Visitors to London Metropolitan Archives’ new exhibition are being promised a tantalising glimpse of a London that they will be unfamiliar with.
Presenting a wide range of richly evocative and forgotten views, ‘Lost Victorian City: a London disappeared’ will feature photographs, prints, watercolours, and documents of buildings, horse-drawn transport, docks, artists’ views of the capital, and varieties of entertainment.
The free exhibition will run from 13 May 2024 to 5 February 2025 at the Corporation’s Clerkenwell-based archives during normal office hours.
Highlights include photographs of the Oxford Arms, a 17th century coaching inn in Warwick Lane near the Old Bailey. The exhibition features images of this lovely, but ramshackle, building taken in 1875 by the Society for Photographing Relics of Old London, two years before it was demolished.
Philip Henry Delamotte was commissioned to record the move of the Crystal Palace from Hyde Park to Sydenham. Constructed for The Great Exhibition of 1851 in Hyde Park, the iconic building was re-erected in south-east London the following year. Beginning with the first girder going into the ground and ending with Victoria and Albert’s appearance at the opening ceremony, Delamotte created 160 images, two of which are displayed in ‘Lost Victorian City: a London disappeared.’
Dressed in protective blouses and leggings, public disinfectors set to work once infectious diseases had been identified and deemed no longer a risk, removing all infected textiles and placed in a sealed hand cart, ready for disinfection. The group in the exhibition’s photograph are standing in front of the outbuilding which contains the disinfecting oven.
Chair of the Corporation’s Culture, Heritage, and Libraries Committee, Munsur Ali, said:
“Thoughtfully curated and full of fascinating insights, this free exhibition at our wonderful archives will put the spotlight on how the capital has changed and grown so dramatically since early Victorian times.
“With such rich and extensive collections from which to draw, the expert teams at London Metropolitan Archives always enjoy using their popular exhibitions to take its visitors on a journey, very often, surprising the most knowledgeable of London history lovers.”
‘Lost Victorian City: a London disappeared’ forms part of the City’s arts and cultural offering and forms part of the Corporation’s Destination City programme, which sets out a vision for the Square Mile to become a world-leading leisure destination for UK and international visitors, workers, and residents to enjoy.
The Corporation, which owns and manages London Metropolitan Archives, is the fourth largest funder of heritage and cultural activities in the UK and invests over £130m every year.
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