Earthly Paradise: Radical Living in the UK — the rehung William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow, London, until 28 March 2027

The William Morris Gallery stands in Lloyd Park in Walthamstow, in a Georgian house of about 1744 once called the Water House, or the Winns, with Corinthian columns on its front porch and semi-circular bays added a generation later. William Morris lived here between 1848 and 1856 with his mother and his brothers and sisters, and wrote some of his earliest poetry at a tall window on the main staircase; his friend Edward Burne-Jones later painted studies in the same house. The publisher Edward Lloyd took it after 1856 and left in 1885, and his son gave the grounds to the public as Lloyd Park in July 1900. A gallery had been proposed as early as 1914; it opened in 1950, when the prime minister Clement Attlee cut the ribbon, and it remains the only public gallery devoted to Morris. The building is listed Grade II*, and the house is owned and run by Waltham Forest Council.

The gallery reopens on Saturday 3 October 2026 after a rehang of its collection across six gallery spaces, the first substantial overhaul since the 2011–12 redevelopment by the architects Pringle Richards Sharratt, which was paid for by the Heritage Lottery Fund among others and added the extension holding the café, the exhibition gallery and the collection store. The director Hadrian Garrard, who arrived in 2022, puts it plainly: a museum is never finished, and should change all the time.

Opening with the rehang, and running to 28 March 2027, is Earthly Paradise: Radical Living in the UK, a touring exhibition about the people and places that have shaped art and activism in Britain over the last two hundred years. It follows individuals and communities who defied the conventions of their day to make a different kind of home, and it does not leave out the awkward part: how far money and class decided who could live that way at all. Morris’s own Red House is here, with Charleston of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, Benton End of Cedric Morris, Derek Jarman’s Prospect Cottage, and Dial House, founded in 1967 by Penny Rimbaud and Gee Vaucher of the band Crass. Objects, painting, drawing, photography, sound and archive material come from lenders including Tate, the National Trust and the Lee Miller Archive. After Walthamstow the exhibition travels to Wrexham, Bowness-on-Windermere and Edinburgh, through 2028.

Programme

• Saturday 3 October 2026 — the gallery reopens with the rehung collection and the new exhibition
• Monthly, October 2026 to March 2027 — An Introduction to Earthly Paradise, a curator-led tour of the exhibition, with a date in each month of the run
• During the run — Family Day: Welcome Home, Mini Morris: Feathered Friends for younger visitors, the Flow State Sessions workshops, and Tomorrow Is Built Today. The gallery publishes the dates and booking for each.

Practical details

• When: 3 October 2026 to 28 March 2027; Tuesday to Sunday, 10 am – 5 pm
• Where: William Morris Gallery, Lloyd Park, Forest Road, Walthamstow, London E17 4PP, United Kingdom
• Admission: free, with a suggested donation of 5 pounds
• Curated by: Hadrian Garrard, director of the gallery, with Linsey Young, independent curator, and Tayyabah Tahir, assistant curator
• Organised by: William Morris Gallery, owned and operated by Waltham Forest Council
• Information: telephone 0208 496 4390, and the gallery’s own listing for each event in the programme

Cultural Heritage Online lists this exhibition for readers following the Arts and Crafts movement and the houses in which it was lived.