Queen Victoria

Where is a good place in London to look for anything related to Queen Victoria?

My 9-year old son who is about to start in year five is interested in finding out as much as he can on Queen Victoria and the Victorians before starting back at school. Can you recommend good museums in London which will keep him interested?

Here are some places around town that my son (about the same age) has really enjoyed -- all on the Victorian theme.

For Queen Victoria herself, Kensington Palace; definitely. You can visit the bedroom where she woke to find that she was now queen. http://www.hrp.org.uk/KensingtonPalace/stories/queenvictoriasbedroom.aspx -- and her wedding dress is in the royal collection there.

Buckingham Palace is interesting but there's not much specifically about Victoria or Victorians. But we did enjoy the children's audio activity trail tour -- more info here... http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/default.asp?action=article&ID=49
Interestingly, in Victoria's youth, Buckingham Palace didn't have that front wall. She could look out from the windows that now look onto the courtyard and see way down the Mall. Apparently, she loved to watch the dawn after late-night parties!

Now, about Victorians and Victorian life...

Kew Bridge Steam Museum. It's a Victorian water-pumping station, and now houses an amazing collection of working Victorian steam engines (plus a miniature steam railway). Fantastic introduction into how Victorian industrial innovations changed our world. http://www.kbsm.org/

Tower Bridge is another suggestion on similar lines (for its construction and the vast engines which used to raise the bridge) -- I've been there myself and am longing to take my son. =D http://www.towerbridge.org.uk/TowerBridge/English/BridgeHistory/

The Florence Nightingale Museum http://www.florence-nightingale.co.uk/flo2.htm is recommended by my lad himself: he visited it with his school and they really enjoyed it. It's in Lambeth, near Waterloo tube.

The London Transport Museum is a permanent favourite and has lots of stuff about the Victorians who built and used the bus and tube network we still get around on today. Real Victorian buses and tube trains etc -- keeps our whole family entertained for hours and hours. http://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/tfl/collections/guide/victorian.aspx

If your lad has the taste for Roald Dahl-ish gore, he'll probably also love the Old Operating Theatre Museum, once part of the old St Thomas's Hospital. My son was thrilled at being in a real operating theatre and found the Victorian surgical tools fascinating. http://www.thegarret.org.uk/index.htm

I'd really give the V&A a miss... it's a fantastic museum but it's *not* about Victorians or Victoria. It's about the whole worldwide history of design. Its name's a bit misleading...
But do think about visiting the V&A Museum of Childhood (in Bethnal Green, E2). That covers children's lives (toys, home and school life etc) from the 16th century and has quite a bit on Victorian times. http://www.vam.ac.uk/moc/your_visit/index.html

Oh, and here are a couple of websites that my son's also been finding interesting: http://www.show.me.uk/topicpage/teachers/tVictorians.html and http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/victorians/

Well I hope you get some fun and useful visits out of this little lot. Love from a Londoner born and bred.
=D

A different side to Queen Victoria?