Waltham Forest Council is working to revitalise Vestry House Museum, a well-loved cultural and heritage site in Walthamstow Village. The council has appointed a multi-disciplinary design team led by architects Studio Weave to work on the project, who have received planning approval to transform the building. The architecturally ambitious proposals have been guided by an attitude to sustainability and care for the historic building, aiming to make as few changes as possible to allow the museum to flourish.
March 2025 Update
We’re delighted to announce that Vestry House Museum has been awarded a £150,000 grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund to support the Revitalisation Project.
This funding will enable the delivery of the first phase of their Heritage in the Making project, a three-and-a-half-year plan to make the museum’s collections and displays more accessible, inclusive and relevant, to residents and visitors from further afield.
Within the initial year displays will be co-curated with local community groups, in preparation for the reopening of the museum in 2026 following capital works to improve the building. We will also explore how to establish displays of museum objects in sites around the borough and preparing to digitise the museum and archive collections, making them accessible online.
The museum displays will tell the multiple stories of the borough, its people and of the building itself, which has seen many changes and uses in its near 300-year history. The refurbished museum galleries will include objects from the collection that are familiar to visitors, such as the Bremer car, discoveries that haven’t been shown before, as well as new acquired objects that will present the borough’s more recent histories and diverse communities.
Using money raised by National Lottery players, The National Lottery Heritage Fund supports projects that connect people and communities with the UK’s heritage. Vestry House Museum, Heritage in the Making, since 1730, is made possible with The National Lottery Heritage Fund. Thanks to National Lottery players we have also been able to recruit a Curator position, fixed term for 12 months. Please find more information on this below.
Join the Vestry House Museum Team
Bursting with culture, energy, and opportunity, the London Borough of Waltham Forest is a fantastic and exciting place to work. As part of the revitalisation of Vestry House Museum, we are looking for an experienced and dynamic local history curator to work on new displays, digitisation and co-curation projects with communities.
Building update
We are also very excited that building and refurbishment work will start at the beginning of April 2025. Funded by central government and the council, the works include improved access and environmental sustainability of the historic buildings, refurbished museum galleries and learning space in the historic core and reconstruction and adaptive re-use of the 1990s garden extension to provide a new flexible cafe/event space kitchen and WCs.
Works will continue until early 2026.
An outline of the works includes:
• Refurbishment of the building and museum, including new ramp access to aid accessibility
• Relocation of the public museum to the ground-floor level
• Partial demolition/rebuild of the ‘millenium’ extension in the garden, and relocation of the cafe to the extension
• Installation of a platform lift which will provide wheelchair access to the first floor
• Formation of new primary entrance to the museum via the existing historic door, plus new doors from Church Path to access the cafe
For more information on the revitalisation project and to get updates on its progress, please sign up for our newsletter here.
The National Lottery Heritage Fund is the largest funder for the UK’s heritage. Using money raised by National Lottery players we support projects that connect people and communities to heritage. Our vision is for heritage to be valued, cared for and sustained for everyone, now and in the future. From historic buildings, our industrial legacy and the natural environment, to collections, traditions, stories and more. Heritage can be anything from the past that people value and want to pass on to future generations. We believe in the power of heritage to ignite the imagination, offer joy and inspiration, and to build pride in place and connection to the past.