Old Operating Theatre Museum
Photograph: Old Operating Theatre Museum

Old Operating Theatre Museum

  • Museums | History
  • London Bridge
Rosie Hewitson
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Time Out says

Situated in a herb garret in the roof of St Thomas’s Church in Southwark, the Old Operating Theatre Museum is Britain’s oldest surviving purpose-built operating theatre. Built in 1822 as part of the women’s ward for St Thomas’s Hospital, it predates both anaesthetics and antiseptics, and offers a unique (and often grisly) insight into the history of medicine and surgery.

The theatre has been restored with original furniture and equipment, including a nineteenth-century operating table, surgical instruments and pathological specimens. Visitors enter via a vertiginous spiral staircase to view a semicircular operating theatre with tiered viewing seats for up to 150 medical students.

Sanitised reenactments are sometimes held – just as gruesome as the operating tools that look like torture implements – alongside more light-hearted events ranging from craft workshops to comedy nights, while the venue’s programme of temporary exhibitions often combine art with explorations of pathology.

Details

Address
St Thomas Church
9a St Thomas St
London
SE1 9RY
Transport:
Tube: London Bridge
Price:
£7.50; £6 concessions; £4.50 children
Opening hours:
Open Thu-Sun 10:30am-5pm
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