Welcome to the Museum of London blog - insightful and interesting digital content from our team.

Browse the blog, join in the conversation, and if you want to know more about the museum visit the main site.

Discovery Tags

Mark Jackson St Alban Tower Kidd rationing A-z padlock

Featured Posts

The story of London Tweed

So this is how the story goes. In 1826 a London merchant decides to buy some cloth from a weaver in Hawick, a town in the Scottish borders famous for its cloth production. Very happy with his order, he decides to get some more but – crucially – misreads the weaver’s dashed handwriting. Instead of ‘twill’ this Londoner reads ‘tweed’, and assumes this new cloth must take after the River Tweed which runs fast and clear through the textile areas of lower Scotland. ‘Tweed’ and not ’twill’ has been the term used ever since.

Infographic: The Great Fire of London

Nearly 350 years ago the City of London faced one of its most famous disasters. To mark this occasion we’ve put together a handy infographic with some of the topline facts and figures – discover even more at the Museum of London’s free ‘War, Plague and Fire’ gallery!

Miss Levy’s Wedding Dress

This whole thing started a few years ago when a wedding dress came up at auction. Not being a wedding dress swooner I could nevertheless think of quite a few (entirely rational) reasons why the museum should acquire this particular example. For one thing it was made by Victor Stiebel, one of my favourite London couturiers. Secondly, we do not have enough of his creations (one never does) and they do not come up at auction very often. The dress also had an intriguing mystery inscription. We will get to that in a moment.

The Final Three

By adam corsini on 9 Jul 2014

Object of VIP13: The Final

Over the past fortnight the Museum of London’s Archaeological Archive has taken to these blog pages to dazzle you with the cream of the crop of our archaeological collections. In each of the three preliminary rounds, five objects have battled for your favour in an effort to determine which has been the best artefact that our volunteers have come across during the 13th Volunteer Inclusion Project (VIP13). Here are the final three: Read the full post

When objects get competitive…

By adam corsini on 1 Jul 2014

From 1971's excavations at Appian Road, Old Ford

Object of VIP13 – Round 1

One of the favourite aspects of our Volunteer Inclusion Programme is that we come across loads of incredible artefacts spanning London’s history. And during our current project we’ve encountered some beauties. What we then like to do is get them battling it out, with you, The Great Blog Reading Public, helping to decide which is the very best. No real reason to do this apart from fun. So let’s get started.

Read the full post