A Trip to the Operating Theatre…

A few oddball things interest me – ghost and vampire stories, Japanese Samurai’s, astronomy, ancient Egypt, maritime history, and the history of medicine and surgery. So when I heard that there was an old operating theatre tucked away behind London Bridge station, I was intrigued to check this place out.

How does an old operating theatre exist in London after all of this time? Surely most hospitals become modernised when the times change and it seems odd for an out of date operating theatre to still be intact and preserved after hundreds of years, unable to be used. Apparently when the original hospital was relocated to a new site, nobody knew that wards and an operating theatre were up in the attic of the hospital. It remained intact for a good 60 years before it was re-discovered in the 1950’s and turned into a spot for visitors to soak up a unique piece of London history.


I was a bit stunned when I came to the entrance of the old operating theatre. It is this tiny and unassuming building. In fact – I walked past this place everyday for 5 months and never realised it existed. You climb up these tiny winding stairs but at the top you enter the most magnificent building I have ever seen. It is like something out of a Lemony Snicket book with giant circular windows and exposed wooden beams. It is clammy and poky up there; I cannot believe that this place once served as a hospital…

On display are old operating instruments, preserved body parts, medicines from the era and also have a section on herbal remedies. You can go into the old operating theatre and see where people had limbs amputated amongst other awful things. I am taken aback about how unhygienic this place would have been. They operated on this rickety wooden bench type thing and the general public could come along and watch operations although horrible flu’s and diseases were all over the city at the time. The room was so stuffy as well – the smell must have been dreadful on a warm summer’s day. They also used to put sawdust all over the floor to soak up the blood. A tad frightening as a church lay below the operating theatre’s floors. I am also struck by how many people would have died on the same spot I am standing. This was before the time of anaesthetic or antiseptic and your chances of surviving an operation would not have been great.



Sometimes London really surprises me, how could something that interesting exist in this city? How could it exist for so many years tucked away in an attic, remaining hidden from everyone? It makes me think about what might be in the ceiling above my head as we speak.