The formaldehyde scent hits you first, sharp and clinical, as you climb the stairs into the attic of an 18th-century church. The room contains a horseshoe-shaped wooden operating table, grooved from hundreds of amputations performed without anaesthetic between 1822 and 1862. This is the Old Operating Theatre Museum in Southwark, and it is one of five unusual museums in London that deserve your attention. The city is famous for its blockbuster institutions, the British Museum and the Natural History Museum and the V and A, but the best discoveries are often found in the smaller, stranger spaces that defy easy categorisation.

The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities: A Cabinet of Wonders Above a Bar

Above a cocktail bar in Hackney, Viktor Wynd has assembled a collection that defies any single description. Two-headed kittens float in jars. The preserved faeces of a celebrity sit in a display case. A Fiji mermaid, part monkey and part fish, hangs on the wall next to McDonald’s Happy Meal toys from the 1990s. The collection operates on no principle beyond the founder’s curiosity. The absinthe bar downstairs serves excellent cocktails made with proper ingredients, and the entrance fee of 10 pounds includes a drink. This is not a museum for children. It is a museum for adults who have not lost their sense of wonder at the strange and the grotesque. address: 11 Mare Street, Hackney.

The Old Operating Theatre: Surgery Before Anaesthetic

The oldest surviving surgical theatre in Europe sits in the attic of St Thomas’s Church in Southwark, accessible only by a spiral staircase of 52 steps. The operating table is made of wood and stained dark by two centuries of blood. Women undergoing mastectomies and men having limbs amputated lay on this table without anaesthetic, gripping leather straps as the surgeon worked as quickly as possible. Speed was the only mercy available. The herb garret next door, where medicinal herbs were once stored, still smells faintly of lavender and old medicine. The museum costs 7.50 pounds and offers a glimpse into a world of medicine that is both horrifying and fascinating. It is not for the squeamish, but it is unforgettable.

The Grant Museum of Zoology: The Victorian Cabinet Surviving

Tucked away in the University College London campus in Bloomsbury, the Grant Museum is a Victorian teaching collection that has survived into the 21st century almost unchanged. A single dim room contains 68,000 specimens in glass jars arranged on wooden shelves. Dodo bones sit next to a quagga skeleton, one of only seven in existence. The Micrarium displays 2,000 microscopic specimens backlit in a single glowing case. A jar containing 18 moles suspended in ethanol sits on a shelf without explanation. There are no interactive displays, no children’s trails, no cafe. There is just the strange and beautiful spectacle of a Victorian scientist’s obsession made visible. Entry is free, and the museum is open Tuesday to Saturday.

Sir John Soane’s Museum: An Architect’s Home Frozen in Time

Sir John Soane was the architect of the Bank of England, and his home at 13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields is preserved exactly as he left it at his death in 1837. The house is a labyrinth of mirrors, domes, and hidden spaces, packed with art and antiquities that Soane collected over a lifetime. The centrepiece is the sarcophagus of Seti I, a carved alabaster masterpiece from ancient Egypt. Hogarth’s series ‘A Rake’s Progress’ hangs on moving panels that can be folded out to reveal the complete sequence. The museum offers candlelit evening openings on the first Tuesday of each month, when the rooms are lit only by flame and the experience becomes genuinely atmospheric. Entry is free. The address is 13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Holborn.

The Cinema Museum: Chaplin’s Childhood Haunts

Charlie Chaplin lived in Lambeth Workhouse as a child when his mother was admitted to the mental hospital. The building that housed that workhouse is now the Cinema Museum, a volunteer-run collection of everything related to cinema: projectors, posters, uniforms from picture palaces, and a seat from the Odeon Leicester Square. The Chaplin connection is real and the building feels haunted by it. The museum operates by appointment only, and guided tours cost 10 pounds. Book ahead, because the volunteers give the tours themselves and they know more about cinema history than most university lecturers. address: 2 Dugard Way, Kennington.

Which of these five would you visit first, the two-headed kittens, the operating table, the moles in the jar, the Egyptian sarcophagus, or Chaplin’s workhouse?

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Category: United Kingdom Travel Guides. Updated: June 11, 2026.

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