Think London museums and you're probably imagining the Victorian-era titans of South Kensington and Bloomsbury, with their grand facades and teeming collections of artefacts plundered from across the world. But although the likes of the British Museum and Natural History Museum are a fine place to squander a day or two, there are plenty of other, more atmospheric treasure troves to uncover in this history-stuffed city.
These weird and wonderful museums are often the legacy of a single collector's private passions, and visiting them can feel like stepping inside someone's mind, the walls lined with objects that document their interests and obsessions.
Often, that passion can be infectious. You don't have to be a Bridgerton fan to take a flutter on Greenwich's Fan Museum, where you'll find these frivolous accessories actually have a fascinating, often political history. Even if you loathe patterned wallpaper, the William Morris Museum might well intrigue you with its insights into this radical thinker and designer's mind. And you'll emerge an instant old movie buff from your tour of Kennington's Cinema Museum. Read on for our pick of the small museums that outdo the big guys for flair, fun and sheer atmosphere.
RECOMMENDED: Read our complete guide to London's Best Museums.
This Kennington museum only opens its doors for guided tours if you book in advance. But believe us, it’s worth all the faff. There’s a gargantuan collection of posters, projectors, cinema carpets, fanzines and memorabilia, plus more than 17 million feet of celluloid film to peruse.
Time Out tip: Go along to one of this museum's affordable evening screenings of celluloid classics to peek inside its collection after dark
2 Dugard Way, SE11 4TH.
Not strictly a museum, more of an immersive, living exhibit, the home of late American eccentric Dennis Severs tells the story of a fictional family of eighteenth-century silk-weavers in Spitalfields. Okay, some of the historical facts might be a tad (wh)iffy – but the ten rooms here send you on a wonderfully evocative journey, down to fresh fruit ‘left by the family’ on the kitchen table and a chamberpot full of authentic Huguenot wee. Quelle horreur!
Time Out tip: Choose a Silent Night visit and you can explore this house wordlessly by candelight. Magical!
18 Folgate St, E1 6BX
Nearly 200 years ago, Isambard Kingdom Brunel started work on the Thames Tunnel. It opened in 1843, gathered a crowd of 50,000 Londoners on its first day, and has been a hugely popular attraction ever since. At the Brunel Museum, on the Rotherhithe side of the river (that’s south), you can delve into the story behind this spectacular feat of Victorian engineering. The tunnel is now used, ironically, for the Overground, but guided tours will still take you into the humongous entrance chamber, and every once in a while it plays host to gigs and screenings.
Time Out tip: This fascinating museum doesn't take long to visit, so pair it with a trip to Surrey Docks Farm, or to the gorgeous old Mayflower Pub
Railway Avenue, SE16 4LF
The famous Austrian shrink moved to London in 1938, fleeing the Nazis. His house has changed very little in the years since: a slice of Habsburg Vienna slap-bang in the middle of Hampstead, where you can see his collection of antiquities, and the world-famous couch upon which his patients shared their thoughts, dreams and neuroses. ‘Tell me about your muzzer…’
Time Out tip: Don't forget to pick up an audio guide, as it's full of intimate insights into the Freud's family life
20 Maresfield Gardens, NW3 5SX
Visit this duo of homes-turned-museums in Holland Park and you'll get interior design decor inspo galore – provided you've got the budget of a wealthy Victorian gentleman, that is. Celebrated 19th century Frederic Leighton commissioned a house to suit his opulent taste, with rich interiors that reach their zenith in a spectacular Arabic-style tiled central hall with trickling fountain. Things are a little more sedate down the road at Sambourne House, once owned by a Punch illustrator who decorated its rooms in gloomy bourgeois style, each wall covered in pictures and historic ceramics to pore over.
Time Out tip: Leighton House offers a pay what you want visit on the first Monday of each month from 10am to 1pm.
Leighton House 12 Holland Park Road W14 8LZ, Sambourne House 18 Stafford Terrace W8 7BH, London
Collector and artist's Viktor Wynd's micro-museum is an assemblage of objects that chart his passionate interest in all things odd, bizarre and macabre. Don’t expect anything you see here to make a lot of sense – instead, just let your jaw drop to the floor as you examine this most eccentric of 21st century wunderkammers, including Happy Meal toys and celebrity stool samples. Its regular ‘menagerie nights’ give you the chance to pet some interesting creatures too, like lizards and tarantulas. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
Time Out tip: Pair your visit with a green-hued cocktail or two to psyche yourself up for the weirdness that follows
11 Mare St, E8 4RP
Perched delicately on the corner of Greenwich Park is the most ladylike of all London institutions, the Fan Museum. But don't be fooled by its sedate exterior and orderly array of glass cases. The collection here is full of surprising additions, including some of the world's oldest fans that date back to the tenth century, campaigning fans decked with political slogans, and texts on the illicit language of fans, used by secretive Victorian flirts. Practise it, because after a trip here it’ll be your preferred method of communication.
Time Out tip: Pair your visit with a refreshing turn about Greenwich Park (the deer are worth seeking out) or a short stroll to nearby historic pie shop Goddards
12 Crooms Hill, SE10 8ER
Restored with original fixtures and surgical instruments, the UK’s oldest purpose-built operating theatre sits in an attic at the top of a Southwark church. Climb a vertiginous wooden staircase, and you’ll find yourself transported back to the world of nineteenth-century medicine, when surgery tended to involve things like brandy and hacksaws. Feeling squeamish? Escape next door to the beautiful herb garret, whose specimen-lined walls are a tribute to the long history of plant-based medicine.
Time Out tip: You'll need to scale a 52-step spiral staircase to reach this museum: if you've got accessibility needs, get in touch with them in advance and they'll arrange for you to use a different entrance
St Thomas Church, 9a St Thomas St, SE1 9RY
These days, you can find William Morris's intricate nature-inspired designs pretty much anywhere: from wallpaper to dresses to socks to pencil tins. But this legendary Victorian thinker and artist would be rolling in his grave at his works' mass-produced afterlife, as he devoted his life to reviving England's medieval tradition of handmade crafts. Find out about his radical ideas at this Walthamstow museum dedicated to the Arts and Crafts maestro’s life and legacy, housed in his boyhood home. It's teeming with sumptuous fabrics, prints, furniture and wallpaper, as well as displays on his passionate socialist beliefs.
Time Out tip: Inspired by what you see? Check out the museum's busy line-up of crafting workshops
William Morris Gallery, Forest Rd, E17 4PP
London's first vagina museum is also the world's first. This tiny, muff-loving institution started as a pop-up project in 2017 at venues across the UK before getting a womb of one's own in Camden Market in 2019, then moving to Bethnal Green in 2022. The museum aims to destigmatize anything and everything to do with the gynecological anatomy, while also promoting bodily autonomy in a trans-inclusive environment. Oh, and they really, really love a good pun.
Time Out tip: Pair your visit with a trip to one of this museum's special events, like its Cliterature book club or its sapphic mix and mingles
Arches 275-276 Poyser Street, E2 9RF
Okay, it's no Venice. But London's waterways are still pretty central to the history of this city, bringing in food and fuel in the centuries before the railways took over. Located by Kings Cross, this part waterways/part industrial museum showcases the history of London's canals. There are intriguing displays on the history of ice-cream making, and on the little-known trade in ice imported from Norway and once stored in two huge wells beneath the museum, too.
Time Out tip: Book in advance and you can pair your visit with a ride on historic boat 'Long Tom'.
12-13 New Wharf Rd, N1 9RT
Set up in 1892 by eccentric traveller and diarist Amelia Edwards, the Petrie Museum is named after Flinders Petrie, tireless excavator of ancient Egypt. Where the British Museum’s Egyptology collection is strong on the big stuff, Petrie (run by University College London) is an extraordinary selection of minutiae (amulets, pottery fragments, tools, weapons, weights and measures, stone vessels, jewellery), which provide an insight into how people lived and died in the Nile Valley. Highlights include colourful tiles, carvings and frescoes from heretic pharaoh Akhenaten’s capital Tell el Amarna. The museum also has the world’s largest collection of mummy portraits from the Roman period (first to second centuries AD).
Time Out tip: Ask the passionate staff for their insights on this museum's densely-packed displays.
University College London, Malet Place, WC1E 6BT
This dimly-lit space full of wooden cabinets with handwritten labels initially seems harmless enough. Charming, even. But be warned: UCL’s museum of zoology isn’t for the faint of heart. Elephant skulls, jars of moles (really), shark vertebrae and bisected heads are among the gruesome exhibits on display. It’s macabre, yes, but you’ll learn some fascinating stuff here, amongst the teeming cases of carefully-labelled specimens.
Time Out tip: Look out for the comical skeletons waving down at unsuspecting museum-goers.
University College London, 21 University St, WC1E 6DE
And as if by magic… another unusual museum. If you’ve got a trick or two up your sleeve, this is the place to visit. Located at the Magic Circle Headquarters in Euston, its prized possessions include Harry Houdini’s handcuffs and the belongings of legendary magician Jean-Eugene Robert-Houdin. Sadly, you can’t just abracadabra your way in whenever you please – it can only be visited as part of a public event.
Time Out tip: Book a guided Magic Circle tour to wander this intriguing building's corridors, check out the museum, and maybe even learn a trick or two.
12 Stephenson Way, NW1 2HD
Today, there's nothing easier than picking up a paracetamol pack at the supermarket. But for most of human history, acquiring medicine was a much more complex business, involving visiting the apothecaries who spent their lives seeking out, drying, grinding and compounding herbal ingredients. Originally a resource for medical students, this institute became a public museum in the 1930s. Its staggering collection of more than 45,000 objects tells the long story of pharmacy and medicine, from leeches and mummified hands to the discovery (in London!) of penicillin.
Time Out tip: Pair a trip to this small museum with an enjoyable walk past the boats and bougie cafes of nearby St Katharine's Docks: the fresh air will do wonders for your health.
66 East Smithfield, E1W 1AW
Want a divorce? Fancy a cheap holiday? Need to launder money or lose weight? All these things and many others can be achieved for the modest outlay of a pound (sometimes two) at the nutty slot machines of Novelty Automation in a small shabby space behind a Bloomsbury shopfront. Once displayed in the Cabaret Mechanical Theatre on the lower level of Covent Garden’s Apple Market, these lovingly crafted moving sculptures are almost all the work of cartoonist Tim Hunkin. Highlights include Test Your Nerve – a slot machine that invites you to place your hand beneath the jowls of a huge, red-eyed, growling dog; and Microbreak, which simulates ‘all the benefits of a holiday with none of the downsides’ – you even get a hot blast of sun, courtesy of the lamp on top of the telly in front of you. Great fun.
Time Out tip: Go along to an evening sesh on the first Thursday of the month for a novel first date idea
1A, Princeton Street, WC1R 4AX
Sadly, Pollock's Toy Museum has lost its central London spot in a creaky-floorboarded old shopfront. But you can still find this quirky collection dedicated to the world of childhood and play in Croydon's Whitgift Centre, as well as in a pop-up shop in Leadenhall Market. You'll find nostalgia-inducing, fascinating displays of old board games, marbles, puppets, wax dolls, dolls’ houses. Oh, and priceless treasures including the world’s oldest teddy bear, and an Ancient Egyptian toy mouse, made out of Nile clay.
Time Out tip: The Leadenhall Market branch is full of tempting gift ideas for any kids (or whimsical adults) you might know.
Unit 32-33 Leadenhall Market, EC3V 1LT
Browse one of the biggest collections of neon signs in Europe in a salvage yard in Walthamstow, which happens to be the personal collection of late neon artist Chris Bracey. It contains everything from his signage for Soho sex clubs in the ‘60s to his work for the movie industry, including pieces that were used in Captain America, Eyes Wide Shut, Byzantium and more. It’s no surprise it costs over £3,000 a month to power the place. Sandwiched in between all of this, you’ll find his artwork, some of which have been exhibited in his gallery shows, and others that were specially commissioned by other artists and clients.
Time Out tip: Take a technicolour teabreak at onsite cafe The Rolling Scones
Unit 12, Ravenswood Industrial Estate, Walthamstow, E17 9HQ
This tiny museum is a neat-as-a-pin tribute to the sewing machine. It houses the collection of Ray Rushton, which includes a replica of his father's sewing machine shop, and 600 gleaming examples of his wares, dating from 1829 to 1950. Look out for the star exhibit: a machine which belonged to Queen Victoria's daughter.
Time Out tip: This free museum is only open on the first Saturday of each month from 2pm-5pm, so plan your trip wisely.
292-312 Balham High Rd, SW17 7AA
The Grade I-listed pumping station in which this museum housed was built in 1838 and it was the first to drive clean water into people’s homes, 24 hours a day – at an affordable price. The revamped museum now combines remarkable working remains of our Victorian industrial heyday – nine machines (five still in their original locations), including the 90-inch steam-powered Cornish Engine – with the story of how London’s water has been cleaned up since the seventeenth century.
Time Out tip: Check the museum's website for the monthly Steam Up weekends, when you'll get to see these machines roar into life once more.
Green Dragon Lane, TW8 0EN
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