Foundling Museum — Attraction in London

We visited here on a trip to London because my daughter had recently read Lucky Button and she was fascinated with the history of foundlings. The museum is relatively small in London terms, but well equipped. The ground floor details the founding of the hospital, details of the daily life and upbringing of the foundlings, as well as having a display of the tokens that mothers would leave with their children. This floor was the most interesting for us. The second floor is a gallery housing the paintings from the original hospital. These were an important stream of revenue for the foundling hospital, so with knowledge of its history, the relevance of these paintings is clear. There was also a dress up area for kids on this floor. The top floor housed a collection of items linked to Handel, who played in the Chapel of the hospital. The bottom floor was in transition from a temporary exhibition at the time of our visit. There was a Hetty Feather themed activity pack for my daughter to do and a couple of kids activities around the museum. I wouldn't recommend taking really young children if they're as spirited as my 2 year old, just because there's a lot of breakable items around the museum. But I'd already scoped out the surrounding area and found that adjacent to the museum (on the original grounds of the foundling hospital) is Coram Fields, which houses an excellent play park for children, so my husband tookmy youngest there whilst my daughter explored the museum. Overall it was nice to put into context the people, surroundings and experiences of the foundlings that...

I had never heard about this museum until our local history group organised this trip! We arrived a couple of hours before our guided tour was due to start so we picked up a leaflet and read that the original colonnades were still across the road so we walked the short distant only to find that they were in a gated park where no unaccompanied adults were allowed to enter, obviously due to child protection, so I had to take photos through the fencing, which may have looked worse than if I'd actually walked in to the park! It's much better having a guided tour because they tell you much more than you can see in the exhibits! The building is not the original home but built on the site of it as administrative offices but it now houses the museum which includes a room dedicated to the history of the home and its founders, a room replicating the court room, various paintings by Hogarth and a room devoted to Handel who were both the home's main benefactors! I was impressed with the recordings of former attendees who said they were treated really well and well fed - a different story to the workhouse! The only negative is that nearly everyone that went into the room with the huge elm refectory table wanted to touch it and we were snapped at not to touch it but there was no notice and it would not come to any harm if people did touch it anyway - it's as thick and so,I'd as a rock! Really well worth a visit- very humbling to think of the poor women who had to give pup,what may have been her fourteenth child because she just couldn't afford another...

This museum has a very interesting and quite a sad story to tell. There is really only one room dedicated to telling this story and it does have some informative displays with written documents and all sorts of tokens left for the abandoned children from their mothers. However the most interesting part of the story was a video from people (now elderly adults) who lived at the foundling house during the 40's,50's. You really get a feel of what the children left behind would of experienced​ and it's not a good one. But unfortunately the screen is put in a really awkward place. Everyone has to stand in an area which is in front of other displays in quite a small little area, and you have to crane your neck as the screen is quite high up. It could do with a separate dedicated area for this video. The rest of the building is really an art gallery of all the male, pale and stale men who at some point had something to do with the house. All very honourable men I'm sure but looking at painting after painting not that interesting. There is also recreated rooms that the board would of met in, lovely to look at but I'm not sure what the point of these rooms are. A good way to spend an hour but feel it could do with more rooms dedicated to being the foundling museum and telling the story of...