Showing 3 Result(s)

Glimpse the Future at The Crystal

One part science museum, two parts corporate advert, Siemens’ The Crystal in Royal Victoria Dock is a so-so introduction to environmental science, so long as you like it sponsored. The new glass buildings that sprout like weeds along the revamped docklands of east London rarely conceal their true identities, their storeys-tall names calling out like sponsored beacons in the London fog. But I thought that maybe, just maybe, this squat, spear-cornered building at Royal …

#841: Get a Dose of Your Own Medicine at the Herb Garret

Quietly lingering in the shadows of Europe’s tallest building, the Herb Garret in the attic of St Thomas’s Church near London Bridge stored the dried flowers and plants used for medicine before the days of packages of paracetamol. The Old Operating Theatre Museum & Herb Garret has to be one of London’s most London-y places: Blink and you’ll miss it. Look the other way as you walk past, and you might …

#788: Close to the Bone at the Old Operating Theatre Museum

Skeletal hands down, the Old Operating Theatre Museum & Herb Garret is my new favourite small museum in London. To enter, pull yourself along the worn rope that snakes up the steep, creaking spiral staircase to find a church attic where Victorian medical students learned how to perform amputations, a hidden space rediscovered only 58 years ago. Despite all of medical technology’s advancements, assurances of only a few seconds of pain and the promise of unicorn …