Tucked away in an old church near London Bridge station is one of London’s more unusual museums which tells the story of the long history of hospitals in this area and the sometimes gruesome story of surgical history.

The Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garret in St Thomas Street is one of the oldest surviving operating theatres. It is located in the garret of St Thomas’s Church, Southwark, on the original site of St Thomas’ Hospital.

St Thomas’ is one of London’s oldest hospitals, operating in one form and another since the twelfth century. Originally part of the Priory of St Mary Overie, it was renamed The Hospital of St Thomas the Martyr following the canonisation of Thomas a Becket in 1173. Southwark at this time was the location for many brothels and theatres and developed a reputation for vice. At the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1540, St Thomas’ was closed by Henry VIII and Beckett was decanonised. However the hospital was soon reopened but renamed the Hospital of St Thomas the Apostle.

Between 1693 and 1709 the hospital was rebuilt on a more permanent basis covering a wide area constructed around three courtyards. The rebuilt St Thomas’s could accommodate more than 400 patients and had nineteen wards, four of which were for venereal patients. The rebuilding also replaced the medieval church with the church which now houses the museum. At this time, Thomas Guy founded the nearby hospital, Guy’s, which still stands on the site.

An important medical advance in the eighteenth century was the introduction of operating theatres. These were often located on the top floor to ensure they received the benefit of daylight. In St Thomas’s, the male theatre was built in 1751 and the female theatre in 1821. Operations had to be carried out quickly, anaesthetics weren’t used until 1847 and antiseptic surgery was not introduced until the 1860s.

Florence Nightingale opened up her school for nurses at St Thomas’ in 1859, but in the same year the site of the Hospital was acquired by the Charing Cross Railway following Parliament’s decision to extend the London Bridge railway line from Greenwich across the River Thames. St Thomas’s left Southwark in 1862 and moved to Lambeth opposite the Houses of Parliament, most of its buildings in Southwark were demolished.

The church that contains the Old Operating Theatre Museum was built at the end of the 17th century, the new church was fitted out with a large garret constructed in the ‘aisled-barn’ tradition. The garret was fitted with wooden storage racks, and described as “the herb garret” in 1821. It is suggested that the garret was used by the hospital’s apothecary to store and cure medicinal herbs.

In 1822, part of the herb garret was converted into a purpose-built operating theatre. This is not as strange as it sounds because the female surgical ward was situated next to the garret. A skylight was put in and other windows added and other spaces may have been used as a recovery ward.

In 1862, when St Thomas’ Hospital moved, the Operating Theatre was partly dismantled and the entrances from the Hospital into the Garret were blocked up. It was then mainly forgotten, except for references in medical academic publications. In 1956, Raymond Russell was researching the history of St Thomas’ Hospital and decided to investigate the garret. He was amazed to find that although part of the operating theatre had been demolished, most of the structure had survived. Raymond Russell’s find was considered unique, no other 19th century operating theatre in Europe had survived. In 1962, after 100 years of disuse, the garret and operating theatre were opened to the public as a museum.

The collection was originally donated by various representatives of the London NHS Hospitals and by private donors to Lord Russell Brock, founder of the Old Operating Theatre Museum & Herb Garret. The original collection comprised of around three hundred items, over the years of the Museum’s existence, acquisitions to the collection have been acquired from private individuals and staff of St Thomas’ and Guy’s Hospitals.

The modern visitor goes from the bustle of the modern world in Thomas Street and walks up a series of narrow wooden stairs to be transported into a different world where the collection of artefacts revealing the horrors of medicine before the age of modern science

There is a large section on herbs and their use in medicine for centuries.

The medical displays includes: surgical and pharmaceutical objects, hospital furniture, a small collection of human pathology specimens and a small image collection.

A collection of artefacts revealing the horrors of medicine before the age of science. Includes instruments for cupping, bleeding, trepanning, and childbirth.

Displays on medieval monastic health care, the history of St Thomas’s, Guy’s Hospital and Evelina Children’s Hospital, Florence Nightingale and nursing, medical and herbal medicine.

The Apothecary was the equivalent of the modern chemist shop and hospitals used to employ people who had particular skills for mixing and understanding herbal and chemical ingredients. They often specially-shaped containers for potentially poisonous substances.

The Operating Theatre itself is a bit of surprise, being quite small and intimate. When you remember operations were often watched by up to one hundred medical students and with various people working in the theatre, it was no surprise that patients were often blindfolded. The museum staff often give entertaining talks about the horrors of surgery in the early 19th century, but as they often remark, many patients consented because it was a chance to survive a situation where the alternative was death.

The Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garret is a unique attraction and one of London’s hidden gems. It is a must see for anyone medically minded but is a reminder for everyone the way that medicine has moved forward in the last two hundred years. Although we might recoil in horror at the operations and instruments, at the time they were state of the art and saved many lives. The setting of the museum is well worth a visit, the ‘aisled-barn’ roof of the church provides a wonderful backdrop to a fascinating museum.

Visitor Information

Address: Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garret, 9a St Thomas Street, London, SE1 9RY.

Opening hours: Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, 10.30am – 5.00pm.

Access is limited as the Museum is in the attic space of a 320-year-old church. The entrance is via a 52-step narrow spiral staircase.

Admission: Adult: £7.50; Concessions: £6.00; Child 6-16 years: £4.50; Children under 6
years: Free; Family (2 adults, 2 children): £18.00.

Visiting London Guide Rating – Highly Recommended

For more information and tickets, visit the Museum website here

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