Design Museum

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  • Address
    28 Shad Thames, Bermondsey, SE1 2YD
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  • Phone
    7940 8790
  • Website
  • Transport
    underground rail: Tower Hill, London Bridge

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Lonely Planet review

In recent years this museum, founded by Sir Terence Conran 20 years ago and housed in a 1930s-era warehouse, has abandoned its permanent collection of 20th- and 21st-century objects to make way for a revolving programme of special exhibitions. The shows are populist - a display of Manolo Blahnik shoes; Formula One racing cars; the evolution and use of what is our favourite material in the world, Velcro - and also very popular.

The informal White Café (; - ) is on the ground floor and the more formal Blue Print Café restaurant is upstairs.

A short distance to the south of the museum in the centre of Queen Elizabeth St is a bronze statue of Jacob, one of the many Courage Brewery dray horses stabled here in the 19th century. These workhorses delivered beer all over London from the brewery on Horselydown ('horse lie down') Lane, where the poor old things rested before crossing the bridge - again and again.