William Morris Gallery

#60

Morris’s childhood home in Walthamstow is now the world’s only public museum devoted to his life and the Arts & Crafts movement. The galleries balance beauty and politics: pattern blocks and dye samples sit beside Kelmscott Press books, medieval inspirations and his socialist campaigning. It’s compact, kid-friendly, and free—plan 60–90 minutes, then decompress in Lloyd Park behind the house.

Show more Show less

Wikipedia Official Website Google Maps

Opening Hours

Sunday: 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?

Pattern Lab

How repeats become wallpapers and textiles

You see the jump from hand-sketched motifs to carved blocks and finished repeats—Morris’s craft stripped to its moving parts.

Pick one motif and trace it from sketch → block → the final paper; notice where he hides stems to ‘join’ the design.

📍 Ground floor, early galleries

Dye & Print

Natural colour, revived

Morris rejected chemical shortcuts; indigo vats and madder reds brought back the slow, luminous colour of vegetable dyes.

Compare two blues—synthetic vs. plant dyed—and clock the softer, layered tone he chased for decades.

📍 Ground floor, materials section

Kelmscott Press Room

The ‘book beautiful’

Black ink, dense borders, and Burne-Jones wood-engravings show how Morris re-imagined the book as a total artwork.

Open your phone’s camera and zoom: follow how letterforms, borders and images lock into a single rhythm.

📍 First floor

Wallpaper Icons

Patterns that shaped British taste

‘Strawberry Thief’, ‘Willow’, ‘Seaweed’—nature stylised into endlessly livable rooms.

Stand back three metres: the repeats ‘calm down’ and you feel why these were made for whole walls, not samples.

📍 First floor, design gallery

Lloyd Park & Garden Views

Context for a nature-first designer

From the café windows to the herbaceous borders, the park frames Morris’s belief that beauty belongs in everyday life.

Grab a tea, sit by the glass, and sketch a leaf—Morris would approve.

📍 Rear of the house

🤓 Fun Facts

The gallery won Art Fund Museum of the Year in 2013—remarkable for a free, local authority museum.

Morris lived here as a teenager (1848–56) in the Georgian ‘Water House’; his walks in the Lea Valley fed the plant forms that later recur in his patterns.

‘Strawberry Thief’ was inspired by thrushes stealing fruit at Kelmscott Manor—proof that irritation can birth an icon.

Morris co-founded a firm with six friends in 1861 (Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.), effectively inventing a modern design studio that handled everything from stained glass to furniture.