Hunterian Museum, Royal College of Surgeons, London

The Hunterian Museum opened to the public on 16 May 2023, with free entry. It is a medical museum, housed in the ground floor of the Royal College of Surgeons, at Lincolns Inn Fields, London. Directly across the park is Sir John Soane's Museum.

The Hunterian Museum is named after the 18th century surgeon and anatomist John Hunter (1728-1793).  It displays over 2,000 anatomical preparations from Hunter’s original collection, alongside instruments, equipment, models, paintings and archive material, which trace the history of surgery from ancient times to the latest robot-assisted operations. The Museum includes England’s largest public display of human anatomy.

It was larger than I expected and covers several rooms. Being new, everything is laid out really well with easy to see labels and good lighting. The display A Curious Mind shows lots of animal bones and skeletons and preserved bodies.

Student surgeons in Hunter's day needed lots of corpses to practice their anatomy skills -

I liked the large touch screen displays

Cross section of an elephant trunk on 2nd shelf down, with lizards on shelf below -

The Long Gallery is the biggest room and contains very many human specimens, including fetuses. Photography is not allowed here, though most people were ignoring this rule!

The last few rooms progress up to the current times with modern surgery and how it transforms lives.

The museum is well worth a visit, although there is an awful lot to take in. 

See all the details on the Hunterian Museum official site. Also an article on Time Out.

Walthamstow Pumphouse Museum

Continuing my visits to Victorian sewage pumping stations in the London area, I made a visit to the last one I know about, Walthamstow Pumphouse Museum. However it is just a museum.

It is located near Walthamstow, NE London. It is relatively close to Markfield Beam Engine, separated by modern day filter beds.

The museum is located at the Low Hall Pumping Station, a Grade II listed building that was originally a sewage pumping station built in 1885. The area was originally occupied by the Low Hall Farm and in the 1880s the council acquired the land in order to build a sewage pumping station. The pumphouse was built in 1885 and steam pumps were installed in a pit at the front of the building to raise the effluent coming from the Blackhorse Road area. Two boilers provided the steam for these.

The engines didn't run together. When one was stopped for maintenance, the other would be in use.  From 1928 the pumps fed effluent directly into the main sewerage system run by the London County Council. However, by the early 1970s it seems the production of steam by the boilers wasn't too safe and electric pumps were installed.

Some of the 1885 buildings were demolished. The original pumps were removed but the steam engines were left in situ, presumably being too difficult to dismantle and scrap.

Today the museum is more of a transport museum than a pumping station. However you can still see the horizontal steam engines. They are Grade II listed along with the steel beams that form part of the building’s roof. One of the engines is run on compressed air on the last Sunday of every month, when I paid a visit.

The rest of the museum is devoted more to the pioneering achievements in road, rail, air and sea transport in Waltham Forest and the surrounding area from the early 19th century.

A steam engine

Other displays are Routemaster buses, a decommissioned London Underground 1967 Stock Victoria line carriage, and various fire fighting vehicles.

See Wikipedia entry

See History of the Pumphouse & Low Hall Manor

Dennis Severs & John Soane

I managed to tick 2 more things off my London 'to do list' when I recently visited two small private museums. Unfortunately photography is not allowed inside either place, so I only have photos of the exterior.

Dennis Severs' House

18 Folgate Street, Spitalfields.
This 5 storey house is a time capsule. Dennis Severs (1948 - 1999) lived in the house and lived there in the same way that the early 18th century occupants might have done. We are told these were a family of Huguenot silk-weavers from 1724 to the dawn of the 20th Century. It was Dennis Severs’ intention as an artist that as you enter his house it is as if you have passed through the surface of a painting, exploring with your senses and imagination the the sights, smells and sounds of the house.

The house is open to visitors for 2 hours on a Monday. A few people are allowed in at a time, and there is total silence. The house is dark, lit only by candles, firelight and limited daylight from the windows. The 10 rooms are mostly jam packed with items as if the inhabitants, the Jervis family, were still living there. There are different smells and different sounds, such as ticking clocks, church bells. Photography is not allowed. £10 entry. See more on Dennis Severs' House official site.

Whilst I was out I passed the memorial to Sun Yat-Sen. He was the founding father of China, born in 1866. He became leader of the Chinese Nationalist Party, having overthrown the Qing (Manchu) dynasty. After a plot for an uprising in Guangzhou failed, he went into exile overseas for 16 years. This included London, in 1896.

He was detained by a Chinese legation in London, but the British Foreign Office intervened and Sun was released from captivity. See more on Sun Yat-Sen.

John Soane's Museum

On another day I went to John Soane's Museum at 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields. This is the historic house, museum and library of distinguished 19th century architect Sir John Soane. At Soane’s request, the house has been left untouched since his death – almost 180 years ago. It is packed full with artefacts as well as drawings and models from Soane's life as an architect. Photography is not allowed.
Admission is free.
Official site. Also a Wikipedia page.