William Morris Gallery Tea Room

Pre-​Raphaelite textiles and art. You have to pay for this museum. The color palettes and works are rich and lush.

Situated in the recently rejuvenated greens of Lloyds Park the William Morris Gallery is an underrated museum that exhibits a number of William Morris’s original tapestry collections, paintings and his contributions as a socialist.
Walking through the museum you’ll feel inspired by the luxurious, floral themed designs of William Morris whose work was debatably ahead of its time.
The museum has recently undergone some long-​awaited developments, with a new tea room in its quarters that serves up an array of lunch foods– salads, sandwiches, cakes and a selection of beverages (some alcoholic also). There is also a gift shop if you’re feeling particularly inspired.
This place is good for a mellow afternoon out with friends– art and food always go well– followed by a nice stroll through the park.
Entry is free (of course).
I have known this place since I was a child, living just 2 minutes away from the venue, so apologies if this review comes across slightly biased…

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful. William Morris said that.
Fittingly, the new gallery (
) that celebrates his life, and its associated Tea Room are indeed very beautiful. The Tea Room an extension, returning symmetry to the grand house Morris lived in is light, airy and well-​designed. So far so good. And it’s situated in a lovingly recently restored house that is full of his beautiful objects and designs, and is succeeding, rather wonderfully (particularly since not so long ago, the gallery was in danger of being shuttered), in drawing in punters from far and wide. But and you knew there was a but coming
While the space for the Tea Room is indeed beautiful, the food being served there on my recent visit was neither useful or beautiful. The catering has been contracted out to Just Hospitality (
). Now, I know little about the firm and they might be all kinds of a wonderful social enterprise. But while service at the Tea Rooms was good, the entire thing had a very strong whiff of corporate catering.
William Morris, as the above quote implies, was against modern industrialisation yet here, in his former home, we have the kind of bland, corporate food that we find in staff canteens, airports and yes, far too many other museums and galleries. Industrialised food which, if it’s been prepared by hand, it’s certainly prepared without any sort of love or passion to it, somewhere on a conveyor line.
Our order:
Hot chocolate frothy, pretty, utterly devoid of taste
Goats cheese and roasted vegetable panini clearly, like the salad (see below), shipped in and then simply stuck under the sandwich press to serve cold, bland, oily vegetables that had been sitting for hours somewhere tasted of nothing
Pesto pasta salad with goats cheese, roasted peppers and rocket from a seriously uninspired vegetarian range of options (the only other option we could have gone for was a cheddar ploughmans), this repeated the experience of bland and oily coming in a suitably depressing and greaseproof cardboard box.
This is food designed to be able to sit for a long time. It’s sub-​Pret-​A-​Manger food. It’s bland fuel tarted up to appeal to the middle classes but utterly missing any freshness or flavour.
Truly, I can’t imagine Mr Morris being very happy if he’d found such contracted-​out rubbish being served up in his own home.
Go for a pot of tea and to soak up the room architecture if you must. But for food, might I gently suggest the nearby Le Delice, La Cafeteria or several other spots will serve you something much closer to William Morris’ ideal of beautiful and useful.

The gallery has only just reopened following a major refurbishment in fact parts of the grounds and Lloyd Park are still not quite completed yet!
The new look is fantastic and currently sporting Grayson Perry’s wonderful Walthamstow Tapestry for another few weeks.
There is far more interaction, more history about William Morris himself, and Morris &Co, including big fat books of Morris designs. And it’s all free!
You can very easily get round the beautiful venue in 40minutes if you’re not lingering about too much, but there is also a fabulously well-​appointed café now, giving a great reason to just hang out and chill, overlooking the beautiful grounds.
Highly recommended and almost on my doorstep!

As its name suggests this gallery was once lived in by wm and has a reasonable sized exhibition of his work along with that of his contemporaries. The upper floor has «The Brangwyn bequest» basically a load of paintings, drawings, etchings etc by the artist Frank Brangwyn and is well worth a visit if you’re in the area. Walthamstow unfortunately doesn’t have an awful lot going for it in the way of tourist attractions though the old village has a church (St Marys) with some interesting monuments in it but this is seldom open other than for services also nearby though i haven’t been since i was a kid is vestry house museum.

This is a gallery founded in a house once occupied by the titular Morris, and is mostly concerned with him and his Pre-​Raphaelite colleagues.
It is in a creaky old building and access is a problem, there is a manual ramp which has to be trundled out by staff to let in wheelchairs, and then the visit is limited to the ground floor. Recent reductions in opening has also limited visiting this gallery. Saying that it is set in a large park, which also until recently was a pleasure to visit, now it is very dowdy and uncared for. There is a café and toilets in the park, but have very limited opening hours and are quite far away.
With all this against it the exhibits are glorious and well worth the effort of a visit