Museum of London Docklands

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Set in a Grade I-listed 1802 sugar warehouse, this museum anchors London's maritime memory. Galleries chart docks, trade and migration with uncommon clarity, balancing everyday objects against sweeping economic currents. Walk Sailortown's dim lanes to feel the texture of Victorian waterfront life. Then confront "London, Sugar & Slavery," a landmark gallery linking wealth, empire and human cost. River-found artefacts-pipes, coins, tools-bring two millennia of Thames stories to hand. Families find thoughtful trails and interactives without losing historical nuance. Start at No.1 Warehouse, ascend through Sailortown to the slavery galleries, and finish with Thames finds and quayside views.

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Opening Hours

Sunday: 10:00 – 17:00

Monday: 10:00 – 17:00

Tuesday: 10:00 – 17:00

Wednesday: 10:00 – 17:00

Thursday: 10:00 – 17:00

Friday: 10:00 – 17:00

Saturday: 10:00 – 17:00

What's not to miss inside?

No.1 Warehouse

1802 sugar warehouse home

The museum sits inside a Grade I-listed brick warehouse opened in 1802 for the West India Docks, once a hub for sugar, rum and coffee from across the Atlantic.

Touch the timber posts; note fireproof brick vaulting.

📍 West India Quay, Ground floor

Sailortown

Immersive 1860s dock street

A walk-through recreation of narrow Victorian lanes with shopfronts and taverns shows how sailors and dockworkers lived around 1860.

Let your eyes adjust; read the hand-painted signs closely.

📍 First floor, Galleries

London, Sugar & Slavery

Transatlantic slavery, told locally

This landmark gallery links London’s wealth to Caribbean plantations, through original objects, personal stories and the city streets that still carry this history.

Follow one person’s story from label to label.

📍 Second floor, Galleries

Thames Finds

Objects from the riverbed

Mudlarked and excavated items-from Roman coins to clay pipes-reveal everyday life along the Thames over two millennia.

Spot tool-marks and fingerprints on clay pipes and tiles.

📍 Galleries, mixed displays

🤓 Fun Facts

The museum opened in 2003 inside a Grade I-listed 1802 warehouse at West India Quay.

‘Sailortown’ recreates an 1860s dockside street you walk through in near-darkness.

‘London, Sugar & Slavery’ was the first major UK gallery to tackle London’s role in slavery.

West India Docks once handled cargoes of sugar, rum and coffee for the capital’s warehouses.

Many Thames artefacts on display were recovered by licensed mudlarks at low tide.

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