Honeywood Museum is a Grade II listed building next to Carshalton ponds in the heart of Carshalton village, in the London borough of Sutton. The museum exhibits cover the history of the local area, and it’s the sort of place I can imagine children visiting on school trips. I’d been once before with my parents when they were visting, and I didn’t find it particularly interesting though at the time I was fairly new to the area – it’s definitely more interesting when you know where places are and what they look like today, when comparing to the photos of years gone by.
The museum is run by the council and volunteers and there are often events taking place here, from book clubs to art exhibitions to seasonal themed craft activities for children.
Last year we went for the Halloween half term event – for just £2, Sophie could take part in three craft activities and complete a trail around the museum, looking for spooky pictures on the walls – each had the punchline to a joke, which we filled in on a sheet, though she was a bit young to really get any of the jokes. I filled in some of the sheet nonetheless and handed it in at the end, and sge got a pencil as a prize. The crafts were located in different rooms around the museum – it’s a converted house, so there are lots of windy staircases and little rooms along corridors which makes you feel that you are exploring. They were unsupervised, with everything we needed laid out on a table, but no instructions – just an example that was already made to follow. We made a spider headband, that I thought was really cute and was something I hadn’t seen before; a pumpkin mobile, and a ghost mask.
We also found several rooms with traditional children’s wooden toys in the museum that the children could play with, so we ended up spending a lot longer in the museum than I expected – and all that cost us just £2. Really good value and definitely something we would do again!
As we were in the museum well into lunchtime I hadn’t planned for that and decided we should have lunch at the museum café – which in retrospect was a mistake. We entered the café from inside the museum so didn’t actually go outside -if we had done, I would have realised what an unseasonably warm day it was for the end of October, and seen everyone sitting at the tables outside next to the pond. Instead, I thought it would be too cold so we sat inside the café – there are only three or four tables inside and we felt quite crammed in between the drinks fridge and the wall. I went to order a child’s lunch menu including a sandwich, crisps etc, but was told there was only brown bread left, which my daughter didn’t want. Instead she decided to have a jacket potato with baked beans, so I had the same with cheese. When it came, she took most of my cheese which meant I had a very plain potato – it only came with a tiny pat of butter and was a really floury potato – it was probably the most disappointing jacket potato I’ve ever had, and with drinks it set me back nearly £25.
This year’s Halloween event has a magical spells and potions theme; you can find out more about their other events including talks from local artists and writers, a book group, and Christmas activities here. There is a nice little gift shop which has a good selection of pocket money toys on the ground floor – and when you’re finished, Grove Park with its playground (plus ducks and squirrels to feed) is only just across the pond.
Mini Moo Life 
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