Old Operating Theatre and Herb Garret

Housed in the attic of the early eighteenth-century church of the old St Thomas’ Hospital, this atmospheric museum offers a unique insight into the history of medicine and surgery. The original timber framed Herb Garret was once used to dry and store herbs for patients’ medicines and in 1822 an operating theatre was included. Predating anaesthetics and antiseptics, it is the oldest surviving surgical theatre in Europe. Access to the attic is through a narrow 52-step spiral staircase.

The Church was dedicated to St Thomas Beckett and it probably originated as a chapel of the medieval hospital, but it is not known when it was first built on the present site. There was certainly a medieval church and it is known that one Richard Chaucer was buried there. Additions were made to the church in the early 17th-century, including the bell tower. By 1697, however, the Governors of the Hospital reported the church was so decayed that people were afraid to go inside.

St Thomas’ Church.
St Thomas’ Church was rebuilt between 1698 and 1702 in a more Neo-Classical style, with the first sermon recorded in July 1703.

The new church was a small structure built of red brick and white stone dressings with a single nave and a flat roof. It was fitted out with a large garret constructed in the ‘aisled-barn’ tradition.

The church shows many similarities to two other London churches: St James’ Piccadilly (1684) and Saint Benet Paul’s Wharf (1685).

Both of these churches were designed by the brilliant architect of St Paul’s Cathedral, Sir Christopher Wren. Wren was Governor of St Thomas’ at the time the Church was built, and had given £500 to the Hospital rebuilding fund. It seems highly probable his team was involved in its design, in any event, it was to be built by his master mason Thomas Cartwright, who had worked with him at the Church of St Mary-Le-Bow.