The Old Operating Theatre

St Thomas Street, SE1

- DAVID ELLIS

More than one district of London can lay claim to being the scariest. There's Waterloo, where under the station runs a damp and icy network of badly lit tunnels, and nearby is the London Dungeon. Whitechapel, with all the Jack the Ripper stories. Or Southwark, where the prison museum Clink is - but something much eerier, too. A place where men would clamp opium-soaked rags over the mouths of women strapped down and wide-eyed with fright, before taking a blade to their flesh.

These men were hailed as heroes. They were surgeons, operating for three decades in the first half of the 19th century before anaesthetic was used. They worked at what is now a museum, the Old Operating Theatre and Herb Garret. It is a place of two parts, the latter leading through to the former.

The entrance to both is found at the foot of St Thomas's Church, the original site of St Thomas's Hospital. Two brooding doors surrounded by a stone architrave, all but unmarked save for a pub sign: this one blood-red and decorated by a coffin-toothed skull. Inside there a staircase leads to the top of the tower. It is a winding tube that turns and turns, its 52 wooden steps giving out low moans and pitchy creaks, with only an old ship's rope for support. Space is so tight the flow of visitors is controlled by traffic lights.