Museum of London
The Museum of London is one of the largest city history museums in the world. It opened in 1976 in a purpose-built site, designed by Philip Powell and Hidalgo Moya,
It houses the collections of the Corporation of London, started in 1826, previously kept below the Guildhall Library and at the ROYAL Exchange, as well as that of the London Museum, started in 1912, and previously at Lancaster House and Kensington Palace.
Originally it was planned as a monoflow museum, with only one route from entrance to exit. It has now been laid out to allow more freedom of movement among the exhibits, selected from the 2 million objects the museum holds.
Currently the museum is showing artefacts from prehistory to 1666, the date of the Great Fire of London, including more than 47,000 items from Roman times.
Amongst these are the famous Bucklersbury mosaic, the largest surviving complete mosaic in England, and the heads of Mithras and Minerva from the Walbrook Mithraeum.
The building also houses MOLAS, the museum’s archaeological service, and it operates the Dockland Museum which has exhibits showing the history of London as a port.
The reconstruction of a Roman waterwheel was made in 2002 by McCurdy & Co following a design by Tony Taylor & Bob Spain. It was based on the Gresham Street finds.It took 6 months to design, one month to test prototypes and 6 weeks to construct.
It can raise 72,000 litres (15,000 gallons) in 10-hours.