Whitehall
A Grade II* listed, timber-framed Tudor hall house in Cheam (c.1500) that layers 500 years of local history under one roof. Displays pair the building’s own fabric—carpentry, infill, later alterations—with exhibits on Nonsuch Palace, Cheam’s village life, and the lavender industry that once scented nearby fields.
Opening Hours
What's not to miss inside?
The Tudor Hall House
Original timber framing and later inserts show how a late-medieval house was adapted through Tudor, Georgian and Victorian periods.Smoke-darkened timbers, braces and pegged joints read like a builder’s diary of five centuries.
📍 Ground-floor rooms
Nonsuch Palace in Miniature
A scale model reconstructs Henry VIII’s Nonsuch Palace (begun 1538) that stood nearby and was dismantled in the late 17th century.Reliefs and towers explain why Nonsuch became the Tudor ‘lost palace’—lavish, short-lived, endlessly influential.
📍 Local history gallery
Lavender & Mint: The Mitcham–Carshalton Trade
Implements and packaging trace the 18th–19th-century herb-growing and distilling industry that defined this corner of Surrey.Bottles, labels and tools track a local crop from field to fashionable scent across Georgian and Victorian London.
📍 Upstairs social-history room
Cheam on the Home Front
Objects and photographs document village life in WWI and WWII—evacuation, rationing, and local service.Ordinary items—identity cards, service badges—become anchors for extraordinary years.
📍 Community history cases
Inspire your Friends
- Whitehall is a Grade II* listed timber-framed house dating to around 1500, with visible evidence of later Georgian and Victorian alterations that chart changing domestic life.
- The museum’s Nonsuch Palace model interprets Henry VIII’s short-lived showpiece (construction begun 1538; demolished by the late 1600s), built just north-east of Cheam.
- Collections on the Mitcham–Carshalton lavender trade document a regional industry that peaked in the 18th–19th centuries, exporting oils and essences to London perfumers.
