The Geffrye Museum explores the home and the way people have lived over the past 400 years, reflecting changes in society and behaviour as well as style, fashion and taste. The museum, set in the former almhouses of the Ironmongers' Company in Hoxton, east London, was opened in 1914, and the 18th century buildings and gardens provide a perfect setting for the series of furnished period living rooms through which the home of the past can be explored.

The image collection includes photographs of furniture, paintings, chinaware, catalogues and other domestic and personal objects such as tea caddies, wine glasses, Christmas baubles and childhood toys. A handwritten cookery book dating from 1724 and containing recipes for such delights as consumption syrup and calves' head hash is a particular favourite, as is a set of Victorian building blocks which form a cathedral.