Vestry House Museum is the local history museum for the London Borough of Waltham Forest, and stands within the village of Church End, Walthamstow. This secluded area still preserves a rural atmosphere, although it lies only a quarter of a mile from Walthamstow's main shopping centre and barely six and a half miles from the City of London.
Vestry House, a two-storey building of brown stock brick, was constructed in 1730 as a workhouse by order of the Walthamstow Vestry. It was later a police station and a private house.
Vestry House Museum is financed by the London Borough of Waltham Forest and since 1931, when it was opened by Sir Ernest Pollock, Master of the Rolls, it has been the borough's museum and local studies library and archive.
The first motor car to be driven in London and the first built in Britain is displayed at the museum. Frederick Bremer built the car in Walthamstow.
Read more about Vestry House Museum: Visiting Information
Famous quotes containing the words vestry, house and/or museum:
“How can a bishop marry? How can he flirt? The most he can say is “I will see you in the vestry after service.””
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845)
“Our law very often reminds one of those outskirts of cities where you cannot for a long time tell how the streets come to wind about in so capricious and serpent-like a manner. At last it strikes you that they grew up, house by house, on the devious tracks of the old green lanes; and if you follow on to the existing fields, you may often find the change half complete.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“Always clung to by barnacles.”
—Hawaiian saying no. 2661, ‘lelo No’Eau, collected, translated, and annotated by Mary Kawena Pukui, Bishop Museum Press, Hawaii (1983)