One of London’s best small museums has had a major revamp, including lighting design by Sutton Vane Associates. The use of daylight was a major feature of the £3.7 million refurbishment, and proved to be one of the greatest lighting challenges at the Museum of the Order of St John.
Located in the Tudor St John’s Gate building in Clerkenwell, the museum houses collections with some vulnerable artefacts dating back nearly 1,000 years. It is two parts: one covers the 900-year history of the Order of St John, the other covers St John Ambulance, the first aid and medical charity.
Visitors will now enter directly through St John’s Gate, a 16th-century gatehouse, and will be able to see some of the original architectural features of the Tudor building for the first time.

The new entrance has a welcome desk and shop. Both the Order and St John Ambulance galleries have been renewed and a new double-height Link Gallery has been added with an interactive multimedia timeline display. There is also a ‘learning space’ and temporary exhibition area housed next to the Priory Church and a ‘pavement museum’ created in window spaces with visuals and models.
The galleries were redesigned by Metaphor, which specialises in design and content development for museums, exhibitions and heritage projects, as lead consultant, collaborating with conservation architects Donald Insall Associates.

Paper and textile artefacts are among the most vulnerable, with oil paintings at slightly less risk from full spectrum light. Some artefacts at the museum can only take up to 50 lux whereas daylight can be up to 60,000 lux. In the Link Gallery, numerous calculations were made to ensure that oil paintings and medal ribbons that have very low limits would be protected and remote control blinds have been installed with a low translucency of three per cent. They can be pulled across at key times, particularly between noon and 2pm from June to August.

Exterior, surface-mounted 35Watt asymmetrical beam metal halide floodlights were mounted above the glazed roof to uplight the Tudor wall. They were mounted above the guttering, so that they fittings would be invisible from the ground, and fitted with stainless steel cowls to prevent glare. Below the glazing, spots provide downlighting directed from the first floor grazing the wall and providing ambient light. Track lights are positioned close to the wall to avoid glare on the gallery’s multimedia, interactive timeline display, which has a slightly glossy surface and incorporates video screens.

The open-plan Order Gallery houses a large display with integral fibre optic lighting. To preserve the drama of the space, Sutton Vane Associates has lit it by focussing light on the graphics. This not only makes the graphics easy to read but also provides a gentle ambient glow so that visitors eyes are drawn to the artefacts not their surroundings.

Lighting controls for the entire museum  were installed in the back of house area with a lighting control panel and integrated LCD astronomic clock controller. The lighting can be adjusted using preset scene controls and a master control.

In the Entry Gallery, Sutton Vane Associates installed monopoint spots on the ceiling rather than recessing the lighting to avoid damaging the fabric of the building and so that they could be reconfigured when necessary to highlight temporary displays. Linear fluorescent has been integrated into the display cases using an under-shelf fitting, to cast light on museum merchandise and was also built into the reception desk to light the work surface. The general lighting in the Entry Gallery is provided by three pendant fittings, which are matching replicas of earlier lighting but with tungsten halogen lamps.

In the Pavement Gallery black fittings were suspended as close as possible behind the curtain. Halogen lighting was replaced with retrofitted LED spots to cut heat build up and to reduce maintenance, as access was a problem. The learning area in the Priory was lit with suspended track and spot.