The Victoria and Albert Museum is known for many different firsts in the museum world. It is a landmark in London, and still continues to be a leader after over 150 years. And it is incredibly impressive when you are walking through it, so you tend not to notice things that jump out because everything jumps out. There are over seven miles of galleries, and you will certainly get your steps in. However, one of my favourite parts of the V&A of course has to do with food… The Victoria and Albert Museum cafe was the first of its kind, and is still in gorgeous condition today!
If you aren’t familiar with the Victoria and Albert Museum, you can find it in South Kensington in London. (Right beside the Natural History Museum, if you are wondering.) Named after Queen Victoria and her beloved Prince Albert, it originally opened in 1857 as the South Kensington Museum. It was renamed as the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1899 when Victoria laid the cornerstone of the new buildings. Victoria had wanted the museum to be named the Albert museum after the Prince, but alas, settled for the Victoria and Albert. (Albert Hall is named after him, as are many other places in England, and across the Commonwealth, so he didn’t do too badly.) It currently has a permanent collection of over 2.2 million items, and is the largest museum of applied and decorative arts. (Makes sense why the Dior exhibition would be there, with the largest textile collection in the world!)
The Victoria and Albert Museum Cafe
The V&A cafe holds quite a notable first- it is the first museum restaurant in the world. While restaurants and coffee shops have become commonplace in museums of larger size nowadays, it was not the case in the nineteenth century. Sir Henry Cole, the first director of the museum, hoped that with later hours and refreshments, the V&A could serve as an antidote to the gin palaces that gripped the nation. (He managed the Great Exhibition in 1851, and knew that food and refreshments contributed to visitor enjoyment.) And while the original refreshment rooms were deemed ugly (like the other original museum buildings), they were rebuilt. And rebuilt with style.
The Gamble Room
Hisdoryan and I made our way through the Dior: Designer of Dreams in just under two hours, and knew that we needed a break. And of course, nothing better than tea and scones! (And excellent scones, at that.) The cafe was rather busy- the whole museum was, as it was half term. However, we did manage to find a table in the Gamble Room. There is quite a lot of seating across the three rooms for the cafe, but it still can take patience and luck to get a seat when it is busy. And if I do say so myself, I think that we snagged a table in the best room.
The Gamble Room is the largest of the three refreshment rooms, and was originally named the Centre room. (For reasons you could guess…) And although there is a different configuration in the museum now, it stood opposite the main entrance. According to a 2018 V&A exhibition on the cafe, “Besides enticing visitors with delicious smells and the welcoming sounds of gaiety, the room was wrapped in a glittering expanse of colourful ceramic, glass and enamel. Newspapers found the room “bright and cheerful … It looks like one of the richly and gaily-adorned cafés of Paris”.” The ceiling was covered in enamelled iron sheets, similar to the enamelled name-plates at railway stations. And although it does look quite cool, it also serves an important purpose- fire protection. Once the doors are closed, it would have been a fireproof bubble within the museum. (And when it was built in the nineteenth century, fire carriages took quite awhile to get to the somewhat rural V&A.)
In case you forget exactly who the museum is named for, you can spot intricate “V”s in the stained glass windows. And this particular window features poetry from Edmund Spenser, the English poet. Given that the focus of the Gamble Room is Renaissance Revival, the inclusion of poetry seems rather relevant. Fun fact: many of the stained glass windows aren’t leading outside- they instead cover the kitchens. Although the room is just gorgeous to look at, every element serves a purpose (though you might not know at first).
The Poynter Room and the Morris Room
There are two other rooms with two distinct interior styles, on either side of the Gamble Room. The Poynter Room featured Eastern influences, rather than Western. It was known originally as the Grill Room where visitors could enjoy broiled chops and steaks. Because the focus was grilled meat, the room has a cast-iron open fireplace (with warming chambers on either side to keep plates warm). The Poynter Room has a significant amount of blue glazed ceramic tiles, that were made by female students studying ceramics at the National Art Training School (where Princess Louise studied).
The Western Room, now known as the Morris Room, can be seen above. If the name sounds familiar, it is because you have probably come across William Morris at some point. Morris would go on to become one of the most prolific designers of the Victorian period, but was a newcomer to design when he created this room. The Morris Room is nearly a perfect example of the Arts and Crafts Movement that Morris promoted. There are geometric and floral patterns throughout the room (including etched onto the ceiling), and you can spot Gothic Revival features as well. And if you are so inspired, the V&A giftshop has a few books on Morris’ design work. In any case, they each have their own distinct and impressive style.
♠
The V&A is one of my favourite places in London. Obviously, I more than loved the Dior: Designer of Dreams exhibition- I still consider myself quite lucky to see the most popular exhibition the V&A has ever hosted. And although it is tucked off and much more quiet than the larger exhibitions, the Beatrix Potter exhibition was also fantastic. It features many of her early sketchbooks, as well as pieces from her infamous Peter Rabbit series.
If you would like to learn more about the exhibition on the refreshment rooms, visit here! And here are 100 facts on the V&A to answer all of your burning questions.
Have you visited Victoria and Albert Museum cafe?
Cheers,
The Historian
Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest | Bloglovin’
