavated from the London region, making it unique. On a broader perspective we can see, despite the end of the Roman Empire, London persists as a centre of trade.

Continuation of Roman practice is also evident through location of this pre-wic Saxon cemetery where Roman burials and the re-use of sarcophagi have been discovered. The burial itself is also telling as it is believed inhumation was a Saxon practice inherited from the Romans. However, the positioning of the body – head orientated to the west – may suggest a Christianizing influence.

The unusual Amber beads from this burial are only one piece of a puzzle that epitomizes how archaeology often asks more questions of its material than it can ever answer. All we can tentatively suggest of our Saxon in question is that she was an adult female and clearly of status.

In the last 25 years our knowledge of Saxon London has changed dramatically and in the last twelve years excavations, such as at sites LGC00 and SMD01, have allowed archaeologists to refine the stratigraphic framework and related chronology of this period. Having located where Saxon London was, perhaps in another 10 years we will be far closer to understanding who our Early Saxon Londoners were. Only archaeology will tell…

Inspired by William Raban’s film Nightwalks, currently showing in our Dickens and London exhibition, PhD student, Joanna, explores the implications of voiceover in retelling Dickens’ stories for a modern day audience. Joanna Robinson is a PhD student working collaboratively with the Museum of London and the English department at King’s College, London.

You can catch Nightwalks by William Raban within the Dickens and London exhibition at the Museum of London until 10 June 2012.

> Find out more about the exhibition
> Watch the trailer for Nightwalks by William Raban

In 2006 archaeological excavations by Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) took place on site at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel revealing an area of burial ground – used for a short period of time from c.1825-1840 – which had long since been forgotten. Significantly the passing of the 1832 Anatomy Act took place during this period, a pivotal point in time that had enormous implications in medical and social history that continues to resonate into the 21st century. The discoveries from the excavation are the basis of our forthcoming exhibition Doctors, Dissection and Resurrection Men. 

The skeletal material recovered from the burials was extraordinary with the discovery of individuals who had undergone post mortems and dissection, as well as comparative anatomy and teaching preparations. Being in the context of a hospital it is not perhaps unexpected to find evidence like this but it is an unusual archaeological assemblage. It provides a unique snapshot into a past era of a functioning hospital treating patients, as well as one of the earliest established medical teaching schools, founded in 1785 by surgeon Sir William Blizard.

London in the 19th century was rapidly developing as an industrial and urban metropolis with a growing population. Scientific investigation was flourishing and with the ascendancy of the surgeon anatomists demand for dead bodies was rising and needed a good supply. The poor were vulnerable both in life and death. Conditions of the cemeteries in the 19th century were dire with high mortality rates and an ever increasing number of burials. Burials of the poor were particularly vulnerable to the manoeuvrings of the resurrection men (body snatchers) who would enter cemeteries under cover of darkness, having with them spades and sacks to dig up the bodies of the dead and sell for a high price to anatomy and medical schools for dissection.

Iron coffin - St Bride’s Church on Fleet Street

One of the prevailing Christian religious fears of the time was the horror of being taken from your grave and dissected. Measures were taken in attempts to safeguard the dead but the resurrection men were resourceful and skilled in their grisly task. The wealthy were able to pay for more secure means of burial, including paying someone to watch over you after death until too decomposed to be of use to the resurrection men. There were also some extreme and bizarre innovations created to protect the dead. Lead coffins (triple shell) were a standard format for burial of the wealthy at this time but for a short period, at the height of the fear of resurrection men, iron coffins were offered by undertakers as the ultimate deterrent. These would have been very expensive and, therefore, the sole preserve of the wealthy.

With fear of body-snatching gripping 19th century Londoners, you might expect that there would be a number of iron coffins discovered during excavations but this is not the case. In all of the many excavations by MOLA not a single iron coffin has been found, making the iron coffin from St Bride’s Church on Fleet Street, which will feature in our exhibition, unique. The coffin has been on display for over 50 years in the crypt of the church. Continued investigations are under way as to whether the coffin was used for an interment or a patent model. The inclusion of this coffin in the exhibition illustrates the fear of the resurrection men and the world in which they moved and traded. In the following months leading up to the exhibition launch, the iron coffin will undergo conservation to expose and learn about its construction and decoration, revealing details to add to the history of iron coffins. The findings from this work will be posted here by our conservationists so watch this space.

Our conservationists taking the iron coffin to the Museum

The first trial trench worried us.

Those of you familiar with archaeology will notice that not very much is going on in that trench. Can you see the line of red in the side? That’s the ‘foundation’ for part of Sir Richard’s house. I’d be slightly concerned if my lovely manor house was just sitting on the surface as that spread implies!

However two more trenches revealed slightly better remains. Trial trench 2 showed a lovely brick debris spread along one of the wall lines…

…and trial trench 3 shows (possibly) the lines of the back walls of the house.

Our plan is to join these second two trial trench together to make a large L shaped trench to explore this summer.

Inspired by our upcoming event at the Museum of London in which Sebastian Groes and Iain Sinclair discuss representations of Victorian London in 19th century literature, we’ve put together a selection of photographs which show the capital at the time.

Click on each image below for more information.

A convicts' home in Drury Lane c. 1877 © Museum of London

Cheap Fish of St. Giles, 1877 © Museum of London

The Oxford Arms, Warwick Lane, 1875 © Museum of London

The Oxford Arms, Warwick Lane, 1875 © Museum of London

Cloth Fair, Smithfield, 1877 © Museum of London

An old house, Palace Yard, Lambeth, 1883 © Museum of London

Neville Thomas at the Coconut Fibre Works, Millwall, 1885 © Museum of London

The Aldgate Pump, 1880 © Museum of London

View Across the Thames to St Paul's Cathedral, c.1850 © Museum of London

The Royal Exchange, c.1880 © Museum of London

Blackfriars Bridge with the City in the distance, c1880 © Museum of London

Cheapside with Bow Church, c.1880 © Museum of London

London Bridge with traffic, c.1880 © Museum of London

Westminster Abbey and Palace, c.1857 © Museum of London

A woman carrying a toddler with a young girl in Drury Lane, 1899 © Museum of London

An elevated view along Bishop's Court towards Holborn Viaduct Station, 1882 © Museum of London

An exhausted sweated labourer, 1890-1910 © Museum of London

Taking these images into consideration, do you think the portrayal of Victorian London by Dickens and his contemporaries was realistic? Have your say in the comments section below or join us at the Museum of London on Wed 25 April (event details below).

Back in March we hired a mechanical digger to open three trial trenches in the area of hoped for remains of Sir Richard Wynn’s house in Syon Park. Our first issue quickly arose when we realised that the remains weren’t quite where we thought they might be!

 We were hoping they would be here:

A lovely open grassed patch with lots of space for open area trenches.

Instead we quickly realised they were over a fence and here:

In a reasonably recent plantation of new trees!

Well, it’s widely known that the best archaeology is always in the most inconvenient place. Luckily our digger fit perfectly in between the rows, and Topher (Syon’s Head Gardener) explained to us that because the trees are young (and don’t have big root systems yet) he could move a few for us to fit in our trenches. Hurrah!

Following Hilary Young’s blog post Listening for a change and author Harriet Salisbury’s look at the discoveries she made while delving into the Museum of London’s oral history collections, here Harriet talks about her work with the Museum’s picture library and putting faces to the voices her new book, The War on our Doorstep.

The Museum had agreed to let me use 50 of their images in my book and after time spent listening to the voices in the oral history collection, I was eager almost beyond belief to see what this world looked like. Of course, I started off with hugely unrealistic expectations. Having read about a particular pub or street market, I expected to be able to find a picture of it. Frequently, there wasn’t one.

Dockers campaign in an east London park in 1961. Henry Grant © Henry Grant Collection/Museum of London

First World War poster issued by the Central Recruiting depot, Whitehall © Museum of London

A view of Neath Place c.1900-1910. John Galt © Ian Galt/Museum of London

Four circus elephants being unloaded at South West India Docks after a circus tour of South Africa, in 1968. Photographer unknown © PLA Collection/Museum of London

‘I’ve never read any of his books you know,’ the woman in front of me is saying to her companion.

‘Oh but you have to,’ is the shocked reply, ‘the characters are just so vivid and true.’

An observation backed up by the portraits on the walls of some of Dickens’ most famous creations as we enter the exhibition. Even if you haven’t read the books, who hasn’t heard of Scrooge or Fagin or Oliver Twist? They’re so familiar it’s as if we’ve known them all our lives. 

What’s interesting to discover is how many of his characters Dickens based on Londoners he actually knew. These are people who once walked the streets of the capital, breathing its air and soaking up its unique atmosphere. Dickens’ great gift was that he knew how to make his characters come alive so that they leapt off the pages and into real life. His readers could imagine them as real human beings struggling to survive in a vast, chaotic metropolis.

Perhaps what’s most remarkable about Dickens and London is how the Museum of London has recreated the sense of being in the city Dickens wrote so much about. Huge projections display photographs of how London looked back in the 19th century. I am surrounded by the sounds of horses’ carriages, bells and ticking clocks. This soundscape helps give the illusion that I am actually walking through these tiny back alleys and winding streets. I pass the Furnival Inn watchman’s box and the door from the infamous Newgate prison. There is the huge sign from the long gone Bull and Mouth pub. I start to get a sense of why Dickens referred to London as his ‘magic lantern.’

I turn the corner into the thrills of Theatreland that Dickens loved so much. There is tinsel and glitter, old playbills, harlequins, clowns and puppets. The toy theatre model shows the delight Dickens felt as a child at all the excitement of the stage and why he dreamed of being an actor. There is also ample evidence of how much London loved to stage Dickens. Long before the musical and within months of it being published in 1838, the capital boasted three different productions of Oliver Twist. It’s also fascinating to see playbills featuring Ellen Ternan, the actress 27 years younger than Dickens that he left his wife for.

Then there are the manuscripts themselves. There’s something very touching about seeing the Mystery of Edwin Drood, the book Dickens was working on when he died. Also I find it quite reassuring to see how many corrections and scribbled rewrites there are on the original Bleak House. Even the prolific genius Dickens wasn’t above a bit of editing!  It’s particularly inspiring to see the desk where Dickens himself wrote. The famous painting of Dickens’s dream is vividly brought to life through audio visuals. It’s as if I’ve managed to step into the world of Dickens’ extraordinary imagination.

After this journey into the past, William Raban’s film ‘The Houseless Shadow’ is a beautiful and moving way to lead me out of the exhibition and into the present. It combines contemporary footage of London at night with voiceover from Dickens’ essay ‘Night Walks’ where he describes roaming the streets of the capital in the small hours. It captures how much of Dickens’ passion for London, in all its poverty and loneliness, is still as relevant today as it was then.  

Aoife Mannix is an Irish writer and poet based in the UK. She is the author of four collections of poetry and a novel. She regularly features on BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live and has been poet in residence for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

I am not an oral historian – or even a historian. Before I began researching material for The War on our Doorstep, my experience of oral history was limited to recording a few interviews in my student days. So for me, the Museum of London’s vast collection of tapes was a big step into the unknown.

Luckily, in the case of the Port & River collection, there was a thick file containing an information sheet for each interview, listing the topics covered. I began by picking out anything that looked promising – ‘detailed account of childhood in East End’, ‘first day of Blitz’, or in one memorable case ‘incidence of transvestism in docks’. After a while, I concluded that the women were nearly always worth a listen, that many dockers were a winning combination of the poetic and the profane, and that managerial figures could be dispiritingly dull.

What captivated me was the way oral accounts give more than one route into the past. If you want to find out how the casual system of dockworkers was organised, or what items were regularly sent to a pawnbroker, or what a doodlebug rocket was like, you will – eventually – track down or stumble across that information. But with an oral history, you get the personal context that brings the information to life. It might be a docker’s memories of fights breaking out while waiting for a day’s work; a woman recalling trips to the pawnbroker with her dead father’s suit, or a recollection of standing in a bedroom as a child, watching a V1 rocket fly past.

‘The foreman would have perhaps 30 to 40 tallies, according to the amount of work that was going, and he’d throw that amongst the men and then they used to fight and scramble for these tallies. It was bad. That would be in the morning and it would happen again at one o’clock. That was for half a day’s work. They didn’t get a full day, no guaranteed day, only what they fought for. And it was real nasty to see it. There was no friends, there was fights for half a day’s work.’
Walter Dunsford, born 1910, Carpenter, West India Dock 1920-1970 (85.593)

‘My mother had a suit – my dad was dead, but that suit still went in and out. We always laughed about that suit – he was dead but that suit went in and out of the pawnbrokers – in on Friday, out on Monday. Everything went in, including the candlesticks, but we always had the candlesticks out for Friday night. My mother would never have done without the candlesticks. She never got her wedding ring back, though – she bought another wedding ring when my sister first brought a young man in. We said, “He’ll think that you’re not married – you got six kids and not married.” So we went out and bought her a ring.’
Miss H, born 1900, Dress Machinist (2008.112)

‘I saw the first doodlebug – the first V1 over London – with my face pressed up against the glass of my bedroom window. What a stupid thing to do. This thing went over – an extraordinary sound – not like an aeroplane at all. And I could see flames coming out of the back of what I now know was the jet propulsion unit. And then the engine stopped. I yelled to my mother. “It’s coming down!” And of course it did come down, with a bang. But not anywhere near us.’
John Earl, born 1928, Surveyor with London County Council (2005.24)

When you listen to the tapes, the voices gradually people a vanished world. As your ear tunes into individual turns of phrase, exclamations, jokes and preoccupations, you get to know and enjoy a huge cast of characters. And the further you delve, the more you begin to build up a picture of a community interconnected by people’s shared experiences, defined both by their differences and what they hold in common.

I have tried to reproduce my journey – the excitement of discovery, the growing sense of the characters behind the voices, and the layering up of a portrait of a vanished East End – in my book. My second task was choose pictures to illustrate the stories, and I’ll be writing about using the Museum’s picture library next week.

Hello everyone! My name is Arna and I am a host at the Museum of London.

As a host, I am the person in the pink uniform who is there to help visitors. I give guided tours of the museum, take workshops and storytelling sessions, and frequently I am a walking Tourist Information Centre!

The LAARC holds thousands of Roman artefacts, only some of which have made it into our galleries. Many still reside in storage waiting to be rediscovered, perhaps for a new gallery display.

So what object best to exemplify Londinium? I could have selected something iconic, such as the marble head of Mithras discovered by Professor Grimes in his chance discovery of the Roman Mithraeum. It is after all one of the finest Roman marble sculptures ever excavated in all of Britain…

Or perhaps I should have selected an artefact that brings us closer to, and makes real, Roman Londoners, such as this wooden writing tablet excavated from Poultry near Bank. Inscribed into the wood, its last permeated letter records the sale of a slave girl named Fortuna. Important as singular evidence of the slave trade, but also offering a glimpse at a real Londoner (who may not have been resident in London for very long and indeed wasn’t even ‘Roman’)…

I could even have chosen a more recently excavated object and one that showcases the ability of museum conservators to bring objects ‘back to life’ after their c.2000 year entombment. This reconstructed Roman bowl of millefiori glass was recently excavated from a grave at Prescott Street, east London and was painstakingly restored. It’s one of the finest examples known outside of the eastern Roman Empire…

Instead, I’ve not even chosen an artefact at all, but have hopefully blindsided you all by selecting an ecofact! I’ve chosen this as it highlights an important field of archaeological study – environmental archaeology – that forms a dedicated section in our Archaeological Archive. Additionally I hope this specimen illustrates how archaeology can in fact question our assumptions of written history…

Object 3

Roman (C1^st AD) Carbonised Cereal Grain

These seeds are a sample of a larger deposit of grain that was excavated from a building in London’s Roman forum – essentially the marketplace of the Roman town – in 1976. The seeds have survived through carbonisation as a result of intense burning. The impetus of this particular fire is the well known: the Boudican sacking of Londinium in 60-61 AD. As such, these seeds form part of an important ‘event horizon’ in London’s archaeological stratigraphy. Such tangible contexts are key benchmarks that allow us to construct a basic chronology and formulate a historical narrative of the early city.

Analysis of this grain deposit revealed inclusions of einkorn, lentils and bitter vetch (as well as a couple of weevils!) which has led to the conclusion that this crop was not indigenously cultivated i.e. it was imported from the Mediterranean or near east. When excavated in 1976, these seeds were the first evidence of grain being imported into Britain. Up until then it had been assumed that grain was one of the main exports of Britain, based on the writings of the Roman author Strabo: “It [Britain] bears grain, cattle, gold, silver, and iron. These things, accordingly, are exported from the island, as also hides, and slaves, and dogs…” (Geographica 4.5.199). Although this cereal may not have been imported in any major quantity, it does emphasise the importance of archaeology in the appraisal of literary texts, which can often go unchallenged.

Since the 1970s, when professional archaeology was developing in the city of London, archaeobotany has continued to evolve and our knowledge of exotic imports has considerably grown. Recent discoveries at Poultry include evidence of mulberry, pine nut, pomegranate, black cumin and anise to name a few. Although this ‘object’ may not even be recognisably Roman, its selection hopefully underpins and does justice to Londinium’s legacy as a major commercial centre.

The Dickens and London exhibition is proving to be extremely popular and with just three months to go until it runs its course in June, tickets are still high in demand. To avoid disappointment and make use of our advance ticket discount, book your tickets at least one day in advance!

Remember, admission to the Museum of London and the permanent galleries are free, and so are all our Host-led activities such as our daily gallery tours, as well as interesting, on-the-spot short talks on objects within our collections.

Our free gallery tours are every day at 11am, 12pm, 3pm and 4pm and last approximately 45 minutes – perfect if you are in the City and looking for something to do during your lunch break!

From ancient archaeological artefacts discovered on the Thames foreshores to Roman Londinium and Anglo-Saxon Lundenwich, and from the Great Fire and Newgate Prison to the Victorian shops, Suffragettes and the Poll Tax Riots, the tours will leave you with knowledge and a new-found passion for this World City that is London.

If you don’t have time to join one of our tours, you don’t have to miss out! Every day we offer short, 10 minute talks on some of the most interesting objects within our galleries. You can also support the museum by purchasing a Museum Higlights book for £5. This is not only a great souvenir but also excellent accompaniment to your visit to our Museum.

At the Museum of London, we strive very hard to make our collections accessible to everyone, and have therefore started to offer tours to visually impaired visitors. Should you know someone who could benefit from one of our VisualEyes tours, please call the Museum of London box office on 020 7001 9844 to arrange a free tour.

Giusy

Annual rally of the National Federation of Old Pensioners Association

On 11th November 1954, the annual rally of the National Federation of Old Pensioners Association, was held at the Central Methodist Hall. The Guardian newspaper interestingly wrote a rather derogatory report stating that there were more women than men at the meeting “among them very old ones; and true that there were cups of tea continually being sipped and bars of ice cream sucked and a lot of deaf-aids being twiddled.”

Club Row Market

Club Row was the only weekly animal street market in London during the 1950s. Every Sunday morning traders would bring hundreds of dogs and puppies to Club Row, off Bethnal Green Road where they were sold. From 1951 all animal sellers were required to hold licences however there were of course many disreputable traders. In 1982 the local council banned the sale of animals in Club Row Market.

Demonstrators at the eviction of a tenant

In May 1959 the Conservative Council in St Pancras introduced a new means tested rate scheme which increased rents dramatically for the majority of tenants, most were doubled and some even tripled. 35 separate tenants associations were set up and there were regular protest meetings, rallies and demonstrations. As many as 8,000 tenants withheld their rent in protest. This photograph depicts demonstrators at the eviction of tenant Don Cooke who had withheld his rent in protest.

Policemen in the canal

By the 1960s there were only a small number of boats using the London canals for trade and by the 1970s the use of canals for leisure had begun. A large crowd has gathered to watch police divers search the canal; unfortunately Henry Grant hasn’t left any notes about this photograph so we don’t know why they were in the water or where exactly they were.

Peace Rally

Protestors in Trafalgar Square on the final day of the Aldermaston Peace March in 1960. The marches were anti nuclear weapons protests taking place on Easter weekend which took the form of a march from the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston to Trafalgar Square in London. As can be seen from this photograph the marches were attended by thousands of people.

The London Archaeological Archive & Research Centre’s highly successful Volunteer Inclusion Programme has drawn to a close.

It all started in August 2008, with our first VIP volunteer joining us on 29th September. Since then 259 volunteers have joined us over the course of 10 projects.

We have worked through hundreds of excavation archives from the 1970s; thousands of boxes of finds from these sites; and hundreds of thousands of items within these boxes.

We’ve worked with children, students, employed and unemployed adults and retirees from all different backgrounds and social situations. Our projects have evolved to include creative elements, specifically themed projects and new experiences such as leading public tours.

Perhaps our proudest achievement however has been switching the V for Volunteer to V for Visitor and stretching our project to include museum visitors.

For the past 10 weeks we’ve been sharing our work with everyone and anyone who has passed our tables in the foyer and Archaeology in Action. Over 30 days we have engaged over 15,500 visitors with many different aspects of archaeology, all the while improving 305 boxes of material.

Full credit to the 18 volunteers that have been the VIP10 team. Each day they have gone about this task, never knowing what material would be coming up next in the boxes, what they would have to talk about on that day and of course,  who they would be talking to. But they have been excellent. True stars.

As have all our volunteers over the years. Folks, it has been a pleasure.

As for the future… The Volunteer/Visitor Inclusion may be over, but what’s in a name anyway? We’ll be back soon with new projects in new places with new volunteers. But for now, Ladies and Gentlemen…

…VIP has left the building.

Our Visitor Inclusion Project is coming to a close. For 29 days over the past three months, our volunteers have been engaging visitors with archaeology whilst improving the standards of our archaeological collections. And it’s been excellent. However, these projects don’t just happen just like that. Behind the scenes, loads of different people across many departments of the museum have helped create this project. So lets get those credits rolling:

The project first began 9 months ago when we checked out whether we could run our Visitor Inclusion Project in the Archaeology in Action exhibition. The project managers in our Programmes department gave the go ahead and those nice box office people helped us book the spaces.

The museum’s collections care manager was then contacted and allocated us some storage space for our project so that we could keep our equipment and boxes of archaeology safe and secure and then we needed to sort out some way of transporting all the material from our archive in Shoreditch to the Barbican site.

Our amazing van driver Tim Ellis sorted this out. We booked him in for every Thursday of the project and he has been helping us go back and forth with around 40 boxes of archaeology each week. Our archive’s security guard, Sami, along with Tim also help us load up the van each Thursday – both are top blokes! Thanks!

We then wanted to create some publicity. Our museum designers in the Design department came up with some great banners that we’ve had on display throughout the project, our Event officers allowed us to be part of their programme and publicised us in their promotional material and our Press & Marketing officers have done a sterling job getting our events onto various web site listings and publications such as Time Out. They also helped promote aspects of our project on Twitter and Facebook – much appreciated guys. Thanks!

Then there’s the technical stuff – we’re still grateful to our technicians who made our incredible table way back during our first Visitor Inclusion Project. For this project we’re also grateful to the electricians and AV folk who assisted us in getting some extra cabling in the space so our light boxes and AV stuff could work.

Thanks should also go to our Finance Officers who dutifully assist us each day in reimbursing our volunteers with their travel expenses.

And we definitely have to mention our Visitor Services department, who not only happily make announcements advertising our workshops each day, but very kindly let us borrow their Ipad for the three months to help explain our objects to visitors.

Special thanks should go to the Conservation Department intern, Jill Saunders, who not only has been explaining conservation techniques to visitors for the past 10 Mondays, but organised the help of her fellow UCL students, scheduling them in and making them feel welcome each week. Along with Jill several members of the conservation department have also lent a hand during the project so thanks to them too.

A massive thanks to Andy & Chris who have manned our Osteology table on Tuesdays. Between the pair of them they have engaged with thousands of visitors and are just brilliant. Thanks too to the museum osteologists for letting us use their collections.

And an enormous thanks to Alan Thompson, who came out of retirement, to return to his former employers and his former excavation – GPO75. It has been truly a pleasure to have had Alan join us during this project. Huge thanks to his wife, Jan, also, who has been conducting Exit Questionnaires with visitors each week.

It goes without saying that I want to thank my fellow LAARC staff for taking time out of their busy work programmes to join in during this Volunteer Inclusion Project, sharing their expertise and providing support for our volunteers. Which leads me nicely on to…

A big big big THANK YOU has to go to our excellent VIP10 volunteer team; Benji, Braena, Carl, Carol, Graham, Jim, Jon, Katerina, Margo, Maria,  Pam, Sunny,& Yulia. Not only have they done a superb job in presenting archaeology to visitors, they’ve improved the packaging of over 200 boxes of archaeology. But most importantly, they have been outstanding ambassadors for the museum and for volunteering.

Finally, a huge Thank You to the thousands upon thousands of visitors, of all ages and from all over the world that have stopped by our tables and chatted to our volunteers. Special thanks should go to the numerous visitors that have partaken in our Hands-On Archaeology workshops and helped contribute to the upkeep of our collections.

And that’s almost it. Only Friday left…

1) When did you join the volunteer programme and why?
I first joined in the 1990’s (before any official volunteer programme)

2) What was your most memorable day whilst volunteering?
Not really at LAARC, but connected via my involvement with the City of London Archaeological Society. Our annual events at the Tower of London are always very enjoyable.

3) What was your favourite object you discovered whilst volunteering?
No particular one. Any object that evokes a sense of the past can be my favourite – and they all do that.

4) What’s your favourite part of the museum?
Medieval galleries, especially where you can listen to early English being spoken

5) Upper galleries of lower?
Both?

6) Favourite year in London’s history?
2012 – live for the present.

7) Favourite Londoner?
Samuel Pepys

8) Mortimer Wheeler or Indiana Jones?
Can I pick Gus Milne instead?

9) If you could dig anywhere in the world where would you excavate?
Thames Street  / Pilbara (Australia)

10) What’s next for you after this project?
More of the same!

It’s been a been a bit about our volunteers…

It’s been a bit about our visitors…

…and it’s been about how everyone, volunteers & visitors have joined together to improve our collections…

But in truth… it’s been about having fun…

And it’s almost over.

Only 1 week to go, only 1 week left for you to get involved. Conservation Monday, Human Remains Tuesday, Records Friday; come and say hi to the volunteers in Archaeology in Action and be part of the Visitor Inclusion Project by joining in with Hands-On Archaeology on each of these days.

1) When did you join the volunteer programme and why?
Long term volunteer from the days of the minimum standards project, though my first VIP project was VIP7, which was also in the galleries here at the museum

2) What was your most memorable day whilst volunteering?
Too difficult to choose as there’s been quite a few of them.

3) What was your favourite object you discovered whilst volunteering?
Fragments of Victorian Wallpaper from Whitehall

4) What’s your favourite part of the museum?
LAARC

5) Upper galleries of lower?
Upper galleries

6) Favourite year in London’s history?
1666

7) Favourite Londoner?
Samuel Pepys

8) Mortimer Wheeler or Indiana Jones
Mortimer Wheeler

9) If you could dig anywhere in the world where would you excavate?
London

10) What’s next for you after this project?
Who knows!