V&A Museum of Childhood - Cambridge Heath Road, London, UK - Wikipedia Entries on Waymarking.com

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The V&A Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green in the East End of London is a branch of the Victoria and Albert Museum (the "V&A"), which is the United Kingdom's national museum of applied arts.

The museum was founded in 1872 as the Bethnal Green Museum. The iron structure reused a prefabricated building from Albertopolis which was replaced with some early sections of the modern V&A complex. The exterior of the building was designed by James William Wild in red brick in a Rundbogenstil (round-arched) style very similar to that in contemporary Germany.

The building was used to display a variety of collections at different times, including the works which can now be seen at the Wallace Collection. In the 1920s, it began to focus on services for children, and in 1974 the director of the V&A, Sir Roy Strong, defined it as a specialist museum of childhood.

Of all the branches, the Bethnal Green Museum has the largest collection of childhood objects in the United Kingdom.

The mission of the museum is "To enable everyone, especially the young, to explore and enjoy the designed world, in particular objects made for and made by children." It has extensive collections of toys, childhood equipment and costumes, and stages a programme of temporary exhibitions.

The museum closed in October 2005 for the second phase of extensive renovations, costing £4.7 million. It reopened on 9 December 2006 with changes including a new front entrance, gallery, displays and café.

Inside the museum is a cast iron statue by John Bell (1811–1896). It came originally from the Great Exhibition of 1851. "The Eagle slayer" shows a marksman shooting at an eagle which has slain the lamb that lies at his feet.

The museum is a Grade II listed building.

As mentioned, the museum is a Grade II listed building with the entry at the Historic England website telling us:

Originally constructed in South Kensington in 1856-7, disassembled 1865-7, and reassembled in Bethnal Green where it opened as the museum in 1872; refurbished early-C21. Charles Denoon Young & Co. supplied the ironwork for the original building which was erected under the supervision of Sir William Cubitt; James Wild was the architect for the re-assembly in Bethnal Green. Iron-framed clad in red brick; slate roof in 3 spans with lantern lights running full length of ridges.

EXTERIOR: Facade to Bethnal Green Road has 3 gables divided by pronounced pilasters and modillion eaves cornice. Each gable with wide arched window divided by chamfered brick pilasters. Below this, a full width single storey range also divided into 3 parts, with similar chamfered mullions between mid-C20 metal framed windows. Side elevations divided into 3 storeys with gauged brick banding and dentillation; a raised basement below main floor with large windows, and the upper level marked by a mosaic panel to each bay, illustrating agriculture and the arts and sciences; these designed by F.W. Moody and assembled by female students of the South Kensington Museum mosaic class.

INTERIOR: Lower front range has C20 toilet blocks to each side and leads to main building where, on entering, a split-level staircase to each side, then the impact of the main space. This comprises a central full-height hall with raised ground floor and mezzanine galleries to the perimeter, and the exposed iron frame throughout. This is of malleable bowstring roof trusses with continuous clerestory rooflights, slender cast iron column uprights that have arched braces with circular spandrels to the beams, and X pattern balustrade. Some of the uprights were replaced at the time of re-assembly. The main hall floor is black and white mosaic tile in guilloche pattern, apparently made by female convicts from the Woking Gaol. Staircases with board panelling balustrades were inserted at the time of reassembly. Fire escape doors and stair inserted in southeast corner late-C20. Raised basement used mainly for storage and with some C20 interventions.

HISTORY: The origins of this building formed part of the first phase of the South Kensington Museum, as planned by the Department of Science and Industry. Construction of the chosen pre-fabricated iron `temporary` shed was supervised by the well known London building contractor William Cubitt. Cubitt had an interest in new constructional systems and had exported prefabricated structures to Crimea during the War, which further prompted the economic choice of structure. Cubitt enlisted Charles Denoon Young and Company for the manufacture of the ironwork, this firm having supplied the same to many buildings in the colonies as well as in Great Britain, including the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition buildings. In form and structure, the South Kensington Iron Museum resembled Joseph Paxton's near-by Great Exhibition building, the Crystal Palace, but the museum differed in its corrugated iron cladding. This unusually non-glassy skin, coupled with the buildings massing of three barrel-vaulted spans, earned the building the disparaging nickname of the 'Brompton Boilers'; an elegant iron arcade along the south front and a bright paint scheme were added to ameliorate the aesthetics. The Iron Museum served as the home of several collections including the Museum of Ornamental Art and the Architectural Museum, a collection of casts to educate carvers in the newly favoured Gothic style. As the Museum site expanded, the iron building was mainly dismantled in late 1867, and the few remaining bays were demolished in 1899.

Bethnal Green had been lobbying for a museum since 1857. After much debate and several designs, the Bethnal Green Museum was opened on 24 June 1872 as designed by James W. Wild, a notable mid-C19 architect, responsible for the Grade I Grimsby Dock Tower and associated with the South Kensington Museum as their expert on Arabian art. His museum building at Bethnal Green was encased in red brick, presenting an altogether more attractive exterior with generous used of rubbed brick, decorated gables and large windows, and the parade of mosaic panels representing agriculture and the arts and sciences to both long elevations. The interior remains the most dramatic aspect, however, with the cathedral-like scale and arrangement of the tall central nave flanked by galleried aisles, all three ranges top lit, and with the delicate but robust iron structure exposed. Some of the columns were replaced at the time of re-erection, but the original structure mostly survives, including the bowstring roof trusses. The museum primarily held collections that were transferred from the South Kensington Museum, continuing the connection. It was re-launched as the Museum of Childhood in 1974, and in 1997 the National Museum of Childhood.