At home with history in London

The sun was shining, birds were singing and daffodils were in bloom. Not a cloud marked the blue sky. Could this be London in March?

It was hard to believe. Even harder was resisting the urge to play hooky from the research I had been doing in the public records office at Kew. I couldn’t, so I decided to take a three-day holiday from study and visit some out-of-the-way museums scattered through London and its suburbs.

I was lured not only by the collections, but also by the buildings they are housed in. Many are historically important; the Guildhall Art Gallery stands on one of the oldest inhabited sites in London, and the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology contains a gem of a collection on one of the oldest inhabited sites in all of Britain.

Sutton House

With sunbeams raining down, I took the Underground to Hackney, which was once a village on the outskirts of the city. At the heart of Hackney is Sutton House, the oldest house in London’s East End and one of the few Tudor buildings left in the city. The three-story brick structure, laid out in an H, was built in 1535 by Sir Ralph Sadleir, Henry VIII’s reluctant ambassador to Scotland -- he deplored the country and its residents. It was originally known as Brick Place, and Sadleir and his family lived there until 1550, when it was sold.

Over the centuries, Sutton House was also used as a girls’ boarding school, an apartment house and a recreational club for “men of all classes.” Now it belongs to the National Trust, a nonprofit organization that preserves Britain’s historical buildings and their contents. In 1990 Sutton House underwent a three-year restoration that returned most of its interior to a mid-1500s look, with some rooms that reflect its Victorian past.

In the depths of the dim, dank cellar were samples of the bricks, made from local clay, that were used to build Brick Place. Back then, brick makers were a superstitious lot, and they inscribed magic symbols into some of their products. Upstairs, the front parlor was wrapped in magnificent linen paneling, which, a docent told me, the owner would have stripped from the walls, along with the glass in the windows, when he sold the house.

Above the parlor was the Little Chamber, formerly a small sitting room for the family. Its floor was covered with a painted oilcloth in medieval patterns of red, green and yellow, and a hooded wooden cradle was displayed by a hard straight-backed chair in the corner. Passing through the Little Chamber, I entered the Great Chamber, whose shadowed, wood-paneled corners looked as if they held a ghost or two.

The haunted feeling followed me into the next, smaller room, which was decorated like a Victorian study in terra-cotta red and royal blue. In a display case rested a pair of tiny gloves that once belonged to a Miss Hooker, a student at the 19th century Mrs. Temple’s School for Girls. In 1851, 26 girls boarded at Sutton House, and their worn gloves and well-darned socks were found under the floorboards during the restoration.

One pleasing feature of Sutton House is the glass-walled cafe in the back garden, where, for $8, I lunched on mushroom soup, whole-grain bread and a dessert of sticky apple caramel tart with vanilla ice cream. I’m sure Sir Ralph never had it so good.

Guildhall Art Gallery

My next stop was the Guildhall Art Gallery, which opened in 1999 to display paintings and sculpture belonging to the Corporation of London, which runs the city of London. Next to the imposing 15th century Guildhall and only a five-minute walk from London’s commercial heart, the gallery was designed by contemporary British architect Richard Gilbert Scott to blend in with its Gothic neighbor. During construction, a Roman amphitheater, dating to about AD 70, was discovered, and a basement display was built around its cobbled eastern entrance and two adjacent rooms, which may have been used for pregame religious rituals or as holding areas for wild animals or gladiators.

As I walked down the narrow corridor that once led to the arena, the din of a crowd’s shouts, jeers and applause filled the space from hidden speakers. Against a green-lighted wall of etched glass, schematic gladiators stood frozen in battle stances. It was an eerie feeling to find echoes from a world that still seemed to live beneath the foundations of Guildhall Yard.

The paintings in the galleries above continued the theme of the exotic. Nineteenth century Pre-Raphaelite artists William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Sir John Everett Millais dominate the collection. My favorite painting, done by Sir Edwin Landseer in 1827, was “The Travelled Monkey,” which depicts a sophisticated, world-weary monkey in a velvet coat and tricorn hat, carrying a cane and gloves, describing his international adventures to a group of stay-at-home relatives.

Ham House

The sun continued to shine on Day 2 of my holiday, so I decided to visit one of the several stately mansions on the city’s fringe. Ham House, an early 17th century redbrick mansion in Richmond-Upon-Thames, was owned from 1626 by William Murray, earl of Dysart. As a child, Murray served as the future Charles I’s whipping boy, designated to take the punishments earned by the royal heir. But King Charles made it up to him in adulthood with land and titles.

I arrived to find the house closed until the following week because a theatrical company was rehearsing inside. But house steward Nigel Byrne allowed me a sneak look. I saw a long gallery of Murray family portraits in heavy frames and a small, jewel-like room whose walls were covered with green silk, which enhanced a display of 17th century miniatures. With many of the windows shuttered, I felt an air of haunted happenings here too, a feeling reinforced by the actors in costumes from the reign of the ill-fated Charles I, who was beheaded in 1649 during the English Civil War.

Actors in fanciful outfits kept popping in and out of the large, dimly lighted, ornately decorated rooms. Every now and then recorded music blasted out, and I jumped. I finally asked one of the actors what they were rehearsing.

“Oh,” he replied, “it’s a drama called ‘The Painted Frame,’ all about ghosts and mayhem and murder.”

Outside, the gardens were infinitely more welcoming. Formal and French in design, they are the fruit of the gardening obsession of Murray’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth. An influential and charismatic woman, Elizabeth married John Maitland, duke of Lauderdale, and, like her husband, was an important political presence at the court of Charles II.

Ham House was her inheritance and her toy, and she lavished time and money on it, turning it into the London showplace it still is. Little has changed since Elizabeth’s time. Outside the gardens, I followed an old towpath on a 15-minute walk along the gently curving Thames River to the village of Peters- ham, where I ate lunch at the Dysart Arms. An inn has stood on this site for more than 300 years, and the present incarnation is a cross between English inn and Italian trattoria, the interior painted a Tuscan gold. The potato leek soup and fresh Italian bread, served on a bleached pine table overlooking the garden, were delicious.

The Petrie Museum

of Egyptian Archaeology

My next stop was a change of pace. The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, off Gower Street, is one of several museums belonging to University College London. Egyptologists actually hang out here, and I was lucky enough to meet Peter Clayton, an Egyptologist and author who answered my questions about pieces from Egypt’s 18th dynasty of the 14th century BC, the time of Nefertiti and Tutankhamen. Clayton pointed out bits of sky-blue pottery -- one with a drawing of a calf frolicking in papyrus bushes -- found in a palace where the rulers once lived. I could easily imagine Tut, the boy king, eating his breakfast cereal from the happy cow bowl.

One fascinating piece was the Tarkhan dress, a long linen garment named for the place in Egypt where it was found. It is one of the oldest pieces of clothing in the world, dating from 3000 to 2300 BC. Although the skirt rotted away long ago, the simple V-neck top with long, pleated sleeves looked stylish enough to wear today.

“It was made for a teenager,” Clayton said, “and had been put in the tomb still stained with perspiration and creased at the armpits, as though she had just pulled it off over her head.”

Leighton House Museum

Just off Kensington High Street, one of London’s premier shopping areas, is Leighton House Museum. It was designed by Victorian architect George Aitchison in 1864 for up-and-coming artist Lord Frederic Leighton, who lived from 1830 to 1896. Leighton traveled throughout Europe and the Middle East seeking inspiration. The house was meant to be his home and studio as well as a gallery for his paintings and for the collection of rare tiles and pottery he picked up in Syria, Turkey and Egypt. Leighton House is a bizarre combination of Victorian early aesthetic movement, neo-Gothic, Turkish bathhouse and Arabian Nights. On the third day of my holiday, I decided to have a look.

The entry hall is a dramatic imitation of the interior courtyard of a traditional Syrian house, with 16th and 17th century Damascus tiles covering the walls, wood Syrian window screens and a fountain in the center. You can hear the fountain in every room, including Leighton’s enormous studio upstairs, where a gallery is draped with Oriental carpets.

Like Ham House, Leighton House is impressively opulent, featuring red-flocked velvet wallpaper and a massive oak mantel in the dining room, and an extensive display of colorful Turkish Iznik pottery in the foyer.

Leighton’s bedroom is surprisingly spare, with only a simple brass bed and a white bedspread. Despite the heavy furnishings in the rest of the house, the place is full of light, and the windows look out on a garden brilliant with primroses.

Geffrye Museum

My final stop was in Shoreditch, northeast of central London, where the Geffrye Museum was built in 1715 with a bequest from Sir Robert Geffrye, a London merchant and lord mayor of London, to house the elderly poor. The Geffrye’s collection of English furniture and interiors is great fun, especially for children. Each of the dozen or so ground-floor rooms of the connecting houses is laid out as a sitting room of a different period, from 1580 to the 1990s.

I particularly liked the Stuart Room (1660-1685), which featured a portrait of Oliver Cromwell and a stuffed armadillo on an inlaid wooden cabinet, and the Regency room, in French blue and white. That was a model of restraint compared with the Victorian room, which was suffocating with dusty stuffed birds, overstuffed furniture and violently clashing upholstery.

An extension added in 1998 contains several rooms from the early, middle and late 20th century, as well as rotating collections and a wonderful bookshop. In the spring, the gardens are divided into different periods that maintain the Geffrye’s historical theme.

Since my last visit, the Geffrye has also added a spacious cafe, which features period food. For about $10, I ordered rosti (potato pancakes with cheese) served on a bed of stewed leeks, with lemon cake for dessert. I don’t know what period the food was from, but it was very good.

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Lured by London’s little museums

GETTING THERE:

From LAX, British Airways, American, United, Virgin Atlantic and Air New Zealand have nonstop flights to Heathrow Airport in London. Continental flies direct (one stop) to Gatwick Airport. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $838.

TELEPHONE:

To call the numbers below from the U.S., dial 011 (the international dialing code), 44 (country code for Britain) and the local number. When in London, dial 0 before the local number.

MUSEUMS:

Sutton House, 2 & 4 Homerton High St., Hackney; 20-8986-2264, www.nationaltrust.org.uk. Open 1-5:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 11:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Sunday; admission $3.64 for adults, 84 cents for children. Tube stop: Hackney Central.

Guildhall Art Gallery, Guildhall Yard, London; 20-7332-3700, www.guildhallart-gallery.org.uk. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Saturday, noon-4 p.m. Sunday; admission $4.13 for adults, children free, free to all on Friday. Tube stop: Bank.

Ham House, Ham Street, Richmond-Upon-Thames, Surrey; 20-8940-1950, www.nationaltrust.org.uk/hamhouse. Open 1-5 p.m. Saturday-Wednesday, April 5-Nov. 2 (garden open 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday-Wednesday all year); admission $11.58 for adults, $5.80 for children (garden $4.96, children $2.48). Tube stop: Richmond, then a taxi or bus 371.

The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, University College London, Malet Place, London; 20-7679-2884, www.petrie.ucl.ac.uk. Open 1-5 p.m. Tuesday-Friday and 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturday; free. Tube stop: Euston Square.

Leighton House Museum, 12 Holland Park Road; 20-7602-3316, www.rbkc.gov.uk/leightonhousemuseum. Open 11 a.m.-5:30 p.m. daily except Tuesdays. Free. Tube stop: High Street Kensington.

Geffrye Museum, Kingsland Road, Shoreditch; 20-7739-9893, www.geffryemuseum.org.uk. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, noon-5 p.m. Sunday; free. Tube stop: Old Street, then bus 242 or 243.

CONTACT:

Visit Britain, 551 5th Ave., Suite 701, New York, NY 10176; (800) GO-2-BRITAIN (462-2748), www.travelbritain.org.

London Tourist Board and Convention Bureau, 1 Warwick Row, London SW1 E5ER; 011-44-20-7932-2000, www.visitlondon.com.

-- Susan James