The best museums in London are the ones you've walked past
Updated: 5 days ago
I asked LinkedIn one question about small museums and lost a week to the answers.
I was putting together a piece for Stylist on the best small, lesser known museums in London, so I asked my network who had cool things to tell me about. I expected a handful of replies. I got museum directors nominating their own places, curators sending lists of their favourites, and a thread that kept growing long after my piece was filed.
So I did what I promised in the comments and put every small one on a map. 60 museums and counting, numbered, grouped by area, with a few landmarks so you can find your bearings. The big names didn't make the cut. They don't need the help.
What the comments told me
Read 50 recommendations back to back and the patterns jump out. Four of them matter to anyone running an attraction.
🟣 Nobody quoted a tagline. They quoted a moment. Oscar Wilde's dock at Bow Street. Candlelight tours at Soane's. The actual room where penicillin was discovered. Over 80,000 Egyptian and Sudanese objects squeezed into the Petrie's tiny space. Your visitors already know what makes you worth the trip. It's sitting in your reviews.
🟣 Small is a selling point, not an apology. "Does a lot with its small footprint." "Won't take up your whole day but worth a visit." That's a trigger: a spare hour near a station. Market to the hour, not the size.
🟣 Your neighbours are your best partners. Eleven of these sit within a short walk of each other around Bloomsbury and Holborn. Nobody plans a day around one small museum. Plenty of people will plan a day around four.
🟣 Say your opening hours loudly. Lots of these places open three or four days a week, some by tour only. That's fine. A locked door on a Monday because nobody told you is not.
The full list
West End & Westminster
1. Moco Museum London
2. Sherlock Holmes Museum
3. Handel Hendrix House
4. Household Cavalry Museum
5. The Guards Museum
6. Florence Nightingale Museum
7. Garden Museum
8. Royal College of Physicians
9. Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum
10. Chelsea Physic Garden
11. Museum of Anaesthesia
12. British Optical Association Museum
13. Benjamin Franklin House
Bloomsbury & Holborn
14. Grant Museum of Zoology
15. Foundling Museum
16. Charles Dickens Museum
17. The Postal Museum
18. Novelty Automation
19. Sir John Soane's Museum
20. The Hunterian
21. Museum of Freemasonry
22. Bow Street Museum
23. London Transport Museum
24. Petrie Museum of Egyptian and Sudanese Archaeology
King's Cross & Camden
25. Museum of Youth Culture
26. Queer Britain
27. London Canal Museum
28. Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration
29. Museum of the Order of St John
City, East & South
30. Museum of the Home
31. Dennis Severs' House
32. Great Fire micro museum, by the Monument (coming soon)
33. The Clink Prison Museum
34. The Old Operating Theatre
35. The Cinema Museum
36. London Mithraeum
37. City Wall at Vine Street
38. British Red Cross Museum
39. Dr Johnson's House
40. Sutton House, Hackney
41. Vagina Museum
42. St Bartholomew's Hospital Museum
43. Barts Pathology Museum (events only)
Further afield
44. Freud Museum London
45. Trent Park House of Secrets
46. Museum of Homelessness
47. Leighton House & Sambourne House
48. William Morris Society, Hammersmith
49. The Musical Museum
50. London Museum of Water & Steam
51. Horniman Museum & Gardens
52. The Fan Museum
53. Bethlem Museum of the Mind
54. Museum of Brands
55. Keats House
56. God's Own Junkyard
57. Turner's House
58. Hogarth's House
59. Kempton Steam Museum
60. William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow
My verdict
London doesn't need another blockbuster. It needs people to know the small ones exist, and a reason to go this weekend. If you run one of these places, your visitors are already writing your marketing. Read your reviews, then put their words on your website.
Thank you to everyone who added to the list. Tell me your favourites and any additions I need to make.
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