Patrick Comerford
A group of three of us spent much of Thursday afternoon at the Museum of the Home in Hoxton, in the London Borough of Hackney, close to Hoxton station and Shoreditch. The museum is housed in former almshouses built over 300 years ago in 1714, and despite many changes over the past century or more, the almshouse chapel survives with many of its original details, including a memorial to and a copy of a statue of the original benefactor, Sir Robert Geffrye (1613-1704), who made his fortune in the 17th century as a slave trader.
As the estates of titled and landed families began to be broken up at the end of the 17th century, many of the large houses in the Hoxton area came to be used as schools, hospitals or asylums, and almshouses were built on the land given by benefactors, most of whom were City liverymen.
These almshouses included Aske’s Almshouses or Haberdashers’ Almshouses, built on Pitfield Street in 1689 thanks Robert Aske’s endowment for 20 poor haberdashers. The almshouses endowed by Sir Robert Geffrye were established by the Ironmongers’ Company on Kingsland Road in 1714.
The 14 almshouses were built in 1714 for around 50 residents in need associated with the Ironmongers’ Company. They were financed by Geffrye, a merchant and slave trader who had once been Lord Mayor of London and Master of the Ironmongers’ Company, one of the livery companies of the City of London.
The original 14 almshouses had four rooms each – one room for each resident. The central Great Room was used as a meeting place and to socialise for the first two years of the almshouses, but it was then turned into a chapel at the heart of the buildings and it was used primarily for Sunday services.
In addition, the almshouses had a matron, groundskeeper and chapel clerk, all employed from among the pensioners. The almshouses also had a chaplain, who was not a pensioner and who held a position of authority.
The chapel remains a beautiful, high-ceiling space complete with wooden pulpit, prayer desk and pews. Behind the rails, where the altar once stood, three varnished boards survive, inscribed in gold lettering with the Apostles’ Creed, the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer. The residents of the almshouses were obliged to attend the Sunday services in the chapel each week.
A monument to Sir Robert Geffrye and his wife Priscilla was moved to the former chapel from their local church, and the additional context of the origins of their wealth is explained in simple terms.
The survival of the chapel is a reminder that the museum is set within a real space that was once been part of daily life for the residents of the almshouses. The 300-year old space can be hired for ceremonies and events on Mondays, and after 5 pm from Tuesday to Sunday. The Reading Room off the chapel provides additional space that can be booked for receptions or private dining.
Most of the basement space has been cleaned up to make it suitable for museum displays. The space beneath the chapel or the Undercroft has been left with its brick arches exposed and it has been modernised to create a beautiful, intimate space for small groups.
The vaulted ceilings and soft lighting give the room a warm, yet dramatic character. The Undercroft has its own door onto the Gardens Through Time, allowing receptions to spill out into the evening air.
By the late 19th century, Hoxton had become one of the most impoverished parts of the East End. the remaining pensioners in the almshouses were moved to Kent and Hampshire, and the Ironmongers’ Company closed the almshouses in 1911.
London County Council was keen to save the gardens in a densely populated part of the East Ebd, and saw the potential of giving the almshouses a new purpose as a museum. The Geffrye Museum, with collections of furniture and wood crafts, opened in 1914 and remained open throughout World War II. It became a charitable trust in 1991, and after a two-year £18 million development and refurbishment project reopened in 2018 as the Museum of the Home.
The Museum of the Home, housed in the 18th century Grade I listed former almshouses, invites visitors to take a journey through homes over the last four centuries, exploring how people once lived and lived now.
The museum has been the focus of controversy recently, with calls to remove the replica statue of Sir Robert Geffrye from the front of the building, above the doors leading directly into the chapel, and revelations of interference by the Conservative government in the consultations and decision-making process.
The statue is set in a niche above what looks like the main entrance to the museum, but is in fact a pair of long since blocked off doors into the chapel.
Geffrye was became an East India merchant and had two terms as Master Ironmonger. He was knighted in 1673, was Sheriff of London in 1674, and was the Lord Mayor of London in 1685-1686, and President of Bridewell and Bethlehem Hospitals in 1692-1693. Geffrye was a significant trader in tobacco, invested in the Atlantic slave trade and was part owner of a slave ship, the China Merchant.
The museum held consultations in 2020-2021 on removing the statue. With little subtlety, Oliver Dowden, the then Tory culture secretary, threatened the museum’s funding if the statute was moved: ‘It is imperative that you continue to act impartially, in line with your publicly funded status, and not in a way that brings this into question.’
Despite strong, vocal local objections, the museum board decided to leave the statue over the former chapel doors and to place interpretive explanations outside, below the statue, inside the chapel, beneath the Geffrye memorial..
Ironically, this is not the original statue of Geffrye but a copy of the original made by John Nost in 1723-1724. The original statue was removed when the almshouses closed and set up in the new almshouses at Mottingham in 1910.
Since then, the almshouses have moved yet again to Hook, Hampshire, taking the statue with them. The present statue is a copy of the original and was made by James Maude & Co of Mansfield.
