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Museum In Docklands
Museum in Docklands
West India Quay
Canary Wharf
London E14 4AL
About the Museum In Docklands
The Museum In Docklands is the kind of family attraction that should be spoken of with the other great museums of London, matching many better-known institutes as a complete family day out that both enlightens and entertains. In fact, a ticket to the imposing Museum In Docklands, based at the West India Quay in Canary Wharf, takes the holder into a fascinating world that few are even aware of.
Museum In Docklands is located on five floors of a magnificent six-storey Georgian warehouse (Warehouse No. 1), not far from Canary Wharf. It features a dozen permanent galleries, a children's zone, education resources, functions facilities, a restaurant and shop, all of which are open to those with a day ticket. Around 70% of the objects and documents in the family attraction originated from the Port of London Authority archive, as well as those of past dock companies and river conservation authorities - the bigest single collection of UK business records in private hands. But there’s much more besides on a family day out to the Museum In Docklands.
Among the exhibits on show are collections from HM Customs and Excise, covering 17th/18th century finds on the river shore; numerous restored boats that worked on its waters, including skiffs, punts, tugs and barges; uniforms, fire arms, cutlasses and truncheons from the Dock Police; trade union wares, such as an 1889 Great Dock Strike Banner; Railway Department vehicles; working clothes and fire-fighting kit; office furnishings and fittings from 1850-1970; wartime and coal industry paraphernalia; signs and notices; and objects from London’s Greenland and Southern Whale Fisheries. And that only scrapes the surface of this eye-opening and enjoyable family attraction.
As well as a rolling programme of Community Exhibitions at Museum In Docklands, ticket holders can experience the changing face of the city through the ages, starting with the AD50 - Present Day exhibit. It outlines the story of London's River, Port and People, utilising models of the Roman settlement built on the ancient Brythonic settlement of Llundain, life-size imaginings using multi-media technology, engravings, paintings, testimonials and photos. The family attraction also examines the legacy of the Warehouse (one of only two existing from an original nine), which was used during the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
From the opening of West India Dock in 1802 to the British abolition of the slave trade in 1807, 77 ships set off for west Africa and acquired 24,962 slaves, who were shipped to the Americas to labour on plantations there. Some 3136 died on the way, the ships returning to the Dock packed with sugar from the American estates. The Ground Floors of Museum In Docklands then stored two tiers of ‘clayed’ sugar, the upper floor having a single tier of muscovado sugar, while the top floor contained coffee, cocoa, cotton and, subsequently, after slavery was outlawed in the British colonies in 1834, tea.
The Museum In Docklands Thames Highway display looks at the early ports in London, from the Brythonic bridge across the Thames, c. 1500 BC, to the Roman crossing forged after AD 43, along with a model of Old London Bridge. A family day out at the Museum In Docklands is further enlivened by Tony Robinson of Channel 4 TV's Time Team introducing on-screen studies of the river crossings. Just the ticket!
Trade Expansion 1600 -1800 highlights the work of trading enterprises like the East India Company, Muscovy Company and the Africa Company, which had HQs in the metropolis, while Pocahontas deals with the construction of the city's first wet docks at Rotherhithe for whaling; the delivery of East India Company goods to Blackwall; shipbuilding; and exhibits about overseas visitors like Pochohantas and Prince Lee Boo. This section of the Museum In Docklands boasts touch-screens that send users on a voyage to China (where the British made an impact through their Opium Wars, sponsoring the trade in narcotic drugs!), ensuring a rather mind-boggling family day out. There’s a mock-up of a Legal Quay, featuring the groans of men inside the tread-wheel punishment crane, as well as an iron Gibbet cage used to house captured pirates. Not something you see at any old family attraction!
City And River 1820 -1840 includes a journal from the local South Sea whaler, the Mary, as well as harpoons and a boiling pot in which whale blubber was heated to produce oil. An armoury and The Museum In Docklands Sailortown gallery reconstruct the Wapping of the 1840s, with a wild animal show, public house, sailors’ lodging house and chandlery.
A ticket for a family day out at Museum In Docklands includes a permanent exhibition on the trans-Atlantic slave trade, Sugar & Slavery. It takes in the papers of Thomas and John Mills, owners of sugar plantations in St. Kitts and Nevis who grew sugar for Britain’s trendy coffee house set. A sound and light show and video about the Triangle Of Trade airs every 20 minutes. Inside Sugar & Slavery, Zone 1 has metal artwork from West Africa, rough moulds for making sugar cones from the American plantations, and beads used to buy Africans. Further, a computer point reveals sites across London connected to slavery and its abolition. Zone 2 retains publications by African authors such as Olaudah Equiano and Phillis Wheatley that critiqued the slave trade, and contemporary Abolitionist merchandise, such as purses, sugar bowls, pamphlets and prints,, which were used to popularise the cause. There’s also the ‘Slavery Table’ where top abolitionists convened and which was where the Bill for the Abolition of Slavery was drawn up. Zone 3 examines the African community of London in the 19th century with rare photos, music song-sheets, adverts and china figurines.
First Port of Empire traces the growth of the steamship, featuring tools from Tilbury Docks, while Warehouse of the World boasts a tobacco weighing station and bottling vault, in addition to a ‘cabinet of curiosities’. Another exhibit deals with the life of Joseph Conrad, of Heart Of Darkness fame, who lived in the port for a period, and there’s an opium pipe (used for smoking heroin) confiscated from a Chinese seaman.
Museum In Docklands’ Wartime exhibit has touch screens, models and life-size re-creations, plus a landing craft flag from the D-Day invasion of June 1944.
New Port, New City covers the postwar growth of the Docklands, with uniforms, posters and models, while children can play in the Mudlarks Children's Gallery interactive play zone, and the under-fives can enojy the soft play area, with its DLR train and outsize props. The Sainsbury Study Centre and Search Zone are also accesible to ticket holders, and house the Sainsbury Archive of 19th/20th century documents, photos, prints, plans, objects and audio/visual recordings about the enterprise. With a shop, restaurant and disabled access throughout, Museum In Docklands is a family attraction that everybody can enjoy.