I recently made a rare visit to central London to see the opening of a new museum, the Bow Street Police Museum in Covent Garden.
This tiny independent museum hidden down a side street off Bow Street occupies part of the old Bow Street police station and magistrate court. Bow Street, of course, is one of the oldest and most important locations for organised law enforcement anywhere in the world, and the museum’s excellent written material explains that an early form of policing existed on this street before even Henry Fielding’s Bow Street Runners.
It’s a small museum with only a small number of original objects. There’s the dock from the courthouse, a replica Bow Street Runner uniform and several small items donated by former police officers who served at Bow Street. I recently interviewed one of those officers – Norwell Roberts, the Met’s first black officer. It was a harrowing and humbling experience.
Instead of objects, the museum at Bow Street prefers to rely on the atmosphere of the location – the corridor in the (terrible) photo below contains a number of cells that would have been used to house overnight visitors. Within each cell, information boards relate the history of the Metropolitan Police, the Bow Street site and some of the famous figures who may have spent a night in these cells or at the holding cells for the neighbouring magistrate court.
The courthouse is now a hotel and the museum has been created as part of that development. Campaigners have wanted to build a museum on this site for decades, and it becomes one of the very small number of “blue light” museums in London alongside the ones at Wapping and in the City. There’s also the Met’s own Crime Museum, which is closed to the public.
It’s a space that has the potential to be used for small temporary museums, talks, events and as the start or end location of walking tours around the local area. It’s worth a trip but also keep an eye out for its programme of events as that starts to gets underway.
The Great Wen 