Sir John Soane's Museum
Museum · Holborn, England
Sir John Soane's Museum occupies 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields, on the north side of the square, which is in the London Borough of Camden. The operator gives normal opening as Wednesday to Sunday, 10am to 5pm, with last admission usually at 4.30pm and admissions closed earlier if the museum reaches capacity; it closes Monday and Tuesday but opens on bank holidays. Entry is free and no pre-booking is required. Free volunteer-led tours of the Private Apartments run Wednesday, Friday and Sunday at 2pm for up to eight people, and of the Drawing Office on Thursday and Saturday at 2.30pm for up to six.
History
The Grade I listing, NHLE 1379327, covers three terraced houses — Nos 12, 13 and 14 Lincoln's Inn Fields — which Soane rebuilt in turn into a single symmetrical facade: No 12 in about 1792–94, No 13 in about 1812–13 and No 14 in about 1824. Soane built the museum itself on the site of the stables behind No 13; No 14 was sold off, but its back half was retained and absorbed into the principal residence. The Drawing Office opened to the public in May 2023. Soane's tomb for his wife and son, in St Pancras Old Church Gardens elsewhere in the borough, is Grade I listed, NHLE 1322044, and Historic England records its domed form as the influence on Giles Gilbert Scott's K2 telephone kiosk.
Visit
13 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3BP