Museums & Attractions

21. Pollock’s Toy Museum
This rickety (yet lovingly kept) museum is packed to the rafters with vintage and antique toys from around the world.
Best exhibit Be sure to have a look at the room full of dolls that all have their heads trained on the glass partition – it’s too eerie for comfort.
1 Scala St, W1 (020 7636 3452/www.pollocksmuseum.co.uk) Goodge St tube. Adm £3, students £2, children £1.50, under-threes free.

22. Museum of the Order of St John
This is three museums in one. The first shows the history of St John’s Gate: built in 1504 as the south entrance to the Priory of the Knights of St John, it’s also been a coffeehouse, owned by Hogarth’s family, and a tavern. In the eighteenth century it was a printing house for Gentleman’s Magazine. The second part of the museum concentrates on the Order of St John, founded in Jerusalem in 1099. Armoury and regalia are on display, as well as exhibits showing the Order’s devotion to nursing. The third and final part is an interactive display on the Order’s modern incarnation – the St John’s Ambulance.
Best exhibit A 1785 version of ‘The Dictionary’ by one Samuel Johnson.
St John’s Lane, EC1 (020 7324 4070/ www.sja.org.uk/museum) Farringdon tube/rail. Adm free, donations (£5, £4 concs) requested for priory and crypt tours.

23. Charles Dickens Museum
It’s easy to walk past the only surviving London house in which Dickens lived. You have to ring the doorbell to gain access to this unassuming townhouse with just a small plaque to mark it out from its neighbours. Inside, there are four floors of Dickens material, from posters advertising his public speaking to rare editions of his work, in a house decorated as it would have been during Dickens’ tenancy (1837-1839).
Best exhibit A grille from the Marshalsea jail where Dickens’ father was imprisoned.
48 Doughty St, WC1 (020 7405 2127/ www.dickensmuseum.com) Chancery Lane or Russell Square tube. Adm £5, concs £4, children £4, family ticket £14.
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24. Hunterian Museum
SURGICAL SPECIMENS AND ODDITIES
Wandering among this collection of thousands of medical specimens and cases of surgical instruments is fascinating. Much of it was amassed by eighteenth-century surgeon, anatomist and dentist John Hunter, although it has since been added to. It’s not gruesome, though. The museum is located within the dignified HQ of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. Reopened in 2005 following a two-year, £3 million renovation, it’s now super-stylish, with the clearly labelled glass specimen jars displayed neatly along clean glass shelves. Best exhibit Pickled organs from soldiers who fought in the Battle of Waterloo, Winston Churchill’s dentures and the skeleton of Charles Byrne, the ‘Irish giant’.
Royal College of Surgeons of England, 35-43 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, WC2 (020 7869 6560/ www.rcseng.ac.uk/museums) Holborn tube. Adm free.

25. Sir John Soane’s Museum
You’ll never forget your first visit to the home of architect Sir John Soane. It’s stuffed with curios and is almost exactly as Soane left it when he died in 1837. Among the treasures are an Egyptian sarcophagus that Soane was so elated at acquiring that he partied for three days.
Best exhibits Hogarth’s ‘An Election’.
13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, WC2 (www.soane.org.uk) Holborn tube. Adm free.

26. Bramah Museum of Tea and Coffee
MOUSTACHE PROTECTORS
If there were an award for the most eccentric and lovingly assembled museum in London, the Bramah Tea & Coffee Museum, only two minutes from London Bridge Station, would surely scoop the prize. This ramshackle collection chronicles the commercial and social impact of the tea and coffee trade in Europe over the last 400 years, and many of the articles come from tea master Edward Bramah’s personal collection.
Best exhibit For the hirsute tea-gulper, customised teacups with special moustache guards.
40 Southwark St, SE1 (020 7403 5650/ www.bramahmuseum.co.uk) London Bridge tube/ rail. Adm £4, concs £3.50, family ticket £10.

27. Guildhall Clock Museum
Situated in a single room within the Guildhall Library building, this collection of watches and clocks is reckoned to be the oldest in the world. The collection tells the story of clockmakers in London and Europe and contains some of the most decadent and spectacular timepieces you’ll ever lay your eyes on.
Best exhibit Ornate marine timepieces (one dating back to 1724 was acquired for £75,000).
Guildhall Library, Aldermanbury, EC2 (020 7332 1868/1870) St Paul’s tube. Adm free. Feature continues

28. Grant Museum of Zoology
If you’re not fazed by the skeletons of a walrus, a baboon and a giant iguanadon that face the entrance, you’ll find many a fascinating animal specimen here (quite a lot of them preserved in glass jars, and plenty of skeletons). Part of University College London, it might at first appear chaotically cluttered, but specimens are carefully categorised into evolutionary groups.
Best exhibit A dodo (whose bones are stored in a box and laid out in specially cutout padding).
University College London, Gower St, WC1E (020 7679 2647/ www.grant.museum.ucl.ac.uk) Goodge St tube. Adm free.

29. Museum of Rugby
You can almost smell embrocation in the air as you wander round this evocative and interactive collection of oval-ball artefacts and memorabilia. Permanent exhibits show how the sport has spread around the world from its roots in English public schools, and trophies, tickets, caps, kit and commentaries evoke great games of the past. The excellent stadium tour includes a peek in the England changing room, while would-be Jonny Wilkinsons will prickle with goosebumps as they walk down the players’ tunnel on to the turf.
Best exhibit Get hands on and test your strength on a scrum machine.
Rugby Rd, Twickenham, TW1 1DZ (0870 405 2001/ www.rfu.com/microsites/museum) Twickenham rail. Adm £9, concs £6, family ticket (two adults, three children) £30.

30. Museum of Garden History
Housed in a restored church next door to Lambeth Palace, this museum records and celebrates gardening. Its permanent display includes a collection of antique tools and there are exhibits exploring how new species of flowers, shrubs and trees were imported to Britain in the days when the process entailed epic sea voyages. Best exhibits The tombs of celebrated seventeenth-century plant hunters John Tradescants and his son, also called John, as well as Admiral Bligh of the Bounty, who lived locally.
St Mary-at-Lambeth, Lambeth Palace Rd, SE1 (020 7401 8865/ www.museumgardenhistory.org) Lambeth North tube. Suggested donation £3, concs £2.50.