The Heath Robinson Museum is for students of illustration, lovers of landscape paintings, advertising enthusiasts and academics, dads building contraptions in sheds, believers in fairies, children with time to dream, couples stuck in tiny flats, people who put holes in cheese, artificial teeth testers and anyone who’s ever held something together with a bit of string.

Our permanent Heath Robinson exhibition tells the full story of Heath Robinson’s artistic career with original artwork and other items.

William Heath Robinson is an artist whose work, whether in his well known humorous drawings or his illustrations for Kipling, Shakespeare or children’s stories, is integral to British cultural heritage. His name entered the language as early as 1912 and is still in daily use to describe the kind of ad hoc contraptions that featured in many of his cartoons.

William Heath Robinson is an artist whose work, whether in his well known humorous drawings or his illustrations for Kipling, Shakespeare or children’s stories, is integral to British cultural heritage. His name entered the language as early as 1912 and is still in daily use to describe the kind of ad hoc contraptions that featured in many of his cartoons.

He was born in Finsbury Park, North London, in May, 1872. His father Thomas, an illustrator and engraver, had to illustrate the main news story each week for the Penny Illustrated Paper. It must have been from his father that Heath Robinson learned the disciplines of a commercial artist.

He trained at Islington School of Art, then at The Royal Academy Schools. His ambition was to be a landscape painter, but he had to find a more readily saleable form of art. His older brothers were already established as book illustrators and he joined them.

The Museum is open 11:00 am to 4:00 pm
Thursday through Sunday and Bank Holiday Mondays
except Christmas, Boxing Day, and New Year’s Day.

Heath Robinson Museum
Pinner Memorial Park
50 West End Lane
Pinner HA5 1AE

020 8866 8420
welcome@heathrobinsonmuseum.org

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