John Soanes Museum

The John Soanes museum is one of my favourites but I was a little worried I’d oversold it.

We needed a short day out to make up for the weather and not making it to the beach as planned, and I’d promised Harry Potter style moving walls and a spooky crypt.

I needn’t have worried.

We had to queue for 10 minutes to get in but F was smitten on first sight. Not least because despite it’s strangeness it still feels like a house someone actually lived in.

And it is a fabulously weird and wonderful house. It’s full of winding stairs and tiny rooms overlooking surprise courtyards of ruins as if the Roman Forum was outside the window.

Not to mention mummies in the basement.

F was understandably not interested in hearing all about Hogarth’s pictures but she loved the moving walls made up of layers of paintings that could open out on new rooms.

And, although, it’s obviously not a space kids can run around in – at all, at all! – the John Soanes Museum did feel like a perfect museum for 5s and up.

It’s too small for them to tire of it and the strangeness captures their imagination.

Even the short wait outside added to the experience as it gave F time to decide the statues on the front were Weeping Angels from Doctor Who. We did NOT blink!

We spent less than an hour there but before we left I had to promise we would go back for the first Tuesday of the month candlelit tour to get the full spooky experience!

We then grabbed our scooter and whizzed up to Corams Field Playground for a picnic tea and a run around – a combo we would definitely recommend.

The John Soanes Museum is free but struggling so they desperately need donations.

Getting There:

We got the Thameslink to City Thameslink station and then hopped on the number 8 Routemaster Bus along Holborn to the Brownlow St stop. Duck down the Great Turnstile alley into Lincolns Inn Fields.

Alternatively, it is less than 5 minutes walk from Holborn and Chancery Lane tubes.

Do hope your kids love the John Soanes Museum. Let me know what they enjoy best.

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