Polychrome-painted, pine figurehead of HMS 'London', in the form of a female figure wearing a mural crown (a traditional attribute of cities) which may be based on the White Tower in the Tower of London. '. Stylistically this figurehead would seem to date from the early 1800s.

This item is traditionally associated with the 'London' of 1840, a 92-gun second-rate built at Chatham Dockyard but converted to steam auxiliary at Devonport in 1858, with 72 guns. From 1874 to 1881 she was the harbour guard and store ship at Zanzibar, where she served as the Royal Navy's base for suppression of the slave trade on the east coast of Africa. She was sold there for breaking up in 1884. That said, photographs of her at Zanzibar show a more elegant figurehead in the dress of the 1840s or 1850s, so it is possible that this item relates to her predecessor, a first-rate of 104 guns laid down as the 'London' at Plymouth Dockyard in 1819 but renamed 'Royal Adelaide' in 1827 and only completed in 1828. She became a depot ship in 1860 and was sold to Laidler's of Sunderland in 1905, being broken up at Dunkirk.