London Fire Brigade (LFB) has today released the first CGI image of its new purpose built museum, which will celebrate the role and history of the Brigade over the centuries.
The museum, which will be located at LFB’s former headquarters – a Grade II listed building on the Albert Embankment – offering visitors a rare opportunity to see inside a fully operational fire station with historic fire engines displayed alongside it.
It will showcase a range of vehicles and firefighting equipment, allowing visitors to get up close to fire engines from across the ages. The Brigade’s collection includes what is believed to be one of the oldest fire engines in the world – a Newsham manual pump dating back to the 18th Century.
The Brigade’s Memorial Hall will also be part of the Museum and will be open to the public for the first time in ten years, honouring firefighters that lost their lives whilst on duty since Victorian times, both during peace time and war.
The new location and size will mean that the museum will be able to accommodate up to 17,500 school children per year, helping LFB to significantly expand its community and schools programmes, as well as providing an opportunity to deliver its important work on fire safety and a wealth of exciting, educational family activities.
Jane Stern, Curator at the London Fire Brigade Museum, said:
“We are hugely excited about the plans for our new museum. The CGI is just a taste of the exciting things it will have to offer – from rare historic artefacts to unique equipment that will tell the story of the fire brigade in London since the Great Fire of London.
"The new location will also mean the museum will be directly alongside an operational fire station, providing a clear link between the historic collection and the modern day service.
“Our museum collection contains around 20,000 items, most of which have been in storage since our old museum closed. Our new permanent home will give us the opportunity to showcase more artefacts from our history than ever before.”
The museum forms part of the Brigade’s wider proposals with U+I to transform 8 Albert Embankment, which will deliver a new modern fire station for Lambeth residents and Londoners as well as 417 new homes – with a significant proportion of shared ownership and low-cost rent homes – and new workspaces supporting over 1,250 jobs.
Subject to planning permission being granted by Lambeth Council, the museum is expected to open in 2023. It will replace the current pop-up museum, which has been operating at The Workshop, on Lambeth High Street since 2016. It has seen over 60,000 visitors pass through its doors since opening.