Uploaded October 2024 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
POV: It's 1955 and you're taking a visit to Wellcome*
See the Coronation banners along Euston Road, take in views over Bloomsbury, relax in the verdant Euston Square Gardens.
*(Known then a bit more formally as Wellcome Historical Medical Museum and Library)
Watch the full video "The Story of Wellcome Foundation Ltd" here: wellcome.info/1950s
[Alt text: We open on London’s Euston Road in the 1950s. Bright red routemaster buses race past the fronts of Friend’s House and Wellcome. Banners on lamp posts read “ERII” for the nation’s new monarch whose seven decade reign has only just begun.
Followed by footage of the neo-classical facade of 183 Euston Road where Union flags and the flags of the Commonwealth billow from the roof. The sky is clear and blue, a good day to be off work.
We then are transported to the roof of Wellcome where you can see Euston Road from above: we see what would later be the Cider Tap pub, the now sadly reduced London Plane trees of Euston Square gardens and in the distance are the magnificent Italian Gothic revival towers of St Pancras station.
Then a panning shot of Bloomsbury: Euston Church, the austere tower of Senate House Library that inspired Orwell’s Ministry of Love and the dome of UCL which doubled for the British Museum in 1990s classic “The Mummy” (but that's still 40 years away).
A shot of Big Ben and then we are on street level again. Cars speed down the road while pedestrians amble and our trip to a Wellcome which is both familiar and foreign is over.]
POV: It's 1955 and you're taking a visit to Wellcome*
See the Coronation banners along Euston Road, take in views over Bloomsbury, relax in the verdant Euston Square Gardens.
*(Known then a bit more formally as Wellcome Historical Medical Museum and Library)
Watch the full video "The Story of Wellcome Foundation Ltd" here: wellcome.info/1950s
[Alt text: We open on London’s Euston Road in the 1950s. Bright red routemaster buses race past the fronts of Friend’s House and Wellcome. Banners on lamp posts read “ERII” for the nation’s new monarch whose seven decade reign has only just begun.
Followed by footage of the neo-classical facade of 183 Euston Road where Union flags and the flags of the Commonwealth billow from the roof. The sky is clear and blue, a good day to be off work.
We then are transported to the roof of Wellcome where you can see Euston Road from above: we see what would later be the Cider Tap pub, the now sadly reduced London Plane trees of Euston Square gardens and in the distance are the magnificent Italian Gothic revival towers of St Pancras station.
Then a panning shot of Bloomsbury: Euston Church, the austere tower of Senate House Library that inspired Orwell’s Ministry of Love and the dome of UCL which doubled for the British Museum in 1990s classic “The Mummy” (but that's still 40 years away).
A shot of Big Ben and then we are on street level again. Cars speed down the road while pedestrians amble and our trip to a Wellcome which is both familiar and foreign is over.]
