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Back in January, I shared a blog on five small London museums that you might not have visited - and it turns out plenty of you had your own favourites to add. Here are my top picks from your suggestions: a mix of the immersive, the unexpected and the easily overlooked. If you’re looking to go a little beyond London’s usual museum circuit, these are well worth your time.  Dennis Severs House Step through the front door of Dennis Severs House and you don’t so much enter a museum as trespass into an imagined family’s 18th and 19th-century life. This narrow Georgian townhouse in Spitalfields was the extraordinary creation of Dennis Severs, an American artist who, in the late 1970s, began conjuring the home of a Huguenot silk-weaving family from thin air. Room by room, floor by floor, he staged their existence and their imagined journey from prosperity to poverty. The house is a living, breathing illusion. Half-drunk cups of tea, unmade beds and lingering scents leave you with the unsettling sense that you’ve arrived moments after the occupants slipped out. It’s theatre without actors, immersive without gimmickry, and entirely unlike anywhere else in London. You won’t just see it – you’ll feel it. Leighton House and Sambourne House Visit Leighton House and Sambourne House and you’ll come away with a fuller picture of Victorian London lives – from the inside. Just a short walk apart in Kensington, these two former homes offer sharply contrasting takes on how the era’s creative figures lived, worked and presented themselves. Leighton House, once home to enigmatic artist Frederic Leighton, is designed to impress. Best known for the Arab Hall, with its intricate tiles, golden mosaics and central fountain, the house is full of bold, decorative choices, from the grand studio to the richly detailed interiors. It’s a space built with visitors and guests in mind, reflecting both artistic ambition and social standing. A few minutes away, Sambourne House tells a quieter story. This is the former home of Punch cartoonist Edward Linley Sambourne and his family, and it has been preserved almost exactly as it was around 1900. The rooms are densely layered with patterned wallpapers, photographs, books and everyday objects, offering a clear sense of how the house functioned as a family home. Seen together, the two make an ideal double bill.   Foundling Museum Tucked away in Bloomsbury, the Foundling Museum sits on the site of the Foundling Hospital, established in 1739 as the UK’s first home for children at risk of abandonment. What began as a radical social experiment, caring for and raising foundlings, became one of the most significant charitable institutions in Georgian London. Today, the museum brings that history to life through a mix of art, objects and personal stories. There are moving reminders of the children themselves, including the tokens mothers left behind in the hope of one day reclaiming them, alongside works connected to early supporters like William Hogarth and George Frideric Handel. If you’re interested in London’s social history, or just want something a little different from the usual circuit, it’s well worth seeking out.  The Old Operating Theatre Hidden away in the attic of a church near London Bridge, the Old Operating Theatre is one of the city’s more unusual museums. Dating back to the early 19th century, it’s the oldest surviving surgical theatre in Europe. Originally used to treat patients from St Thomas’ Hospital before the age of anaesthetics and antiseptics, it is reached via a narrow spiral staircase and feels a world away from modern London. The space itself is small and stark, with wooden benches rising steeply around an operating table where students once gathered to watch procedures carried out in full view. The surrounding garret rooms display surgical instruments, herbs and medical equipment, giving a clear sense of how medicine was practised at the time. It’s not for the squeamish, but it is fascinating - offering a direct, unvarnished look at the realities of early surgery, and a perspective on how far things have come.   London Canal Museum
Tucked into a former ice warehouse near King’s Cross, the London Canal Museum offers a different perspective on the city’s history - one shaped by water rather than streets. Set alongside the Regent’s Canal, it explores the working life of London’s waterways, from the days when canals were vital transport routes to the quieter, more recreational role they play today. The museum focuses on the people and industries that depended on the canals. There are narrowboats to step aboard, displays on cargo and trade, as well as a look at the building’s own past storing imported ice from Norway. It’s compact but well put together, and easy to pair with a walk along the towpath outside. If you’re curious about how goods and communities once moved through the city, it’s a worthwhile stop just off the usual King’s Cross route. I did a video about the ice cream pioneer of Regent’s Canal, Carlo Gatti, and his link to the Canal Museum. Head here to find out more: https://www.tiktok.com/@bowlofchalk/video/7476362546652450070 Two more for the road For something a little off the main circuit, Van Gogh House in Stockwell offers an intimate look at the artist’s early London life, with a small but thoughtful programme of exhibitions. And out in Ealing, Pitzhanger Manor, designed by Sir John Soane, pairs restored historic interiors with contemporary art. Both offer a quieter, more personal alternative to the city’s bigger-name attractions.
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Since I began Bowl Of Chalk London walking tours five and a half years ago I have continued to offer three set walks each weekend which operate on a 'pay what you want' basis. Each walk generally lasts about 2.5 / 3 hours. They are as follows: Saturday morning - Trafalgar Square to St Paul's cathedral. This walk begins in the tourist hot spot of Trafalgar Square, taking in the square itself, Nelson's Column and the National Gallery building. Although we don't venture around the 'sights' of Westminster, Big Ben is visible at the bottom of Whitehall. After visiting the statue of Charles I next to the official centre of London, we have of late, passed Benjamin Franklin's House, threaded our way through Victoria Embankment Gardens and up in to the bustling Covent Garden and St Paul's, the Actors' church. From here we make our way around Aldwych, passing the church of St Clement Danes and the Royal Courts of Justice, in to the City of London via Fleet Street. We usually veer off through the maze of alleyways that brings us to Dr Johnson's House, the famous statue of his beloved cat, Hodge and past the famous Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese pub. Back on Fleet Street, we pass the church of St Bride's, and up towards St Paul's cathedral.  Saturday Afternoon - St Paul's to Monument (via Bankside & Borough) This walk begins by St Paul's cathedral, through the churchyard and on to the Millennium Bridge, taking us over the River Thames towards the Tate Modern on the south side. Here we pass by Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, the site of the original Elizabethan Theatre which opened on Bankside in 1599, and along to the usually heaving Borough Market. We usually pop in to the 17th century George Inn on Borough High Street before heading up on to London Bridge, which offers a great view of the iconic Tower Bridge, the Tower of London and the H.M.S Belfast before finishing at the Monument, commemorating the Great Fire of London, 1666.  Sunday - East London The Sunday walk is very street art heavy, but does include historical elements. We often begin near Old Street, including Bunhill Fields Cemetery, where the likes of Daniel Defoe, William Blake and John Bunyan are buried. We pass the Wesleyan Chapel on City Road before heading in towards Shoreditch, which although is now a plethora of cafes, boutique shops and clubs, was in the 19th century, the centre of London's furniture trade. We usually stop off at Arnold Circus, the UK's first ever council estate, then bypassing the incredibly busy Brick Lane make our way towards Spitalfields with its fascinating Huguenot, Jewish and Bangladeshi heritage. Obviously the street art changes pretty regularly, but I tend (as with all my tours) to talk about things that interest me, and street art is no different. I'll undoubtedly point out and talk about Banksy, Ben Wilson (the chewing gum man), Christiaan Nagel, Bambi, Roa, Jimmy C and Thierry Noir ... amongst others.  If you're in London one weekend and think that one of these walks might appeal (or fit in with your schedule) then please send me a message via the contact form. You won't actually know where we're meeting until I send you all the details confirming the walk and how many places you'd like to book. I do this so I can keep an eye on numbers. Please don't try just turning up. You'll see from the photos that it could be just you, two people, four, eight or more. Unless someone books loads of people at once, it probably won't be that big a group.
Please check the dates on the website homepage to make sure the walk you'd like to join is running, as although it is pretty continuous, there are occasional changes. My posts of late seem to have become rather church-centric. It's perhaps not that surprising, considering the sheer number of fascinating churches in London, so today, by way of a refreshing change in form, I shall mention a mosque. I noticed on my east end walk last Sunday, that I have started using the word 'anomaly' quite a lot to describe things when I'm talking to groups. Mainly because London is positively brimming with anomalies, so aside from purely liking the sound of the word, it also regularly encapsulates exactly what I'm trying to explain. This mosque I'm about to tell you about, fits incredibly snugly in to the 'anomaly' category. It's called the Brick Lane Jamme Masjid, and you'll find it on the corner of Brick Lane and Fournier Street, right in the heart of Spitalfields. 
Brick Lane Mosque - Jamme Masjid
As you can see, I managed to pick the one clement day we've had so far this year to take the photos. So, if you're familiar with the east end, you'll perhaps know that historically, Spitalfields has a long association with various immigrant populations that have settled in London, spanning centuries. The building which houses the Jamme Masjid is a Grade II listed English Heritage site and has catered for the religious needs of pretty much every wave of immigrants that have passed through the area, currently serving the largest concentration of Bangladeshi Muslims in the country. The buildings first incarnation was way back in 1743 as a Protestant Chapel, when it was known as the 'Neuve Eglise' (New Church) for the Huguenot's who began arriving in the late 1600's, to escape persecution in France. In 1809 it became an Evangelical chapel promoting Christianity amongst the Jews, which evidently had limited success, as ten years later it became a Methodist Chapel. Then, in the last couple of years of the 19th century it became a Synagogue and remained so until the Jewish population of Spitalfields, many of whom had arrived from eastern Europe, began migrating to north London after the Second World War. This coincided with an influx of predominantly Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh and east India and the building which had closed, re-opened as a mosque at the end of the 1970s. For this reason, and rather unusually for a mosque in the UK, the Jamme Masjid has a Latin inscription written above a sundial which adorns the south facing wall on Fournier Street. It reads 'Umbra Sumus' (We Are Shadows) which in itself, considering the populations that have lived in the area, and particularly with the wealth of the City of London literally eating away at the much poorer borough of Tower Hamlets (I'm thinking of Norman Foster's intrusive office building that in its construction, recently demolished half of the old Victorian Spitalfields Market) is quite poignant. 
Umbra Sumus - We Are Shadows
As well as being a place of worship, the mosque promotes educational activities for local Muslim youngsters, and has four classrooms used by the Evening School for teaching children to study the Quran and Islamic studies. The many Muslims who worship here also seem to be proud of their mosque's unique history and work hard with English Heritage to maintain the building's historical elements, whilst ensuring it meets 21st century technological standards and their own religious and educational needs. Now hopefully, you can see now why I might use the word 'anomaly' to describe this particular building. It also pretty much single-handedly manages to encapsulate the rich immigrant history of the area in one fell swoop. 
Fournier Street
Brick Lane
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