The Museum of the Home, formerly the Geffrye Museum, is a free museum in the 18th-century Grade I-listed former almshouses on Kingsland Road in Shoreditch, London. The museum's change of name was announced in 2019. The museum explores home and home life from 1600 to the present day with galleries which ask questions about 'home', present diverse lived experiences, and examine the psychological and emotional relationships people have with the idea of "home" alongside a series of period room displays. In 2018 the museum had about 120,000 visitors before then closing for two and a half years, during which an extensive refurbishment and building programme took place. The museum reopened as the Museum of the Home in Summer 2021 with a mission to reveal and rethink the ways we live, in order to live better together, and with 80 per cent more exhibition space for its collections and 50 per cent more public space. The Museum of the Home now has new basement galleries (The Home Galleries), a cafe, learning pavilion, collections and reference libraries, several events spaces, and replanted gardens. History Almshouses were built on the site in 1714, to house the widows of ironmongers. The almshouses were funded by a bequest from Sir Robert Geffrye, a merchant who had served as Lord Mayor of London and Master of the Ironmongers' Company. There were 14 four-room houses, for up to 56 pensioners, with a large garden. The Metropolitan Public Gardens Association contributed to the funding for the acquisition of the former almshouses and garden by Shoreditch Metropolitan Council, and the MPGA's landscape gardener Fanny Wilkinson laid out the garden in 1900–01. In 1911 the Ironmongers' Company decided the area had become too dangerous for pensioners, moved them to the country, and sold the buildings to the London County Council (LCC). Museum The museum opened on 2 April 1914. When the LCC took over the site to create the Geffrye Museum, Wilkinson's design was replaced with a new layout. The area was a centre of the furniture trade, so it was decided to establish a reference collection of furniture and interiors to inspire the manufactures. When furniture production moved away the focus of the museum shifted to a younger audience, particularly school children. The curator between 1935 and 1940, Marjorie Quennell, introduced rooms furnished as at a series of historical times. In the latter part of the 20th century it