London's Weirdest Museums

By Josh Jones, Features Editor, le cool London

London, it appears, has quite the pocketful of museums kicking about on its streets. I once went to the British Museum, and to be honest, after the impressive ceiling you see when you walk in, I got really quite bored and went to the pub across the road to watch an impossibly beautiful Italian family eating some 'traditional' dirty looking food from under a heat lamp and pretending it was delicious tapas. When the mum started reading the HP Sauce bottle label like it was a very fine wine I had to go over and tell them some much better places to eat, and the gratefulness in their eyes was marvellous. That's my museum story.

Here's five museums the capital boasts, which you really probably have no reason to go to…

Canal Boat Museum
My mate had his 30th birthday here. It was well funny - we chugged along in a canal boat (funnily enough) from Camden Lock until we got there and danced the night away. In the day time I think it's a little more sedate, but if you would like to know about London's watery heritage then you should go here, which incidentally is housed in a former ice warehouse built in the late 19th Century for Carlo Gatti, who as well you know was a famous ice cream maker.


Garden Museum
For a city where the average citizen's garden is the hair on their partners back, it's quite nice that a couple founded this place (originally called The Museum Of Garden History) when they found the tomb of some 17th century plant hunters (you could do anything you liked in the 17th century) in the churchyard of this place. It recently had a dramatic transformation and now it's got over 9,000 things about gardens for you to enjoy.


Bank of England museum
I'll admit - I only found this on Google when I was trying to bulk up this list. But this is free and it tells the story of the legendary building since it was founded in 1694, right through to today. And as it's been around for quite a while, most of the stuff it deals with is sparkly and expensive, so there's plenty of interesting things to look at, be it from really old money, to gold and, it proudly announces, cartoons. Which quite handily brings me on to…


The Cartoon Museum

Just down the road from the British Museum on Little Russell Street, this has actually only been around since 2006. The Cartoon Museum says on its website that it exhibits the very finest examples of British cartoons, caricature and comic art from the 18th century to the present day. And who am I to argue? I've not been to it.

Fan Museum
One of the finer things about this city is the sheer barminess of the things you can find. Amsterdam has a museum chock full of cocks and whips, which to be honest is a massive cliche for the famous vice city, but we've got the worlds only place that's devoted to every aspect of fans and fan making. There's over 3,500 mainly antique fans from all over the globe dating as far back as the 11th century. It's situated in tow listed buildings and they've built an orangery out the back with a secret Japanese garden in it. Of course they did.