Trip to London

This week I went to London with the university, the study trip was arranged to help students with the brief for 'Secret London' - I initially had ideas of where I wanted to go, one of the places being the Huntarian Surgery College. At my tutorial with Pete I asked where in London he would be taking his group, saying that I wanted to visit the Huntarian - only for Pete to say, "That’s where I'm taking your group". I was so pleased - although at this moment it doesn’t have much relation to my project, I was still excited about going.

Pete had two places to show us, one being the Huntarian, the other being the John Sloane museum. I decided to head across the park to the Huntarian to start with. The Huntarian holds surgical oddities and examples of disease for medical students to examine close up. It really is fantastic, it contains just about every aliment possible in a medical jar, including my favorite – part of a child’s head. It also has artifacts of animals and Andre the seven foot giant. Well, his skeleton anyway. I could have spent hours looking at everything, and unfortunately taking photographs were prohibited. When I got home however, after being behind an American student who loudly kept taking photos on her iPhone for the whole time I was in the museum, I Googled ‘child head jar Huntarian’ and bingo, someone else has had more guts than I ever had and posted the sneaky photos online! Brilliant. I’ll include them further down, they might make you feel a bit sick though.

Child head in jar.

Feeling handy.

Part of a child's face - why not.

After a quick sandwich, I headed over to John Sloane’s house, and after leaving my bag in the hallway like a forlorn mother at nursery, I explored the house – well, its actually three houses all together. I think describing it will do it no justice what so ever, you just have to go and see it. Any structure that was originally there has been moved; it was a strange place full to the brim with artifacts and little nooks and crannies. It was impossible to walk past someone; I constantly had to squeeze past someone in a narrow walk by that would have once been a hallway to the kitchen. There was one room that had huge paintings in frames that hung from the ceiling in every available space. Pete said that the room had an added extra – the staff member that manned the room unhooked a latch on what appeared to be the wall, and revealed a secret ‘door’ that was actually just more room space underneath for paintings! Once again we were sadly not allowed to take photographs, after Googling however, one person has managed to take a photo while it actually happens, see below.

Sneaky photo - found on Google images

A view of one of the archways.

 To summarise I really enjoyed both places I visited in London, and I will be making a return visit to the Huntarian this summer hopefully.