The V&A? The Science Museum? I’m sure, during childhood visits to the capital, that my parents must have shown me some of London’s biggest attractions, but the memory that’s really stayed with me is of something much smaller. We had called in at a Georgian townhouse late one dusky afternoon – and once inside were invited to climb up on to the roof. There, as evening fell over the skyline, I found a scaled-down railway station with a miniature train, steam pouring from its chimney, that skated over a pond and occasionally plunged into a tunnel. It was the stuff of Mary Poppins. Anything is possible in London, I thought.
That rooftop train ride helped ignite my fascination with the capital and its cornucopia of museums. The London Toy and Model Museum, as I later found out it was called, was only open from 1982 to 1999. And yet it was the start of a journey that wound up with me writing for Londonist, a website that enlightens people on the best – and often more unexpected – things they can get up to in this city.
London has about 200 museums, and while these include the swaggering, column-fronted institutions of global repute, many others are diminutive setups, or labours of love – some operate as charities run by volunteers. As with the London Toy and Model Museum, there’s often a showstopping, icing-on-the-cake moment. At the Musical Museum in Brentford, an incandescent Wurlitzer cinema organ rises out of the stage floor, playing visitors out in a melodious finale. The Museum of Brands has a “Time Tunnel” that whisks you through soap, sweets and soft toys from the Industrial Revolution to today. The Postal Museum follows in the tracks of that long lost toy museum, with its own unforgettable train ride, the subterranean Mail Rail.
These smaller museums don’t always stick around. I called in at the Savoy the other day to refresh my memory of its dainty cocktail museum (home to antediluvian bottles of liquor and Noël Coward’s industrial-sized lighter) only to find it gone. The Musical Museum is currently fighting for its life. This makes it all the more important to squeeze a smaller museum into your next London day out. To kick you off, I’ve earmarked 20 lo-fi enterprises with surprising collections, often housed in rather special settings – ice warehouses, retired airports, psychiatric hospitals. Who knows, one of these visits might just change your life, too.
Cinema Museum, Kennington
In the late 1970s/early 1980s, many of the UK’s art deco cinemas were gutted and demolished. Martin Humphries and Ronald Grant had the foresight to give workmen tasked with doing the deed a bit of “beer money” in exchange for the discarded cinema seats, projectors, marquee lettering, you name it. The collection they amassed is now inside the former Lambeth Workhouse, where a young Charlie Chaplin spent a stint.
Women’s Museum, Barking
The location of this newly opened venue could hardly be more apt: it sits across from the ancient Barking Abbey, which was run by nuns for the best part of a millennium. It’s not a museum in the traditional sense, but an artistic space celebrating women, girls, and transgender and non-binary communities. The Vagina Museum in Bethnal Green is also worth visiting.
Historic Croydon Airport, Croydon
Croydon was the centre of the universe in the 1920s and 30s, thanks to its gleaming neoclassical airport, from which Hollywood stars, politicians and royalty were shuttled to Paris, Karachi and even Australia. Much of the building survives, and savvy tour guides will show you around on the first Sunday of the month. So good that it inspired me to write an entire book about Croydon.
Sewing Machine Museum, Balham
Among the prized possessions in this south London warehouse stuffed with some 700 machines is an unwieldy wooden “Thimonnier”; it was built by Barthélemy Thimmonier, believed by many to be the inventor of the sewing machine, and bought at auction for a cool £50,000. Meanwhile, the 1865 Pollack & Schmidt here belonged to Queen Victoria’s first born daughter, Vicky.
British Vintage Wireless and Television Museum, Dulwich
A series of garden sheds in Dulwich houses this remarkable stash of vintage wirelesses, gramophones and TVs – as well as a facsimile of “Stooky Bill”, the sinister dummy John Logie Baird used for television experiments. When I visited in September 2022, people on the antique radios were chanting “Long live the king!”; they meant Charles III but it all felt rather like the 1930s.
Bethlem Museum of the Mind, Beckenham
The entrance to this museum – based in an old administrative building of the still-functioning Bethlem Hospital – is unnerving. Flanked by two grotesque sculptures of Melancholy and Raving Madness, which once “welcomed” inmates to the original Bedlam asylums, you wonder what might lurk inside. Once up the stairs, however, you’ll discover a moving, often personal, record of changing attitudes towards mental health.
British Optical Association Museum, Charing Cross
At this appointment-only townhouse museum, you can ogle Ronnie Corbett’s specs, sunglasses that belonged to an 18th-century Venetian gondolier, a box of glass eyes taken to the battlefields of Flanders, and contact lenses used to stop chickens from scrapping. I can’t resist it: this place is a real eye-opener.
Eel Pie Island Museum, Twickenham
In the heady 1960s, the Stones, Pink Floyd and Bowie were letting rip at the bohemian Eel Pie Island Hotel, run by pipe-smoking club owner Arthur Chisnall. This lovingly curated museum (on the Twickenham mainland) gives a taste of what those days were like. They even let you play a vinyl of your choice.
London Canal Museum, King’s Cross
At the height of London’s 19th-century ice-cream craze, brawny blocks of ice were shipped over from Norway by sea, then canal. Victorian entrepreneur Carlo Gatti’s warehouse is now a museum detailing the trade’s history, and the wider story of London’s canals. The two ice wells are a hit, as are the boat rides – one traversing the 960-yard-long Islington Tunnel.
Peek Frean Museum, Bermondsey
Long before it was a cradle of craft beer, Bermondsey was Biscuit Town – home to confectionery behemoth Peek Freans, creator of the bourbon, Garibaldi and possibly the custard cream. Occupying a corner of the old factory, here lies a bounty of incandescent tins, recipe books crammed with biscuits lost to time, and heirloom biccies many decades past their best before.
Whitewebbs Museum of Transport, Enfield
“Would you like to see our well?” This is how most visits to this alternative transport museum begin. (The answer should always be “yes”.) Elsewhere you can feast your eyes on a glorious clutter of Ford Anglias, Routemaster buses and Enfield motorbikes (once manufactured en masse in this neck of the woods).
Crystal Palace Museum, Crystal Palace
The Crystal Palace may have burned to the ground in 1936, but this humble lecture room building survived, and now tells the story of Joseph Paxton’s glass-terpiece, by way of stunning photos spanning construction to demise – alongside corny Victorian souvenirs. They run guided tours of the area on summer Sundays.
Museum of Comedy, Bloomsbury
You’ve heard of “living” museums such as Beamish, but this one does it differently. Located in the crypt of St George’s church (the same that features in satirist William Hogarth’s famous print Gin Lane), the Museum of Comedy is laden with Sooty puppets, Tommy Cooper’s handmade tricks and a six-necked guitar played by Bill Bailey. Importantly, it hosts live comedy most nights.
Thames River Police Museum, Wapping
Formed in 1798, the Thames River Police claim to be the world’s oldest police force. Housed in the still-operational riverside station’s old carpenter’s workshop, retired officers will regale you with (sometimes grisly) stories of policing the Thames while you peruse retro equipment, from cutlasses to diving gear to a flag from the doomed Princess Alice, London’s worst shipwreck.
The Stephens Collection, Finchley
A visit to the former mansion of ink magnate Henry “Inky” Stephens reveals fascinating curiosities including a second world war escape tunnel – not to mention an array of bottles of the famous blue-black writing fluid. One of comedy’s great writers, Spike Milligan, who was president of the Finchley Society, has a wonderful bench statue in the gardens.
Wandle Industrial Museum, Mitcham
What appears to be an old village hall reveals itself as a treasure trove of artefacts from the river Wandle, once a veritable powerhouse fuelling mills that churned out snuff, paper and Liberty fabrics. It’s not all about the water: look out for the wheel from the Surrey Iron Railway, the world’s first public railway.
Heath Robinson Museum, Pinner
The Cartoon Museum might easily have appeared on this list, but instead I’ve gone for this gem dedicated to the crackpot mind of erstwhile local Heath Robinson, an artist who devised joyfully convoluted contraptions such as self-pedalling flying dining tables, and towering mechanisms built to plunge a single tooth into a roast chicken.
Wiener Holocaust Library, Bloomsbury
Dr Alfred Wiener opened his library here in London on the same day Hitler invaded Poland. Since then, it’s grown to become an indispensable record of fascism and the fight against it, featuring heartbreaking letters from Holocaust victims, and tarnschriften – anti-Nazi propaganda hidden in things such as tomato seed packets. As well as the library and archives, there’s usually a free public exhibition.
Museum of Homelessness, Finsbury Park
London has had a peripatetic Museum of Homelessness for almost a decade, but as of this month it now has a bricks and mortar site in an old gatehouse in Finsbury Park. They don’t do glass vitrines and “do no touch” here, instead they’re launching with How to Survive the Apocalypse, an immersive experience led by people who’ve been homeless.
Original Cockney Museum, Epsom
“Just before I was 20 I had this dream, and you’ve just walked through it.” That’s how George Major – pearly king and creator of this museum – explained it to me. It’s slightly out of London, but the subject matter is on point: walk through ersatz East End streets to witness the hardships of everyday life, be dazzled by The Cockney Crown Jewels, and finish up with a plate of pie and mash.
• Londonist is throwing a 20th birthday party at Five Points Taproom & Courtyard in Hackney on 12 June
• This article was amended on 5 June 2024. The Musical Museum is in Brentford, rather than Kew as an earlier version said.
