Next year, Leighton House will mark its centenary as a public building, and an exhibition is now telling the rather varied uses it was put to before becoming a public museum.
Leighton House was built as an artist’s studio and residence for the painter Frederic Leighton from 1866 to 1895, and is famous for its orientalist decorations on the ground floor. It was then acquired by the council 30 years after Leightone died, but as the contents had all been sold off, and Victorian artists were exceptionally unfashionable at the time, it opened as a community centre for arts and music.
Thanks to a good collection of archive photos, the exhibition shows how the building was adapted and changed over the decades, often stripping away fussy Victoriana until, eventually, in the 1980s, tastes changed back again. The exhibition shows how the 1960s fittings were replaced with 1860s fittings and the building restored to its original(ish) scheme, and then the 2008-10 expansion that created the museum that exists today.
As an exhibition, it’s a glimpse into a timeline that many historic buildings will recognise – saved, despoiled, restored.
There is also an unrelated exhibition upstairs, which is a collection of contemporary photographs from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries. Also dotted around the museum, you might see some very white objects – replicas of lost items from the house when the collection was sold off after Leighton’s death.
All three exhibitions are open until 1st March 2026.
The history exhibition is free to visit, and the other two are included in the entry price to Leighton House Museum. You can also buy a discounted joint ticket to nearby Sambourne House at the same time.
