Grant Museum of Zoology

As soon as you walk through the front doors you know that you are in for a victorian feast of natural history. Despite its central location and the madness happening outside you feel like you are in a safe cocoon of taxidermy. It might be a small museum but it is possible to loose yourself in here for hours. A word of warning, check online for their opening times as sometimes they close for events etc. They have a sponsorship scheme to help fund the upkeep of the museum, I am happy to say that this year I am the proud sponsor of the reproductive system of a duck billed platypus. 

Small and quirky, The Grant Museum of Zoology and Natural History is a great place to unleash your curious side and inspire the zoologist within us all.

Forming part of University College London, and mere seconds away from Euston Square station, The Grant Museums of Natural History in brimming with fascinating taxidermy specimens, animal skeletons, and creatures preserved in fluid. For such a small museums, it’s jam-packed with engrossing exhibits that will grab your attention.

From tiny jars of moles to a full skeleton of an elephant’s head, the exhibits are far-ranging and you can even adopt some of these specimens as your own for a donation. 

The kids will love it as much as the adults and there are activities to keep the little ones engaged and intrigued. It’s completely free to have a look inside, too.

Honestly one of London's best-kept secrets, the Grant Museum deserves better recognition and notice as one of London’s best museums.

There’s something about the vintage romance of museums that has always appealed to me and quite honestly, the older, the kookier and the more of a ‘Mummy’/’Indiana Jones’ vibe they have, the more I love them. Tucked away in a little UCL corner of Fitzrovia is The Grant Museum of Zoology which has old, kooky, adventurous charm in spades plus it’s free and small enough to wander round in an hour but packed full of enough weirdly wonderful artifacts to keep you exclaiming ‘look at that’ for the entirety of your visit. The last remaining zoological museum in London and founded in 1827 as a teaching collection, it’s home to over 68’000 specimens from across every corner of the globe which is a pretty impressive pub quiz fact!

Polished wooden cabinets hold an absolute treasure trove of antiquities and oddities (jars of pickled carcasses, handwritten labelled specimens & ancient stuffed animals are everywhere you look) while the bones of giant – and in some cases now extinct – creatures stand proudly on display…the giant elephant skull is especially mind boggling especially if it’s almost the same size as you are! 

Make sure you glance upwards and check out the various skeletons that prop up the 1st floor balconies looking for all the world as though they should be wearing bowler hats & supping on tumblers of whiskey in the style of old fashioned gents from days of yore while they survey their educational kingdom. There is a nod to modernity though with iPads dotted around to help answer questions you might have about what you’re looking at.

One of the most impressive corners is the Micrarium, a brightly back-lit, three sided, floor to ceiling space devoted entirely to over 2000 microscopic slides of some of the tiniest creatures to ever walk, swim or fly the earth; it truly is a wondrous thing and well worth seeking out considering that most museums focus only on the larger, flashier animals. It’s also lovely that between the cases and shelves you get a glimpse into the space of the research team who work here and in fact, on the day we went there were PhD students in attendance and happy to discuss their work with you.

The Grant museum looks ancient but in a way that is beautiful and inspiring, making you proud to live in a city where places like this are not as unusual as they would be elsewhere. Everyone knows the V&A, the Imperial War & the Natural History Museums and for good reason, they are spectacular. However it’s these tiny hidden gems that make for the most fascinating afternoons sometimes, reminding you to take advantage of the city you live and not just leave it up to the tourists to explore and enjoy.

A weird and wonderful museum I've visited several times - and you'll certainly like it if you have slightly morbid inclinations. Animals in jars, alongside a number of skeletons, are packed together in a pretty small space - but it's well worth spending some time here. My favourite exhibits are the more unusual, rare animals on offer - particularly the quagga (an extinct zebra) and tasmanian tiger skeletons.

If Wallace and Gromit had created a museum, it would be this one.  It is eccentric and quirky, as if the room had just been discovered after being hidden away for 100 years.  The exhibits include a jar of preserved moles, some dissected animals way older than Damian Hirst's cow and skeletons look down on you from the balcony as if they come to life whenever you look away.

This museum is pretty small, so you won't need long there, but it's a great place to visit as part of a day around Museum Mile.

This place is a bit nutso and I love it. If you don't like museums, you might like this one. It's compact, and creepy and weird, and full of taxidermied animals you didn't know existed.