Museum of Croydon

Museum of Croydon
#154

⭐ Highlights

Croydon Now

People-centred social history

Uniforms, shop signs, flyers and family keepsakes show how migration, music and retail shaped the borough.

Pick an object from your decade and read the donor’s note.

📍 Core gallery

Wartime Croydon

Home-front realities

Air-raid shelter set-pieces, an ‘unexploded bomb’ story and photos connect everyday streets to the Blitz.

Step into the shelter vignette and imagine a night’s routine.

📍 Main trail mid-section

Riesco Gallery

Global ceramics in a local museum

Celadons, blue-and-white and figural wares trace a millennium of Chinese ceramic innovation alongside Roman and Anglo-Saxon finds from the area.

Compare glaze and form on a Chinese bowl with a local pot shard.

📍 Upper level

Design & Industry (rotating)

How Croydon makes and remakes itself

Shows like “FORGE: Industries of Croydon” pair archive and contemporary images to map factories, offices and retail parks over time.

Find a then/now photo pair and list what the camera can’t show (sound, smell, shift patterns).

📍 Temporary gallery

Opening Hours

Wednesday: 10:00 – 16:30
Thursday: 10:00 – 16:30
Friday: 10:00 – 16:30
Saturday: 10:00 – 16:30

Inside the museum

Croydon’s people, places and work lives told through donated objects and oral histories, with a shift upstairs to the Riesco Gallery’s Chinese ceramics and local archaeology. Small, focused displays reward close reading over spectacle.

📖 Wikipedia🌐 WebsiteGoogle Maps

🤓 Fun Facts

The Riesco Collection spans roughly a thousand years of Chinese ceramics—from Tang to Qing dynasties.

A 1950s–60s ‘bubble car’ on display captures post-war urban mobility in miniature.

Local archaeology exhibits include Roman and Anglo-Saxon material, placing Croydon in much older settlement networks.

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