The List...

This is 'The List'...

Victoria and Sarah’s Museum List

1. Benjamin Franklin House COMPLETED
This creaky old London home of the US politician and scientist focuses on the scientific discoveries he made while living here between 1757 and 1775.
Benjamin Franklin House, 36 Craven St, WC2 SNF (7839 2006/www.benjaminfranklinhouse.org). Charing Cross tube/rail.

2. The British Dental Association Museum COMPLETED
FREE
The history of British dentistry (don’t scoff, Americans). Features lots of teeth, plus old dentists’ chairs and oral health posters.
The British Dental Association Museum, 64 Wimpole St, W1G 8YS (www.bda.org/museum). Regent's Park tube.

3. Dr Johnson’s House COMPLETED

Although the museum takes up all four floors of the house in which Johnson wrote his 'Dictionary', it’s the atmosphere that intrigues here – and the exhibits largely consist of old furniture, portraits of Johnson and Boswell, and the occasional case of ephemera (letters, spectacles etc). There’s also a short, hammy biographical video on the second floor. Kids can dress up from a selection of Georgian costumes on the top floor.
Best exhibit A rather random brick from the Great Wall of China on the landing.
Dr Johnson’s House, 17 Gough Square, EC4 (7353 3745/www.drjohnsonshouse.org). Chancery Lane tube. 11-5 Mon-Fri

4. Florence Nightingale Museum
An advocate of free healthcare, Florence Nightingale raised nursing to a professional level for women and started her own training school for nurses at St Thomas’. Appalled by the conditions the wounded experienced in the Crimean War, she helped to develop new hospitals in the Victorian era, for which she was the first woman to receive the Order of Merit in 1907. Her possessions, letters and portraits are on display here.
Best exhibit To bring Florence’s legacy up to date, there are talks from St Thomas’ current nurses.
Florence Nightingale Museum, St Thomas’ Hospital, 2 Lambeth Palace Rd, SE1 (7620 0374/www.florence-nightingale.co.uk). Waterloo tube/rail.

10-5 Mon -sun

5. Foundling Museum COMPLETED
Thomas Coram, shipwright and businessman, was so horrified by the abandoned children he saw in London he spent 17 years raising funds to build the Foundling Hospital. The hospital doubled up as the country’s first public art gallery and concert hall, with paintings donated by William Hogarth and recitals by fellow governor George Frideric Handel.
Best exhibit The donated Hogarth paintings.
Foundling Museum, 40 Brunswick Square, WC1 (7841 3600/www.foundlingmuseum.org.uk). Russell Sq tube.

Tues to Sat 10-5

6. Freud Museum COMPLETED
A beautiful Hampstead house and the great psychoanalyst’s home after he fled Austria, the Freud Museum is not only preserved as it was when Sigmund died, but as it was in Austria when he fled in 1938. He had the position of everything in his study written down, so it could be exactly recreated in London.
Best exhibit The original couch.
Freud Museum, 20 Maresfield Gardens, NW3 (7435 2002/ www.freud.org.uk). Finchley Rd tube.

7. Grant Museum of Zoology COMPLETED
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).
Grant Museum of Zoology, University College London, Gower St, WC1E (7679 2647/www.ucl.ac.uk/museums/zoology). Goodge St tube.

Mon –Fri 1-5pm

8. House Mill Museum
House Mill was a tidal mill on the River Lea, built in 1776 and operated until the 1940s. Occasional tours allow you to explore all five floors.
House Mill Museum, Miller’s House, Three Mill Lane, E3 3DU (8980 4626/www.housemill.org.uk). Bromley-by-Bow tube.

Sundays, May to Oct

9. Hunterian Museum  COMPLETED
FREE
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. The space is super-stylish, with the clearly labelled glass specimen jars displayed neatly along clean glass shelves.
Best exhibits Pickled organs from soldiers who fought in the Battle of Waterloo, Winston Churchill’s dentures and the skeleton of Charles Byrne, the ‘Irish giant’. Hunterian Museum, Royal College of Surgeons of England, 35-43 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, WC2A 3PE (7869 6560/ www.rcseng.ac.uk/museums). Holborn tube.

10. Library and Museum of Freemasonry COMPLETED
FREE
Freemasonry is trying to shed its slightly sinister image and welcomes all visitors to its fascinating museum, which includes all sorts of masonic clothing and literature. Worth a gander, if only to see the inside a beautiful building.
Library and Museum of Freemasonry, Freemasons’ Hall, Great Queen St, WC2B 5AZ (7395 9257/www.freemasonry.london.museum). Covent Garden tube.

The Library and Museum is open from 10am to 5pm Monday to Friday except public holidays and the Christmas and New Year period.

11. Linley Sambourne House
Victorian house owned by cartoonist Edward Linley Sambourne that still has most of the original furnishings and fittings intact: a fascinating glimpse of daily life in bygone London.
Linley Sambourne House, 18 Stafford Terrace, W8 7BH (7602 3316/www.rbkc.gov.uk/linleysambournehouse). High St Kensington. Reopens Sept 11 Admission:£6

12. Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture
FREE
This outpost of Middlesex University focuses on British domestic design from 1870 to the present. Themed temporary exhibitions draw out quotidian treasures from its collections. Part of the fun is revelling in nostalgia for a lost way of life, be it butcher boys, 'make 'n' mend' or Soda Streams. Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture, Cat Hill, Barnet, EN4 (8411 5244/www.moda.mdx.ac.uk). Cockfosters tube. Reopens Oct 2011

13. Museum of Immigration and Diversity COMPLETED
FREE
Just one building between Brick Lane and Spitalfields Market tells much of the story of immigration into London’s East End. This museum has been the home of a Huguenot master silk weaver fleeing persecution from Louis IV’s France, a nineteenth-century synagogue, a community centre where anti-fascist marches were planned and now it’s at the heart of the Bengali community. It houses a small exhibition exploring immigrants’ stories. The museum only holds occasional openings as it needs money for repairs.
Best exhibit The synagogue built in the garden.
Museum of Immigration and Diversity, 19 Princelet St, E1 (7247 5352/ www.19princeletstreet.org.uk). Liverpool St tube/rail.

14. Museum of St Bart’s Hospital
FREE
After a short video explaining the history of Bart’s and its founding in 1123, this museum offers a crash course in the changing face of London hospitals. Displays explain how Bart’s developed, while offering plenty of mean-looking instruments and bottles marked ‘POISON’ to gawp at. There are also two Hogarth murals to admire, plus a great book full of illustrations of injuries, ruptures, lesions and pus.
Best exhibit The old wooden skull used to practise drilling and football skills.
Museum of St Bart’s Hospital, St Bartholomew’s Hospital, West Smithfield, EC1 (7601 8152/ http://www.bartsandthelondon.nhs.uk/about-us/museums-and-archives/st-bartholomew-s-museum/) St Paul’s tube.

Tues to Friday and booking required

15. Old Operating Theatre Museum COMPLETED
This is the oldest operating theatre in Britain, complete with wooden spectator galleries, lodged up in the roof of a baroque church. St Thomas’s Hospital is long gone from this site but its hair-raising collection of pre-anaesthetic surgical instruments survives.
Best exhibit The saws, of course!
Old Operating Theatre Museum, 9a St Thomas St, SE1 (7188 2679/www.thegarret.org.uk). London Bridge tube/rail.

16. Ragged School Museum  COMPLETED
FREE
The canalside warehouses that housed Dr Barnardo's Ragged Day School during the late Victorian period are now home to a museum of the East End which examines the experiences of the children who attended the school.
Ragged School Museum, 46-50 Copperfield Rd, E3 (8980 6405/www.raggedschoolmuseum.org.uk). Mile End tube.

17. Smythson Stationery Museum  COMPLETED
FREE
Smythson’s is one of a few ancient London shops that also doubles as a museum.
Smythson Stationery Museum , 40 New Bond St, W1 (7629 8558/www.smythson.com). Bond St tube.

18. Jewish Museum

Jewish Museum London, Raymond Burton House, 129-131 Albert Street, London NW1 7NB

http://www.jewishmuseum.org.uk/

Open Daily 10am-5pm (Except Friday 10am-2pm) Admission: £7.50 Camden Town tube

19. Type Museum

http://www.typemuseum.org/

Museum under development

20. Museum of Childhood

FREE

V&A Museum of Childhood, Cambridge Heath Road, London E2 9PA

http://www.vam.ac.uk/moc/

Open Daily 10am-5.45pm

21. Brunel Museum

Railway Avenue, City of London, Greater London SE16 4LF (020 7231 3840 www.brunel-museum.org.uk/ )

Open Daily 10am-5pm Admission: £2 Bermondsey or Canada Water tube

22. Fan Museum

Open Tuesday to Sunday (and Bank Holiday Mondays) 11am-5pm (Sunday Noon-5pm) Admission: £4

http://www.thefanmuseum.org.uk/

12 Crooms Hill, Greenwich , London SE10 8ER Tel: 020 8305 1441

23. Design Museum COMPLETED

Shad Thames, City of London SE1 2YD Weekdays 9am-5pm Admission: £11
(020 7403 6933, www.designmuseum.org/)

24. Canal Museum COMPLETED

London Canal Museum, 12/13, New Wharf Road, London N1 9RT

Open Tuesday to Sunday (and Bank Holiday Mondays) 10am-4pm Admission: £4 King’s Cross tube

Telephone: (020) 7713 0836 http://www.canalmuseum.org.uk/

25. Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology COMPLETED

FREE

26. Handel House Museum

25 Brook Street, London W1K 4HB Open Tuesday to Saturday 10am - 6pm (until 8pm on Thursday)Sunday 12 noon - 6pm Admission - £6
(020 7495 1685 www.handelhouse.org/)

27. Garden Museum

5 Lambeth Palace Road, London SE1 7LB Admission - £6

Monday - Friday* 10.30am-5.00pm Saturday and Sunday 10.30am – 4.00pm
(020 7401 8865 www.gardenmuseum.org.uk/)

28. Charles Dickens Museum

His nineteenth-century home in London now preserved as a historic house
museum. 48 Doughty Street, Camden Town, London WC1N 2LX (www.dickensmuseum.com/)

29. Wandsworth Museum

38 West Hill, London SW18 1RX  Open Tuesday to Sunday 10:00-17:00 Admission £4 www.wandsworthmuseum.co.uk/

30. Museum of Branding COMPLETED

31. The National Army Museum

FREE

 National Army Museum, Royal Hospital Road, Chelsea London SW3 4HT Open 10-5.30pm http://www.nam.ac.uk/

32. The Anaesthesia Museum

FREE

The Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland, 21 Portland Place, London W1B 1PY Open Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday 10:00 - 16:00 Appointment Recommended.

33. The Windmill Museum  

Manor Cottage, Windmill Rd, London SW19 5NR Open Saturdays: 2 to 5pm, Sundays: 11-5 Admission £2 www.wimbledonwindmill.org.uk/

16/33 Completed!