Frommer's EasyGuide to London 2014 by Jason Cochran

Author:Jason Cochran [Cochran, Jason]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781628870459
Publisher: FrommerMedia

Museum of London Docklands MUSEUMIf you dig the head-spinning Museum of London, here’s a similarly lush, ultimately redeeming treatment to life in London’s East End. Many of the city’s other museums would have you believe that London was always a genteel bastion of graceful gentlemen. This place tells the real story of the working men who sweat to put the teacups into more privileged, manicured hands, and the labor that circulated profits from the slave trade into City banks. Housed in a brick rum-and-coffee warehouse from 1804, the three-floor museum, strong on plain-speaking explanations, traces the history of working on the Thames starting, starting with Anglo-Saxon times and ending now. You can inspect an intricate model of the medieval London Bridge, which like the Florentine Ponte Vecchio was stacked with homes and businesses but clogged the river’s flow so drastically that it was a threat to life. You’ll also roam “Sailortown,” a creepy warren of quayside alleys, all shanties and low doorways, meant to evoke the area’s early 19th-century underworld. Finally, the spotlight shifts to the harrowing Blitz, when the whole area was obliterated by fire from the sky and forced to reinvent itself as a corporate citadel. The whole circuit takes several hours. There’s also an interactive, river-themed play area for kids, Mudlarks.

No. 1 Warehouse, West India Quay, Canary Wharf, E14. 020/7001-9844. www.museumindocklands.org.uk. Free. Daily 10am–6pm. Tube: West India Quay DLR or Canary Wharf.

Whitechapel Bell Foundry MUSEUM/HISTORIC SITEAmerica’s Liberty Bell. Montreal Cathedral’s Great Bell. Big Ben himself. Name an important chimer from Western history, and chances are Whitechapel Bell Foundry cast it. Sure, the Liberty Bell cracked, by which time it was too late to exchange it, but the foundry’s craftsmanship is not in question—Guinness verified it as Britain’s oldest manufacturing company, established in 1570, with lineage traceable to 1420. Back then, fulsome industries such as metalworking were found in the East End, where the prevailing winds would carry the grime out of town. This foundry, still operating in a brick-front building from the late 1600s, conducts tours of its cramped, messy workshops on some Saturdays—always when workers are off duty, because flying sparks and molten metal sting a little. A visit isn’t plastic in any way; tours (full weeks or months ahead) dodge piles of metal dust, sand, shavings, and aged workbenches to collect around heavyweight bells cooling in their molds. Every aspect of the craft, from casting to buffing, is given its due. You’ll even learn that the foundry uses a siren to tell workers when it’s time for a break. Why? “Well,” says Hughes, “When you work in a bell factory ….” There’s also a small museum and shop (teeny bells, musical scores for handbells), open weekdays, which don’t require tickets.

32-34 Whitechapel Rd., E1. 020/7247-2599. www.whitechapelbellfoundry.co.uk. Shop open Mon–Fri 9am–4:15pm, tours 2 Saturdays monthly at 10am, 1:30 and 4pm, £12, no one under 14 admitted. Tube: Aldgate East.

Whitechapel Gallery GALLERYWhen it opened in 1901, contemporary art was viewed as a degenerate indulgence. Since then, the Whitechapel has reliably led the development of new artistic movements.

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