London Museums you must visit
London is well known for its museums, but did you know many of them are free to enter? Or that you can skip the queue if you pre-book your timed entry online? Read on for a selection of our, child approved, museums.
Natural History Museum
Located in South Kensington this is one of our favourite museums. It’s also the most touristy and as such often crowded. Knowing you can pre-book a timed entry to avoid queuing will save you lots of precious time and if you’re visiting with children also a lot of stress.
The gardens in front of the museum are especially lovely to spend time in during the warmer months, there’s plenty of photo opportunities with the majestic building in the background and dinosaur skeletons in the foreground. There’s a cafe outside too and enough sitting to enjoy a drink or a snack.
When you enter the museum, the sight of the blue whale skeleton is pretty impressive as is the architecture itself. If you’re big fans of BBC’s Andy of the Andy’s Adventures fame, then you might want to keep left and walk straight on towards the cafe. If you’re lucky (and Andy isn’t heading on one of his adventures), you’ll see his clock in the alcove just before the cafe.
The Natural History Museum is huge and it’ll take hours to wander around all the exhibits, so I suggest you pick what interests you the most (unless you have time to enjoy the museum at leisure). There’s a map available for a £2 donation. Our favourite exhibition is the dinosaurs and we regularly check-in on the T-Rex. Heading to the Red Zone and taking the escalator through the middle of the Earth is also an experience in itself as is visiting the earthquake simulator. We love learning about volcanoes and designing our own one to test what happens when it erupts.
There are a cafe and a restaurant at the museum as well as a picnic area where you can enjoy your own packed lunch.
The closest tube station is South Kensington served by Circle, District and Piccadilly lines. The station doesn’t have step free access, but you can head to Green Park Station (Jubilee, Victoria and Piccadilly lines), which is step-free and then hop on a bus, either no. 9 to Exhibition Road (Stop RB) or no. 14 South Kensington Station (Stop T). Buses around Green Park get busy, so if you’re visiting with a pram, you may have to be patient.
Science Museum
Located in South Kensington and reachable with the same transport as the Natural History Museum, Science Museum is also in our top 5. With free entry, an option to pre-book a timed ticket and plenty of interactive exhibitions and play areas, it’s no wonder that our children keep asking to return.
Some of our favourite exhibitions at the museum are the Technicians gallery, where we can try out different professions and the Who am I? area where children learn about humans (personality, DNA, etc.).
There’s Pattern Pod for the youngest on the ground floor, a multi sensory play area where discovering water ripples is something my children love. In the basement, there is the Garden, a play area where children can try their hand at construction, discover multiple sensory experiences and enjoy water play. A word of warning, bring a bib or spare clothes as they can get pretty enthusiastic changing the locks.
Science museum offers paid exhibitions as well and most of these will give you an annual pass at a couple of Pounds extra. Wonderlab, aimed at children between the ages of 7 and 14 is one of those we have been regularly visiting even before my children were 7. There are around 50 hands-on exhibits that engage children and make them learn about science. The staff is amazing too and we love watching “Explainers” teaching us about chemistry and the like. The friction slides are a big hit as well, although children need to be 100cm tall to ride.
If you love computers and gaming, then Power Up is the paid exhibit for you. As with Wonderlab, you can get an annual pass for this one too and enjoy gaming on computers throughout history.
There’s a cafe offering hot and cold food on the premises as is an ice-cream bar on the 3rd floor, where you can also eat your own food.
London Museum Docklands
This museum deserves one of the top places. It’s free and we’ve never experienced it extremely busy. During school holidays they organise events, this year we tried The Big Dig where we learnt all about archeology and even tried out the job ourselves.
The museum is located in the West India Quay, which is easily reachable via DLR, Elizabeth or Jubilee Line. The stations are located around Canary Wharf, but all are within easy walking distance of the museum.
London Museum Docklands tells the history of London’s docks, trade and life in the area. There’s exhibitions on slave trade, development of London and Sainsbury’s wing where there’s often colouring sheets for children if they need a bit of a break. Each floor of the museum has hands on items for children to use, from tools to pretend ship build, to a tiny wooden cafe, tunnel and bridge building as well as train tracks. My children love playing on a reconstructed balcony of an east London flat or hiding in air raid shelters.
Children under 8 are welcome in the Mudlarks Family Gallery (pre-book online at a cost of £3.50 per play session). The playroom has a water feature, mini soft play, wheelbarrows to move goods around, a huge map showing trade routes as well as a big table for pretend ships to sail on and other sensory activities. It’s a pretty popular play room and I do recommend booking to avoid disappointment.
There’s a cafe on site as well as a buggy park.
London Transport Museum
In the heart of Covent Garden, nearest tube stops are Covent Garden (Piccadilly Line), Leicester Square (Piccadilly, Northern Line) or Charing Cross (Bakerloo and Northern Line).
Children go free, but adults require a ticket. All tickets are annual and non-concession cost £25. Even with a ticket you need to pre-book a timed entry, including for children, for the day of your visit. There’s a little cafe/restaurant on the premises and a small area where you can eat your own food on the ground floor. There’s also a cloakroom and a buggy park as you cannot walk around the museum with a pram.
Our children love this museum for three reasons. No. 1, they get a card and need to find different stamps throughout the museum.
No. 2, there are a couple of play areas, where they can climb around a bus and other means of transport and the other one with a mini tube train they pretend to drive.
No. 3, there’s a bus, an actual one, you can pretend to drive as well as an old and a new tube train you can also get from station to station. There are also a few other hands on items dotted around the museum and you can sit in old carriages pretending to be travelling to a gig in the 1960s.
The Postal Museum
What’s not to like in a museum that has plenty of hands on activities, a playroom and an actual mail train you can ride?
The Postal Museum is located in Clerkenwell. Closest tube stations are Farringdon (Elizabeth, Circle, Hammersmith & City, Metropolitan Lines as well as Thameslink trains) and King’s Cross (Northern, Victoria, Piccadilly, Circle, Hammersmith & City, Metropolitan Lines plus trains). It’s about a 15 minute walk from the stations to the museum at Phoenix Place.
Tickets to the museum are annual passes, however, you only get to ride the mail train on your first visit. If you wish to ride the mail train on other visits, the cost is £6 per person. The cost of the annual ticket is £18.50 for adults, £12.50 for young people (16-24) and £11 for those under 16. Children under 2 are free. Play area Sorted! for under 8s should be pre-booked and a 45 minute play session costs £4.50 per child and £2.50 for a supervising adult.
We love this museum because even when we skip the playroom, there’s plenty of hands on activities to keep children occupied. They love sorting the mail in a moving carriage, learning about hydraulics, sending letters to each other and trying to help a postman deliver all the mail in a computer game.
2 Comments