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 type of family attraction that should be mentioned in the same breath as the other great London museums. It’s a full family day out that both informs and entertains in equal measure. Indeed, a ticket to the impressive Museum In Docklands at West India Quay, Canary Wharf, opens up an amazing world that few could guess at.
Museum In Docklands is housed over five floors of a splendid six-storey Georgian warehouse (Warehouse No. 1) in the shadow of Canary Wharf. It has 12 permanent galleries, a children's area, education services, functions suites, a restaurant and a shop, all accessible with a day ticket. Some 70% of the collections of artefacts and documents come from the archive of the Port of London Authority and its predecessor dock companies and river conservancy bodies - the largest single collection of privately-held UK business records. But there’s a whole lot more to a family day out at the Museum In Docklands.
Specialist collections on permanent display include those of HM Customs and Excise, documenting finds of the 17th/18th centuries on the river foreshore; a variety of restored vessels that plied its waters, such as skiffs, punts, tugs and barges; uniforms, fire arms, cutlasses and truncheons from the Dock Police; trade union items including an 1889 Great Dock Strike Banner; Railway Department vehicles; occupational clothing and fire-fighting equipment; office furniture and fittings from 1850-1970; wartime and coaltrade items; signs and notices; and artefacts relating to London’s Greenland and Southern Whale Fisheries. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg of this fascinating and fun family attraction.
Besides a changing roster of Community Exhibitions at Museum In Docklands, a ticket buys into a world of adventure, beginning with the AD50 - Present Day exhibition. It details the story of London's River, Port and People, including models of the Roman settlement, life-size reconstructions with multi-media technologies, engravings, paintings, testimonies and photos. The family attraction then focuses on the legacy of the museum Warehouse (one of only two extant from an original total of nine), which was involved in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Between the 1802 opening of West India Dock and the British abolition of the slave trade in 1807, 77 ships sailed to west Africa and purchased 24,962 slaves, who were transported to the Americas for work on plantations there. Of these, 3136 died en route, while the ships returned to their port laden with sugar. Originally, the Ground Floors of Museum In Docklands stored two tiers of ‘clayed’ sugar, the upper floors housed a single tier of muscovado sugar, while the top floors held coffee, cocoa, cotton and, later, after slavery was banned from the British colonies in 1834, tea.
The Museum In Docklands Thames Highway exhibit explores the early ports of London, from the Brythonic bridge over the Thaomes in 1500 BC to the Roman facility established after AD 43, along with a model of Old London Bridge. Adding to a family day out with an eye to livening up the past, Tony Robinson of TV's Time Team introduces on-screen explorations. Just the ticket!
Trade Expansion 1600 -1800 looks at trading companies such as the East India Company, Muscovy Company and the Africa Company that used London as a base for operations, while Pocahontas focuses on the building of London's first wet docks at Rotherhithe for whaling; the landing of East India Company cargoes at Blackwall; shipbuilding; and displays on visitors from overseas such as Pochohantas and Prince Lee Boo. This part of the Museum In Docklands also has a touch-screen journey to China (where the British imposed their presence through the Opium Wars, fostering a trade in narcotics!), making for a mind-expanding family day out.
There’s a re-creation of a Legal Quay too, which features the shouts of men inside a tread-wheel punishment crane and an iron Gibbet cage that was used to encase captured pirates of the Caribbean and elsewhere. Not something you see at a run of the mill family attraction!
City And River 1820 -1840 features a journal from the London South Sea whaler, the Mary, plus harpoons and a pot for boiling whale blubber to extract its oil. There’s also an armoury and The Museum In Docklands Sailortown gallery reconstruction that transports ticket holders to Wapping in the 1840s, with a wild animal emporium, alehouse, sailors’ lodging house and chandlery.
A ticket for a family day out at Museum In Docklands also grants access to the city’s only permanent exhibition on the transAtlantic slave trade. Sugar & Slavery includes the papers of Thomas and John Mills, who owned sugar plantations in the St. Kitts and Nevis and grew sugar used in Britain’s fashionable coffee houses. There’s a sound and light show video screening about the Triangle Of Trade that runs every 20 minutes.
Within Sugar & Slavery, Zone 1 features crafted metal work from West Africa, rough moulds for making sugar cones on the American plantations, and beads produced for purchasing Africans. Additionally, there’s a computer terminal to explore sites in modern London that were connected to slavery and Abolition. Zone 2 includes publications of African writers like Olaudah Equiano and Phillis Wheatley decrying the slave trade, period Abolitionist purses, sugar bowls, pamphlets and prints used to publicise the cause, and the ‘Slavery Table’ where leading abolitionists met and which was used to draft the Bill for the Abolition of Slavery. Zone 3 looks at the African community in London in the 19th century through rare photos, music song-sheets, adverts and china figurines.
First Port of Empire focuses on the rise of the steamship, with tools from Tilbury Docks, while Warehouse of the World features a tobacco weighing station and bottling vault, as well as a ‘cabinet of curiosities’ that further enlivens an informative family day out. Another display looks at the life of Joseph Conrad, author of Heart Of Darkness, who spent time living in the port, and there’s an opium pipe (used to smoke heroin) confiscated from a Chinese seaman.
Museum In Docklands’ Wartime exhibit incorporates touch screens, models and life-size reconstructions, and a landing craft flag from the D-Day landings of June 1944.
New Port, New City charts the rise of postwar Docklands with uniforms, posters and models, while a ticket to Museum In Docklands allows children to play in the Mudlarks Children's Gallery, an informative, interactive play area, while under-fives can explore the soft play area with its DLR train and giant props. The Sainsbury Study Centre and Search Zone are open to ticket holders too, and contain the Sainsbury Archive of 19th/20th century documents, photos, prints, plans, objects and film and sound recordings about the firm. With a shop selling a variety of wares, a restaurant and disabled access throughout, Museum In Docklands is a family attraction for everyone, guaranteeing a uniquely rewarding and memorable family day out.