Helga without the H

I did a brief trip across the pond recently, and managed to squeeze in a whopping 3 London museums in under 2 days! I already covered day one’s museums, but now I finally have time to describe the 3rd and final London museum: Sir John Soane’s Museum!

We picked this museum for our last morning in the UK because we decided to scrap our original idea of trying to shlep to Brentford (home of the Brentford Bees football club, my husband’s favorite team) on our way to Heathrow and instead do something easier. What’s easier than a museum just 2 blocks from our hotel? We didn’t know much about this place before visiting, beyond the fact that it was well-reviewed, and super convenient.

Here’s the basic idea with this place: Sir John Soane was a famous and successful architect. He obsessively collected valuable art and artifacts, which he then hung up all over his house, which was a totally normal run-of-the-mill London rowhouse. But remember, this dude was a rich architect. So he started remodeling his house to better display his collection. He put in skylights and mirrors all over the place. He eventually bought both of the neighboring rowhouses so that he could blow out walls between the houses and make his display areas even bigger and wackier. He packed every single inch of possible wall space in this house with art. No, more than that; when he ran out of wall space, he figured out ways to cram in more walls (for example: his picture room containing his most valuable paintings had walls that could fold out, displaying even more paintings on the other side of the fold, and essentially tripling the amount of paintings that he could hang in one space.) He cut holes in the floor to let light into the lower floor, but also build a loft office to create a room where previously there was just blank space.

It would be impossible to overstate the sheer volume of stuff that this guy had collected and displayed. The first room you enter on the tour is a somewhat normal looking dining room. Yeah, there are a lot of statues and unique items on display, but nothing too crazy just yet. I’ve been to tons of dead rich people’s houses, and this wasn’t that different. But after that, shit gets WILD. It’s just a labyrinth of crazy stuff. Almost none of it is roped off or behind glass. I’d be shocked if visitors didn’t actually knock over and break a few hundred thousand pounds worth of precious works every week, because you’re packed in so tightly with this stuff that you’re bound to squeeze a little too close to a bust of Shakespeare or something at some point.

There are plenty of other things that make this museum a bit strange, all largely having to do with Sloane himself. He started giving tours of his collection back when he was still alive. But his family was full of drama; one son died before Soane, and the other one was disowned by Soane after he published anonymous criticism of his dad in a newspaper (or something like that). With no heirs, Soane bequeathed his vast fortune or art, including the three houses displaying the art, to the government (you know, as one does.) BUT, he had rules; nothing was to be changed. Like, ever. It had to all appear exactly as he left it. And that included clear instructions that there should be NO signage added anywhere. No plaques explaining the artifacts, not even to give a title or time period or artist. Nope; just a wall full of hoarded junk (except each individual piece of “junk” is an actual priceless treasure.)

Admission to the museum is free, which is nice. It’s also controlled entry to keep the place from getting crowded, which is very wise considering the cramped quarters. But if you want to have some idea of what you’re looking at (or some idea of how to escape the house, since the whole thing is one-way and it’s a bit of a labyrinth), you can buy the museum guide for 3 pounds. We eagerly handed over our coins, excited for the knowledge it contained. The guide was certainly a lot more helpful than going in completely blind (if nothing else- it had maps!), but it was also skimpy on details. It described each room, and highlighted a few pieces in each room, but that’s about it. That was enough information to not be overwhelmed, but still, when you enter a room with literally hundreds of artifacts and the guidebook only describes three of them, you feel like you’re missing a bit of the story. On the other hand, after two other museums where we were exhausted with information overload from just reading nonstop museum plaques, it was actually quite nice to just step back and enjoy looking at some cool old shit. I’ve now discovered that you can learn more about individual pieces on the museum website. And we were interested enough in Soane himself that we bought a book about him (At Home with the Soane’s) in the gift shop (my husbands mostly done reading, I haven’t started yet). So consider us inspired to expand our minds, I guess.

Amongst the vast collections, I did have some favorite rooms and items. My favorite room was the breakfast room. It was light on “stuff” compared to the other rooms, but it was my favorite example of his ingenious architecture. It was in the middle of the house, meaning it should have been dark and windowless. But he carefully placed a hundred mirrors all around the room to concentrate light coming in from a small window, and have the morning light redirected straight into the center of his breakfast table. How cool is that? The coolest artifact was definitely the Sarcophagus of Pharaoh Seti. This was the only artifact encased in glass, and with good reason. This thing is over THREE THOUSAND YEARS OLD! It’s one of the rarest, most valuable ancient Egyptian artifacts on the entire freaking PLANET. And this dude’s just got it sitting around in his basement. Literally in his basement. He called the basement his “crypt”, but dude, we all know it’s just the dang root cellar, even when you add a sweet skylight. Crazy crazy stuff.

Bottom line: This place was definitely worth a visit! An employee was explaining to another guest that attendance numbers have been really high recently, but that a lot of those people are remaining in the museum for very short visits (basically, just knocking it off a to-visit list right quick since it’s free). I could see the appeal of a pop-in visit if you have a small bit of time to kill and don’t want to spend money. I think that would still be better than nothing, and it’s a kinda neat place no matter what. But even without the signage all over the place, I recommend taking your time with this one. Spend the 3 pounds for the guide. Take it all in. Talk with the employees (they’re in every room watching to make sure you don’t swipe a mummy or whatever, and they seem eager to chat.) It’s one of the weirdest private homes I’ve ever visited, and this was definitely a better way to kill an hour than visiting a bust stop in Hounslow on a non-match day.