Historic House Museums

There are many museums around the UK based in houses. Many of these wonderful museums celebrate a particular person or a social issue and we have listed a small number of examples below. There are also museums and visitor attractions made up of complete towns or suburbs, very often the work of a singular visionary individual. Again, there is a selection of these listed below. However, the main focus on this page is on house museums whose emphasis is the design and presentation of a particular style and ones that celebrate a particular period in architectural history. Often called ‘memory museums’, these are historic house museums that contain a collection of the traces of memory of the people who once lived there.

House Museums

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  Llwyn Celyn, a Grade 1 listed medieval 3 bay hall. Built in 1420, Llwyn Celyn was once part of the Llanthony Priory estate in the Black Mountains, Monmouthshire.

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  The late 15th century timber-framed Tudor House & Garden is Southampton’s most important historic building.

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  Ordsall Hall, Salford is a formerly moated Tudor mansion, the oldest parts of which were built during the 15th century - http://www.salfordcommunityleisure.co.uk/culture/ordsall-hall

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  The Red Lodge, Bristol, England - an imposing merchants house from the 1580s with original ceilings and carved panelling. https://www.bristolmuseums.org.uk/red-lodge-museum/

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  Dennis Severs House, London is an intimate portrait of the lives of a family of Huguenot silk-weavers from 1724 to the dawn of the 20th Century- http://www.dennissevershouse.co.uk/

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  An elegant Georgian Terrace built in 1719. It was the home of the Ogiers, a Hugenot weaving family before housing a fascinating array of immigrant families through the ages https://www.19princeletstreet.org.uk/about.html

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  Number 29, Dublin is a Georgian terraced House run by the National Museum of Ireland as a museum of Dublin home life for the period 1790 to 1820. http://www.numbertwentynine.ie

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  Pickford House, Derby - the family home of Georgian architect Joseph Pickford illustrating aspects of domestic life from the 18th to the 20th centuries http://www.derbymuseums.org/pickfords-house/

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  The Georgian House, Bristol built in 1790 for John Pinney, slave plantation owner and sugar merchant. It was also where the enslaved man of African descent, Pero Jones lived. ‪http://bit.ly/2CsUUrg‬

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  Number 1 Royal Crescent, Bath was the first of the Royal Crescent Houses to be built and is a museum to ‘fashionable English 18C living’. https://no1royalcrescent.org.uk

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  The Regency Town House, Brighton is a Grade I listed terraced house from the mid-1820s. It celebrates the architecture and social history of Brighton & Hove between 1780 and 1850. http://www.rth.co.uk

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  18 Stafford Terrace was the home of Punch cartoonist Edward Linley Sambourne. It provides a rare example of what was known as an 'Aesthetic interior' or 'House Beautiful' style. http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/subsites/museums/18staffordterrace1.aspx

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  Leighton House is the former home of the Victorian artist Frederic, Lord Leighton. The only purpose-built studio-house open to the public in the United Kingdom, it is one of the most remarkable buildings of the nineteenth century, http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/subsites/museums/leightonhousemuseum1.aspx

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  ‪ ‘Mr Straw’s House’ Blythe Grove, Worksop - a perfectly preserved 1920’s semi-detached owned by a local grocer’s family. Treasured possessions and ordinary domestic items exactly where their owners left them. #HouseMuseums ‬http://bit.ly/2qSdPm1‬

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  The Locksmith's House at the Black Country Living Museum recreates the home of the Hodson family of lock makers from a century ago [1]

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  Sudley House, Liverpool - a Victorian corn merchant's house from the early 19C with period features & furniture, and its the merchant’s art collection still hung in its original location. bit.ly/2EsCjtF

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  Emery Walker’s House, Hammersmith - a Georgian terraced house with a perfectly restored Arts & Crafts Interior and extensive display of photos, documents, furniture and art works relating to Emery Walker and William Morris. http://www.emerywalker.org.uk/house

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  The Back To Back House Museum, Birmingham. The last servicing examples of a very particular, and ultimately discredited, form of British terraced housing built from the 18th to 19th century.

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  The Tenement House Museum, Glasgow. An authentic time capsule of life in an early 20th-century Glasgow tenement. https://www.nts.org.uk/visit/places/the-tenement-house

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  'Red House' in Bexleyheath, SE London is a significant Arts & Crafts home designed for William Morris by his friend Philip Webb in 1859

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  House for an Art Lover - a recent recreation of a previously unbuilt competition entry by Charles Rennie Macintosh http://bit.ly/2C5iI1b

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  78 Derngate - a Grade II* Georgian house in the Cultural Quarter of Northampton, remodelled by Charles Rennie Mackintosh in 1916.https://www.78derngate.org.uk/

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  2 Willow Road, Hampstead, London - the only Modernist house in London that's open to the public and the former home of Trellick Tower architect Erno Goldfinger.,

Historic Towns & Villages

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  Weald & Down Museum, West Sussex http://www.wealddown.co.uk/

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  Avoncroft Museum of Historic Buildings, Bromsgrove, Worcestershire. A collection of restored, historic buildings from the industrial past of the West Midlands.

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  Saltaire Victorian utopian workers village built by entrepreneur Sir Titus Salt in the 1850s http://www.saltairevillage.info/

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  Bournville Model Workers Village, Birmingham - built by George and John Cadbury to house and improve the lives of workers at their chocolate factory.

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  Port Sunlight on the Wirral, Merseyside. Built from 1888 by Lever Brothers to accommodate workers in its soap factory (now part of Unilever)

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  Bata Houses on the Bata Estate, East Tilsbury build by Czech shoe entrepreneur Tomáš Bata in the 1930s.

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  Silver End, Braintree, Essex. Built for their workers by the Crittall Windows company.

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  Trowse, Norfolk. An existing village was expanded by the Colman family during the 1800s for workers at Colman's mustard factory.

• File:Selworthy, Somerset. Rebuilt as a model village, to provide housing for the aged and infirm of the Holnicote estate, in 1828 by Sir Thomas Acland
• File:Barrow Bridge, Bolton. Built in the 1830s by Thomas Bazley and Robert Gardner built a model village for mill workers
• File:Snelston, Derbyshire. Built In the 1840s by the Stanton family for estate workers
• File:Swindon Railway Village, Wiltshire. Built In the 1840s by the Great Western Railway for its staff
• File:Withnell Fold, Lancashire. Built in 1844 by Thomas Blinkhorn Parke a cotton mill owner for his staff
• File:Meltham, Yorkshire. Built In 1850 by local landowners for workers
• File:’Price's Village’, Bromborough Pool was developed in 1853 by the Price Candle Company for the workers at the nearby candle factory.
• File:Akroydon, Yorkshire (1859)Built by Colonel Edward Akroyd for his mill workers
• File:Nenthead, Cumberland. Built in 1861 by the Quaker owned London Lead Cmpany for lead mine workers
• File:New Sharlston Colliery Village, Yorkshire (1864)
• File:150 buildings to house Sharlston Colliery Company workers
• File:​Ripley Ville, Yorkshire (1866)
• File:Sir Henry William Ripley built this for local workforce - residency was not limited to his employees
• File:Copley, Yorkshire (1874)
• File:Built by Colonel Edward Akroyd for local mill workers
• File:Howe Bridge, Lancashire (1873–79)
• File:Built by the owners of Atherton Collieries for pit workers
• File:Bournville, Worcestershire (1879)
• File:Built by the Cadbury Family for their workers
• File:Port Sunlight, Cheshire (1888)
• File:Built by Lever Brothers for local workforce
• File:Creswell Model Village, Derbyshire (1895)
• File:Built by the Bolsover Colliery Company for the workers of Creswell Colliery
• File:New Bolsover model village, Derbyshire (1896)
• File:Built by the Bolsover Mining Company for workers at Bolsover Colliery.
• File:Vickerstown, Lancashire (1901)
• File:Built by Vickers for workers at Barrow’s shipyard
• File:New Earswick, Yorkshire (1904)
• File:Built by Joseph Rowntree for workers
• File:Woodlands, Yorkshire (1905)
• File:Built by the architect Percy Houfton as tied cottages for the miners of the neighbouring Brodsworth Colliery
• File:Whiteley Village, Surrey (1907)
• File:Built by Whiteley Homes Trust, a charity providing almshouses for older people of limited financial means.
• File:The Garden Village, Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire (1908)mainly funded by Sir James Reckitt, and with two-thirds of the housing reserved for his workers
• File:Silver End, Essex (1926)
• File:Francis Henry Crittall to house his Crittall Windows Ltd factory workers.
• File:Stewartby, Bedfordshire (1926)
• File:Built by the London brick company for their workers
• File:Poundbury, Dorset (construction started 1993; ongoing) Built by the Duchy of Cornwall for local people.

Historic Houses Commemorating People

At Chimni we are mainly focussed on house history, architecture and building styles, so our focus in this section is on house museums that celebrate and explain different periods of house building. However, dotted around the country are a series of wonderful house museums celebrating famous people and their work. We have listed some of our favourites below:

Oliver Cromwell’s House - https://www.olivercromwellshouse.co.uk/

Sir John Soane Museum - http://www.soane.org/

Cowper Newton Museum https://cowperandnewtonmuseum.org.uk/

Dickens Museum - https://dickensmuseum.com/

Dylan Thomas' Boat House http://www.dylanthomasboathouse.com/

Dr Jenner's House - http://www.jennermuseum.com/

Jane Austen's House - http://www.jane-austens-house-museum.org.uk/about/about.htm

The Brontë's Parsonage, Haworth, West Yorks. https://www.bronte.org.uk/about-us

Robert Burns House -http://www.burnsmuseum.org.uk/

Virginia Woolf's 'Monks House' - http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/monks-house/

Winston Churchill's 'Chartwell' http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/chartwell/

Benjamin Franklin House. http://www.benjaminfranklinhouse.org/site/sections/default.htm

JM Turner's House - Sandycome. http://turnershouse.org/

Oscar Wilde's House - 21 Westland Row, Dublin http://www.tcd.ie/OWC/history/westland.php

Dr Johnson's House - http://www.drjohnsonshouse.org/

John Milton's Cottage. http://www.miltonscottage.org

Darwin's home at Down House http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/home-of-charles-darwin-down-house/prices-and-opening-times

Richard Jeffries Museum in Swindon http://www.richardjefferies.org/

See Also In Chimni

Chimni Wiki Page: House History Books

Chimni Wiki Page: House History Projects

Chimni Wiki Page: House History Categorisation