Places to go
Become more knowledgable about England's very first domestic goddess by visiting these places.
National Portrait Gallery
On display in Room 27 of the National Portrait Gallery is a photograph of Mrs Isabella Mary Beeton taken in around 1860. On looking at this portrait, viewers may be shocked to see that she was not a matronly, severe character, but a young woman when she wrote her most famous work, The Book Of Household Management.
Also, by 1932, when the hand-tinted photograph of her went on display at the gallery, the book had been reprinted and revamped so many times that viewers were surprised to learn that Mrs Beeton was not a commercial invention like Betty Crocker, but an actual human being.
Address: St Martin’s Place
British Library
Texts In Context is a rich and unusual collection of more than 400 British Library texts. It includes menus for medieval banquets and handwritten recipes scribbled inside book covers, it opens up the first English dictionary ever written and explores the secret language of the Georgian underworld. It allows you to examine the shopping lists of the East India Company and to practise sentences from colonial phrasebooks, and presents smugglers' songs, rare dialect recordings, and the logbooks of 18th century trading ships.
These "everyday" texts illustrate the many histories – social, cultural, economic, political, technical – within which language is used and produced. All the texts will allow you to explore how language varies within situations as well as across time.
There is a section on 1800s food which shows how cookery books became enormously popular at this time. Authors like Mrs Beeton were catering for a rapidly growing middle class. Published initially in affordable monthly parts, Beeton's Household Management advised readers on a vast range of "essential" subjects, such as how to fold napkins, how to entertain guests, how to create the perfect Christmas dinner, or how to organise the duties of different staff members.
Address: 96 Euston Road
Yesterday's World
Located in the 600-year-old Wealden Hall House, this attraction tells the fascinating story of life through the ages - from the reign of Queen Victoria in the 1850s right up to the 1950s, through reproduction houses and shops. Mrs Beeton was alive and cooking from 1836-1865, and this gives an idea of what her experience of Victorian domestic life may have been like.
There is a general store dating from the late-19th century before pre-packaging was introduced, and a jewellers with Victorian mourning brooches on display, made popular by Queen Victoria. In the Royalty Room a life-sized figure of Victoria recalls life in the 19th century and the inventions which took place during her reign. Also on display are clothes she wore, such as her night dress and chemise and many more items of regal memorabilia, including letters from Queen Elizabeth II to Prince Philip.
There is a Victorian Kitchen where a host of labour-saving gadgets for the home can be seen. These include mincers, egg whisks, scales and copper skimmers, which all became available for the first time after the Industrial Revolution. Two maids can also be seen busily preparing dinner.
Address: Opposite Battle Abbey, 89-90 High Street, Battle
