The London Borough of Southwark has been a place of culture, both low and high, for centuries – for example, today it accommodates fourteen museums of various shapes and sizes.
One of those that you probably haven’t heard of is the Cuming Museum in Elephant & Castle, which is housed in three ground floor rooms of the Old Walworth Town Hall on Walworth Road, just down the street from the now defunct Heygate Estate.
The museum is named after the philanthropic Cuming family, and was opened to the public in 1906 to put items that father Richard and son Henry had collected throughout the 19th century on display. Today the first room of the museum contains a small part of their collection – it represents an eclectic mix of treasures from the ancient world as well as more mundane objects. The breadth of the items might indicate that the Cumings were well-travelled but in fact they never left Southwark – they purchased everything at sales and auctions!
More of the more unusual items you’ll find inside the glass cases are a stuffed adult European bear (acquired by Richard Cuming from the closing Leverian Museum in 1806), Egyptian funerial masks, Polynesian artifacts acquired by Captain James Cook on his second and third exhibitions, and a fine group of Zulu objects which were bought from the South African Association exhibition in Piccadilly in 1837. Alongside the Cumings’ items is the Lovett collection of ‘charms and superstitions’. Donated to the museum between 1917 and 1924 this group of items reflects Edward Lovett’s fascination with the subject – he used to swap items and stories with local people in exchange for alpine plants that he had grown himself. Amongst the Lovett items is a carved mandrake root from Croydon and a cow’s heart which has been studdded with nails, used by a dairyman to curse another owner’s cows…
The second section of the Cuming Museum is given over to local history. Based around three themes – Settling Here, Visiting Southwark and World Connections, this area looks at the development of Southwark from the Roman period right through to the present day, and includes contemporary studies of local people. Two of the most interesting characters that you’ll learn about are William Smith and Charles Eaton (known as Billy and Charley).
These two talented mud-larkers (people who scoured the Thames shoreline for objects of value) realised that people would pay good money for ancient objects that they retrieved from the river bed and, not satisfied with what they could actually obtain, decided that they should develop a line of forgeries. From 1857 they used a workshop near Tower Hill to turn out medallions, figurines and shrines – formed from lead these fakes were bathed in acid to age and weather them. Their subterfuge was finally discovered by Henry Cuming who came across some of the items and was convinced that they were fakes, and this led archaeologist and collector Charless Reed to a discovery of their workshop. The molds that they had used were exhibited at the Society of Antiquaries in 1861. While the pair continued to produce their ‘antiques, there were no longer any buyers…
The final room of the Cuming Museum houses temporary exhibitions – at the moment it features a Charles Dickens exhibition to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the novelist’s birth. Dickens had a rather unpleasant first experience of this part of South London – when he was just 12 years old his family was confined in the Marshalsea Debtors’ Prison near Borough High St. His experiences here often formed a backdrop to his novels – there are several colourful and rather damning references to Southwark, particularly in the Pickwick Papers:
‘The streets are mean and close; poverty and debauchery lie festering in the crowded alleys‘
Featuring items drawn from the period and quotations from his work, the Charles Dickens exhibition runs through until 29 November, when it transfers to Southwark Cathedral.
There are lots of activities for children at the Cuming Museum, and if you time your visit to coincide with a trip to the Cinema Museum just a few streets away you could probably spend an afternoon immersing yourself in the Elephant & Castle’s cultural treasures.
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