Inside the Museum of London

Vauxhall, 1785 by Thomas Rowlandson

Pleasure gardens competed for visitors, vying with each other to offer evermore exciting entertainments. Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens offered a wide variety of entertainment, including lion-tamers, trampoline clowns, fortune tellers, ventriloquists, monkeys, dogs, jugglers, horses who danced to a waltz and fire walkers.

Tournaire's Equestrians, Vauxhall Gardens, 1846

Costumes from the Museum of London’s pleasure gardens

The Museum of London’s pleasure gardens

Should you have visited the Museum of London over the last few months, you may have noticed the scaffolding and tarpaulin covering a section of the Roman London Wall, known as ‘Bastion 14′, which sits directly underneath the museum’s Roman gallery.

This was to allow the Museum of London Archaeology’s Geomatics Team and Standing Buildings Team to work on the structure whilst Nimbus Conservation carried out conservation works.

The two teams of archaeologists worked together in order to produce detailed elevations of the structure showing the different types of building materials and the existing features. Documentary research into the Bastion’s history was also undertaken using the City of London’s records held at the London Metropolitan Archive.

The comparison between the archival information and the observation of the fabric will lead to the reconstruction of the history of the remains of the bastion and identification of a sequence of development phases.

There is a wealth of information on their work available on the Museum of London Archaeology website here.

Here, Jane Sidell, English Heritage’s (external link) Inspector of Ancient Monuments for London, helps us uncover what was happening underneath:

Bastion 14 has been gradually decaying since the last conservation works over a decade ago. Unfortunately, historic buildings when exposed to the elements tend to deteriorate and consequently require on-going light maintenance. Owing to its deterioration, through weathering, frost-shattering and vegetation growth, the bastion was identified as vulnerable and was placed on the English Heritage, Scheduled Monuments at Risk Register.

A plan and programme of conservation was devised following a condition survey and the work was undertaken by Nimbus Conservation.

The conservation works aimed to secure structural stability, re-point the masonry where needed, using traditional lime mortars, reversing some elements of unsympathetic repairs undertaken in the past.

The excellent work undertaken really shows much more clearly how the bastion would have functioned as a defensive feature before being gradually overwritten by later buildings such as the warehouses and workshops known in the vicinity.

The conservation programme was commissioned through the City Surveyors Department at the City of London Corporation who very generously funded the project.

In response to Nigel’s post, ‘Life as a medieval and later pottery specialist in the Museum of London Archaeology Service‘, mary lane garmon said:

What an incredibly interesting article! I recently visited London and found some pottery shards on the banks of the Thames, in particular a pie shaped piece of white clay, very rough, covered on all sides with a translucent green glaze. It looks like something used in a kiln. Do you have any idea about what this might have been used for? Thank you.

addendum: a pie piece shape, triangular I meant to say, as if it had been cut from a circle, and fits in the palm of the hand. It is less than an inch thick.

Nigel responds, “is it possible to send an image? If not, then your observation could be correct, between the 17th to the 19th century, the south bank of London had many pot houses making stoneware and tin-glazed wares. The waste products from these industries are commonly found on the Thames foreshore, something I’ve witnessed on my own wanderings on the banks of the Thames”.

While I had Nigel in my office, I asked about the difference between sherds and shards – are they the same thing? Yes, was the simple answer. Shards is jargon from the antique trade, and sherds is an archaeological term.

If you have questions about the Museum of London, Museum in Docklands, LAARC, or museum and archaeology jobs, I’ll do my best to get answers for you. You can leave questions in comments or via the email contact form.

Previously, someone asked “who edits museum exhibit text?”.

The answer from Roz in the Department of Early London History and Collections was:

“The text is written by whichever curator(s) is/are responsible for the gallery or exhibition in question. Then various other people have a look at it – usually the Director of Public Programmes, Design and Exhibitions (or the external designers, if used), and Community and Audience Development/Learning. For some temporary exhibitions, Outside Edge, for example, the text is written by an external curator, then edited in-house.”

You can see some of the other jobs curators do in these photo sets.

You might also be wondering which LAARC object was chosen as April’s Object of the Month – the answer is on the archaeology page.