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

The late 15th century timber-framed Tudor House & Garden is Southampton’s most important historic building.
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
The Red Lodge, Bristol, England - an imposing merchants house from the 1580s with original ceils and carved panelling.
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/
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
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
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/
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
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’.
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
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
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
‪ ‘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
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]
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
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
House for an Art Lover - a recent recreation of a previously unbuilt competition entry by Charles Rennie Macintosh http://bit.ly/2C5iI1b
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/
2 Willow Road, Hampstead, London - t he only Modernist house in London that's open to the public and the former home of Trellick Tower architect Erno Goldfinger.,

Historic Towns & Villages

Weald & Down Museum, West Sussex http://www.wealddown.co.uk/
Bournville Model Workers Village, Birmingham - built by George and John Cadbury to house and improve the lives of workers at their chocolate factory.

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:

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

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