Last day - Museums of London and of Childhood

It's always a treat for me to visit the Museum of London, (http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/English/)%20as Hilary, the curator, finds such treats for me, and whoever I am with. This time, owing to my inability to read properly, she and I found that we had different times for our appointment. Fortunately, and no thanks to me, she was kind enough to go along with what I thought I had booked, so we all met up at 10.00 for our study table.

Wew were split into two groups, as the space is very limited at the M o L.  I took the first group, Jennie the second. There were some wonderful items for us - some shoes, (one of which pairs belonged to Queen Victoria) three Regency, or thereabouts, bonnets, a wonderful dress from the 1880's, an unusual 1730s corset, (specially for me), a lovely 19-teens evening gown,  and an 1890s evening gown bodice with lace trim. Needless to say, photos taken at the study table are not for publication, but you can see Jennie's photo tour of the museum on her blog here http://sensibility.com/englandblog/ We were joined by Cathy Hay of "Your Wardrobe unlock'd" and "Foundations Revealed" for the day.

While the second group were with Hilary, I sat in the cafe, and was joined at various times by others from the group, and we had a very pleasant time chatting, while we waited for the others to join us.

We had lunch at a wine bar on Bastion High Walk, not far from the museum, and Cathy brought some treasures she had rescued from a "jumble sale" held by one of the great costume houses, Angel's. She passed them round for all to see. The poor lady running the wine bar found us a very noisy and awkward lot, I'm sure! We took up a lot of space and confused her thoroughly about paying!

I had arranged for a small group to visit the Museum of Childhood, http://www.vam.ac.uk/moc/ where there is a fascinating collection of children's clothes in store. Noreen, the curator, allowed us almost free rein there, and as I had the advantage of visiting privately earlier in the month, I went back to some of my favourites, with Cathy. The group quite naturally split into two, and we covered a huge amount of ground, but I still plan to visit again, and spend more time looking at the immense amount of work put into these tiny garments. Noreen took us round the galleries in the museum, which is newly refurbished, and I spent a lot of time saying "Oh, I had one of those" and feeling very old!!

Finally my part of the tour had come to an end, and farewells were said outside the Museum, before the ladies went off to their hotel, beofre flying off to their various homes, or wandering off to see more of England. I enjoyed the 2010 tour very much and look forward to the next, whenever that is. Follow me in Spain, if you are interested, as that's where I was off to 36 hours later!