We're crowding around the glass cabinet as if it contained the Mona Lisa. Its display is portraiture of sorts: a distinguished gentleman leans forward, having just cast his line. This is Heissner, one of the first German-made garden gnomes, which Sir Charles Isham brought back for his rockery at Lamport Hall, Northamptonshire, in the mid 19th century, precipitating a very British passion for gnomery.
A selection of these elderly red-hatted fishermen — including an alarmingly big-eared, toothy-grinned Tony Blair specimen — sits next to models of Bill and Ben, a 1987 Titchpot created in the likeness of Alan Titchmarsh and a signed Ground Force photograph of Charlie Dimmock from 2000.
London’s Garden Museum is the Louvre for lovers of horticulture. Its quirky collection of objects — from the first Flymo to vintage slug pellets — traces the history of British gardening. As are so many of our museums, its existence is down to the generosity of a few people; in this case, Rosemary and John Nicholson, who took on the site on Lambeth Palace Road, SE1, in 1976 to save it from demolition. Many people have bequeathed items in the intervening years (the Titchpot was given by its muse).
Collectors often make great curators, which is why many of the museums featured below began life as private projects. Collections need space to thrive — I write this as a recovering collector, whether rocks, stamps, cigarette cards, feathers or whimsies — so not all survive: consider Keith and Sue Blayze’s 8,500 teapots, once shown at the couple’s Kent café Teapot Island, now under new management, or Barry Kirk’s recently defunct baked-bean museum, housed in his Port Talbot council flat for many years.
Thankfully, many eccentric assemblages, from sewing machines to dog collars, remain open to public view. Here are some of Britain’s strangest — don’t forget, as you exit through the gift shop, to buy a fridge magnet for your collection.
Pass the scalpel: The Old Operating Theatre Museum, London
Lotions, potions and an array of exotic animals employed in medicine and surgery populate the Cabinet of Curiosities at the Old Operating Theatre Museum in Southwark.
Tomophobics may want to skip a visit to St Thomas’s Hospital’s original Southwark site, where the church attic has been preserved as an historic surgery space. The raked seating reflects contemporary practice for carrying out procedures — before anaesthesia — in view of medical students. The garret was rediscovered in 1952 after being boarded up when the hospital relocated to Lambeth, unveiling an extraordinary time capsule.
Further grisly gaiety can be found over at the Royal College of Surgeons of England’s Hunterian Museum, which features more than 70,000 objects covering the art and science of surgery from the 17th century to the present day.
Round and round in circles: Amersham Fair Organ Museum, Buckinghamshire
The fun of the fair: An early-20th-century 89-key Gavioli & Cie organ features in the collection at the Amersham Fair Organ Museum.
The traditional tinkling merry-go-round sound — best associated with Mary Poppins’s pastel ponies that leap off their carousel to career through bucolic countryside and onto the racecourse — was historically created by mechanical organs in the centre of the ride (in the Disney film, the guard appears from a hatch surrounded by metal pipes).
The late Albert Ree’s collection of these fairground organs, which includes a rare 60-key Gavioli instrument thought to date from 1887 and a Black Forest Waldkirch that was used in a galloping horse roundabout by Lovatt’s of Scotland during the 1920s, is open for six dates from November to April.
Water, water everywhere: London Canal Museum, King’s Cross
Housed in a former 19th-century icehouse built by ice-cream entrepreneur Carlo Gatti, the London Canal Museum takes the visitor along the capital’s historic waterways during industrialisation. Hands-on exhibits include the stern of trailer boat Coronis, constructed in 1935 for the Grand Union Canal Carrying Company.
Less hands-on are the two ice wells secreted underneath the building — the only examples of their kind open to the public in the UK. The museum is situated just off Regent’s Canal, allowing visitors to have an immersive experience and arrive via water: it offers mooring space for two breasted-up narrowboats or one wide-beamed boat.
Follow the lead: The Dog Collar Museum, Leeds Castle, Kent
Gertrude and John Hunt’s unusual interest in rare dog collars morphed into a collection comprising more than 60 pieces, from 16th-century spiked German ironwork and Italian brass identity tags through to 19th-century filigree silver.
In 1977, Mrs Hunt donated the couple’s canine accessories to Leeds Castle in Kent, where they have been bolstered by 20th-century additions, and the 130-strong group is said to be the largest of its kind. The earliest collar in this diminutive display is a 15th-century heavy-duty Spanish mastiff’s collar, worn for protection against wolves and bears — a far cry from the buttery leather and Harris Tweed specimens favoured by modern-day pooches.
Happy hour: Museum of Timekeeping, Upton Hall, Nottinghamshire
A Far East-inspired long-case clock at the Museum of Timekeeping is still tracking the passing hours almost 300 years after it was made by Wiliam Hayward.
Plenty of timepiece collections focus on a specific type — such as the 400 Black Forest cuckoo clocks curated by brothers Roman and Maz Piekarski at the former Cuckooland Museum in Knutsford, now housed at the Irish Museum of Time — but the Museum of Time-keeping considers the concept of measurement.
Exhibitions feature sundials and sand glasses through to naval technology and watches, including the one that belonged to Capt Robert Scott, the British explorer who led two expeditions to the Antarctic regions. The British Horological Institute shares the space at Upton Hall.
Meal deal: The Food Museum, Stowmarket, Suffolk
If the spotted dick and semolina exhibition prompts school-dinner flashback, seek sanctuary in the Food Museum's walled garden.
Although many of us might prefer to forget them, the former Museum of East Anglian Life sprinkles hundreds and thousands on school dinners with a new exhibition dedicated to spotted dick, semolina and other traditional puddings, displayed next to a broader history of food production across its 84-acre site.
Intrepid visitors are invited to sample a two-course school dinner in the on-site café. No one leaves the table until the plates are cleared — will the milk monitor please report for duty.
Rein supreme: The Museum of the Horse, Tuxford, Nottinghamshire
Artist Sally Mitchell and her son rescued a former Georgian coaching inn and posting house from vandals in 2014 and converted the Grade II-listed building into Britain’s only public display of utilitarian equestrian items. Historic spurs, stirrups and saddles are curated across the first floor; the entrance is home to a gallery with a focus on animals and the countryside.
Whereas the National Horseracing Museum in Newmarket, Suffolk, showcases jockeys and jumps, this collection — built over many years by Mitchell — has a domestic focus, including antique stable rarities and some rather gruesome veterinary equipment.
Ursa Major: The Teddy Bear Museum, Dorchester, Dorset
From Steiffs to celebrity teds, a whole host of cuddly characters can be found in the Teddy Bear Museum in Dorchester.
Like a British Library for plushy toys, Britain’s oldest teddy-bear museum gathers every bear that ever there was, spanning makers from Steiff to Merrythought. In addition to antique collectables, the cuddly cabinet displays include celebearties Winnie-the-Pooh, Rupert, Paddington and Sooty — with original Harry Corbett musical automata.
In a strangely meta twist, the museum is set in the home of one Edward Bear, a human-sized teddy, who collects his miniature familiars.
It’s a stitch up: The Sewing Machine Museum, London
From a working replica of Elias Howe’s first mechanical lockstitch to the 1865 Pollack & Schmidt model that was given to Queen Victoria’s daughter to mark her wedding, the Sewing Machine Museum is a stitch in time.
About 600 pieces — amassed by founder Ray Rushton, the former owner of the Wimbledon Sewing Machine Company in Tooting Bec — are open for public viewing on the first Saturday of the month, in a space featuring frontage styled to re-create the family’s original 1946 shop. Among the vintage curiosities on display are the green 1962 Alfa Stitchline loaned to the musician Boy George (autographed on return) and a well-used Singer that was owned by Charlie Chaplin’s mother.
The sun will come out tomorrow: Foundling Museum, London
Playing cards, jewellery and coins fill a large display in the introductory room of the Foundling Museum. They are some of the 18,000 tokens that accompanied babies on arrival at the hospital during the 18th century, identifiers should a relative later claim a child.
Such poignancy runs through exhibits dedicated to those who have experienced life in care, at once a strange and powerful topic for a museum. The Foundling Hospital’s connections with William Hogarth — whose painting of founder Thomas Coram is in the permanent collection — and George Frideric Handel, whose annual performances of his Messiah raised essential funds for the charity, are world-class ancillary pieces.
At the pointy end: Derwent Pencil Museum, Keswick, Cumbria
A 26-feet-long colour pencil, one of the world's largest, looms over visitors to the Lake District's Derwent Pencil Museum.
A stone’s skim from Derwent Water is the graphite mine that served the pencil industry for centuries, a heritage celebrated by a small, but perfectly sketched collection nestled in the crook of Skiddaw. The Pencil Museum is run by Derwent Pencils, which has been making writing instruments in Cumbria since 1832.
Currently situated on the banks of the River Greta, the collection, which reopened in 2017 after widespread storm damage, includes one of the world’s largest colour pencils, measuring 26ft, and one of two special pencils made for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee — the other resides in Buckingham Palace. A new era beckons for the museum — it will close at its present home on November 1 before reopening in larger premises at nearby Rawnsley Hall in March 2027.