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- Paddington returns to Museum of London
- Bonus Levels: Artist Lawrence Lek invites viewers to re-imagine future London
- The Museum of London hopes to acquire Whitechapel 'fatberg'
- The City is Ours: A Tale of New Cities
- Tracking London’s most talked about topics and emojis
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- Statement on 20 May 2017
- Digital visions of London, faces of the capital photographed and portrait painting in exchange for a favour
- What does the future hold for London and cities around the world?
- Museum of London releases third and final Great Fire 1666 Minecraft map
- Museum of London acquires 100 menswear items worn by townscape consultant Francis Golding
- 8,000 years of human history on display at the Museum of London Docklands
- Museum of London displays recently acquired Sutherland drawings in new exhibition of Blitz artwork
- Mayor of London and City of London Corporation pledge support for new Museum of London at West Smithfield
- City Now City Future: a conversation about the past, present and future of our cities
- Rare tools give insight into working lives of Roman Londoners at the Museum of London
- New display at the Museum of London traces the capital’s obsession with ice skating
- Historic vessels Knocker White and Varlet set sail to new home at Trinity Buoy Wharf
- Missing Bake Off? Take your taste buds back in time with 17th century gingerbread
- Rare Victoria Cross with mysterious story to go on display at the Museum of London
- Museum of London x Craft Central pop-up opens for Christmas 2016
- Museum of London boosts Great Fire collections with mysterious manuscript
- After dark at The Night Museum
- New display about the life of ‘The Royal African’ and the slave trade
- Joe Corré, Jordan and Richard Boon to appear in an uncensored, live Punk.London debate
- People of Punk bring the year of celebration to an end
- Tunnel: the archaeology of Crossrail
- New archaeological exhibition opens at the Museum of London
- Our statement on Fabric
- New Great Fire website to mark 350th anniversary
- Museum of London sets the City on fire with second Great Fire 1666 Minecraft map
- Skeletons: Our Buried Bones
- Behind the Scenes of the Museum of London
- Stanton Williams and Asif Khan to design new Museum of London at West Smithfield
- Rare George Cross medal goes on display at the Museum of London Docklands
- Museum of London opens most theatrical exhibition ever to mark 350th anniversary of the Great Fire of London
- Museum of London uses Minecraft to recreate the Great Fire of 1666
- Sir Edward Lister joins Museum of London Board of Governors
- 17th century fire engine restored for Great Fire exhibition
- Design concepts for new museum at West Smithfield revealed
- Hello London, Hello Barbados
- Stomping Grounds: Dick Scott-Stewart photographs on display
- Legendary London Stone installed at the Museum of London
- West Smithfield Design Competition shortlist announced
- Museum of London launches new website to increase visits and ticket sales
- Never-before-seen archaeological artefacts from forthcoming exhibition, Fire! Fire! unveiled
- Major new gallery at Museum of London Docklands explores history of the world's largest docks
- West Smithfield International Design Competition launched
- Malcolm Reading Consultants appointed to run West Smithfield International Design Competition
- Museum of London bolsters its art collections
- Photography of Londoners and their pastimes on show at Museum of London
- New research to shed fresh light on the impact of industrialisation
- Looking for Londoners and Show Space
- Met Police’s Crime Museum revealed at Museum of London
- Five Museum of London apprentices appointed
- Another record-breaking year for the Museum of London
Rare tools give insight into working lives of Roman Londoners at the Museum of London
12 January 2017
Working the Walbrook
Museum of London
12 January – March 2017
FREE display
The Museum of London has opened its latest display, Working the Walbrook, which reveals artefacts from the lost Walbrook valley and beyond and represents over 170 years of excavation in London.
The Walbrook, one of London’s lost rivers, once cut the city in half from Finsbury Circus to Cannon Street station. It may have acted as a boundary, industrial zone, or even a religious site, but for archaeologists it is an important time capsule. The waterlogged earth of the valley has preserved an exceptional collection of rare metal artefacts that give us a unique glimpse into the working lives of Roman Londoners. This display is part of a PhD project supervised by the Museum of London and the University of Reading. It is the first large-scale project ever undertaken to understand these important objects.
Objects include:
- Gardening tools - Working the ground in London has a long history, from today’s hipster urban farmers, through allotments and window boxes, to the Roman farming and gardening tools found in the city
- Iron stamp - this iron stamp has the letters MPBR inscribed in reverse onto its striking surface. This has been read as an abbreviation for Metalla Provinciae Britanniae: ‘the mines of the province of Britannia’. It was perhaps used by officials to stamp metal ingots passing through London on their way to the Continent
- Pot, decorated with smith’s tools (from Southwark) - Objects such as this pot decorated with smith’s tools show that superstition and the supernatural were a key part of Roman industry and everyday life. It is decorated with a smith’s hammer, anvil and tongs, and was found at the bottom of a timber-lined well in Southwark. It may have been part of a ritual closure deposit, linked to the smith god Vulcan.
Owen Humphreys, PHD student from the University of Reading and display curator, said:
“This project has been a fantastic opportunity to work with the museum’s collections and has given us the most complete image yet of the working communities of Roman London. The wealth of objects found in this area are likely to have been buried in a bid by Roman Londoners to raise their houses above the floodwaters by collecting and dumping their rubbish in the waterlogged soils. They inadvertently left an exceptional archaeological record of their everyday, working lives giving us a rare glimpse of ancient life in the capital.”
The Museum of London has one of the largest collections of Roman tools in Europe, representing a huge variety of activities. Of the 930 tools recorded so far, 678 of them were recovered from the Walbrook Valley.
Further information: www.museumoflondon.org.uk
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The Museum of London tells the ever-changing story of this great world city and its people, from 450,000 BC to the present day. Our galleries, exhibitions, displays and activities seek to inspire a passion for London and provide a sense of the vibrancy that makes the city such a unique place.
The museum is open daily 10am – 6pm and is FREE to all, and you can explore the Museum of London with collections online – home to 90,000 objects with more being added. www.museumoflondon.org.uk.