Uncovering even more of the best hidden museums in London

The wonderfully-rich Museum of Sir John Soane near Holborn is one of several lesser-known London museums that are well worth a visit (image credit below)

London has some of the world’s greatest and most extensive museums.

The British Museum for instance is one you can spend three or four days on and still have that uncomfortable feeling you’ve missed something.

But away from the crowds, the city also has some of the best small museums you could ever dream of – providing you know where to look!

Some of these London museum gems were covered in part one of this article. Here we reveal a few more…

The original kernel of the Hunterian Museum (inside the Royal College of Surgeons) was a collection of anatomical specimens from 18th century surgeon John Hunter’s collection – not just humans, but elephants, microscopic fleas, and all sorts of exotic fauna from Captain Cook’s voyages.

If you have children with a taste for the gruesome, this is definitely the place to take them! There’s also a collection of surgical instruments (I really don’t want to know what some of them are for!), and temporary exhibitions cover subjects such as microscopy and the use of robots in surgery.

The Hunterian Museum is ideal for those with a taste for the macabre! (image credit below)

It’s a strange museum and I find it slightly terrifying, particularly the ranks of glass jars with their pallid creatures or dissected organs suspended in liquid – but it’s never uninteresting.

The Petrie Museum in Malet Street is another academically attached museum – it contains the University of London’s Egyptology collection.

While the British Museum is all about huge granite statues and golden sarcophagi, the Petrie shows another side of Egyptian life – leather sandals, bead dresses, children’s toys, pots and pans and oil lamps, reflecting the everyday life of the ancient dynasties.

There are real rarities too; for example, the architectural drawing of a shrine – so precise and neat you can imagine the architect leaning his head close to the papyrus to ensure each stroke of the pen is immaculate.

And there are also jewelled faience tiles from Akhnaten’s capital at Amarna and flowers in bright sky blue and shining white. All are piled up rather higgledy-piggledy in antiquated glass cases; it’s a very old-style museum with lots of objects and no interactive gizmos or artists’ impressions.

Head out east to Hackney to visit the Geffrye Museum, which makes its home in a range of 17th century almshouses (furniture making was one of Hackney’s main trades in the old days).

Here you can see English furniture through the ages – not in glass cases, as you might in the V&A, but set up in a series of rooms that recreate the material culture of a specific period. There’s an Elizabethan room, a 1950s-60s room and my personal favourite, a Restoration room with some superbly flamboyant furniture – all fine veneers and lacquer.

Leighton House on Holland Park Road is well worth a visit (image credit below)

Leighton House in Holland Park was the home of Victorian painter Frederic Leighton, which he designed, built and filled with works of art – fine Islamic tiles, copies of Michelangelos, wallpaper by William Morris and much more.

It’s a palace of art – from the finely tiled Arab Hall to the fiery reds and warm pinks of the dining room – and what’s so lovely about it is that you can still feel the presence of Leighton in his eclectic but stunning collection.

Architect Sir John Soane also built his own house on Lincoln’s Inn Fields. You can tell it’s unusual from its glazed loggias and statues – so different from the sober Georgian brick façades of other houses on the square.

The Soane Museum contains Sir John’s collections – like Leighton, he was a magpie, picking up among other things a set of Hogarth’s paintings and an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus. He also enjoyed masquerade – he had one room set up as a monk’s cell, decorated the breakfast room with a mirrored vault, and created dramatic light wells within the house.

There are architectural models and drawings too, as you might expect – but the whole house is so much more. It’s an absolute delight and if you had to visit just one of these museums, this is the one I’d pick.

If you want a hotel near the Soane Museum in exquisite surroundings then look no further than stunning One Aldwych – often imitated but never surpassed. It’s also in the vicinity of some lovely historic pubs in Holborn.

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