Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garret
Creak up a church’s spiral stair to Europe’s oldest surviving operating theatre (1822), once serving the women’s ward of St Thomas’ Hospital. Before anaesthesia and antisepsis, speed and spectacle ruled; the timber amphitheatre puts you in the splash-zone of medical history. Next door, the herb garret evokes the apothecary—dried plants, jars and tools telling how surgery once leaned on botanicals. Small, vivid and unforgettable. Allow 45–75 minutes.
Opening Hours
What's not to miss inside?
The Theatre Itself
Oldest surviving operating theatre in EuropeSteep benches and a wooden table: a classroom where lives hinged on minutes and method.
📍 Attic of St Thomas’ Church, top level
Herb Garret
Surgery’s botanical back-storyAromas of dried plants meet mortars, scales and jars—pain relief and poultices before modern pharma.
📍 Attic rooms beside the theatre
Instruments & Innovation
From bone saws to antisepsisScarifiers, tourniquets and chloroform inhalers map the pivot from brutality to science.
📍 Display cases around the amphitheatre
Inspire your Friends
- The theatre served the women’s ward only—modesty and hospital layout kept male surgeries elsewhere.
- Its survival owes much to neglect: hidden in an attic after St Thomas’ moved, the theatre was rediscovered in 1956.
- The entry is via a narrow 52-step spiral stair—original access that doubles as a time machine (and a mild workout).
