The grand Victorian setting of Leadenhall Market is the perfect backdrop to The Pollocks Toy Museum, a wonderful little City attraction offering a series of toy artefacts from across the generations.
The central attraction is a fabulous exhibition about Pearly Kings and Queens. The first Pearly King was 1880s rat catcher and orphan Henry Croft. Legend has it he found a crate of 60,000 pearly buttons washed up by the Thames. He sewed hundreds of them on his ‘whistle’ (whistle and flute equals suit in Cockney slang) to raise money for his orphanage.
Inside the Pollocks Toy Museum, Leadenhall Market’s secret treasure
The museum’s new, albeit temporary, home is an apt setting to tell his story.
Harry Croft’s dazzling look and bawdy music hall songs triggered a movement, and the Pearly Royals (the catch-all term for Pearly Kings and Queens) became a group of East-Enders who were celebrated for how they passionately raised money for their community.
The Pearly exhibition is a feast of decoration and shimmering patterns. There are feathers, old photographs and a ‘Royal’ crown matching a coloured walking stick.
The shop is well worth a gander too. It is a brilliant echo of a bygone, pre-digital age. Now so much of our entertainment is based around solo enjoyment, or one to one engagement. This shop’s toy theatres, ancient puppets and waving ribbons tell of a different time, and are a magical way to stimulate and create another world for the child in all of us.
The Toy Museum is a charity and depends for its future on the volunteers like Dirk, Imogen and Susannah who entertained the Lunchtime Tourist with stories of the collection and its fascinating history. There’s another offshoot of the museum in Croydon where there is the storage of 20,000 teddy bears, rocking horses, Muffin the Mule and Russian folk toys.
The Leadenhall Market museum is open every Thursday and Friday from 11am to 3pm.
Go to Pollockstoymuseum.co.uk
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