The 12 Strangest Themed Bars in the UK

Britain does the ordinary pub better than anywhere. Dark wood, cask ale, a fire in the corner and a dog asleep under the table. Nobody needs persuading.

Underneath that, though, runs a much stranger tradition. A converted church in Edinburgh where a monster drops out of the ceiling on the hour. A laundrette in Manchester that has never washed a single sock. A Glasgow bar that will not tell you its address until you have booked.

These are the twelve we would send someone to for a night they could not have anywhere else. Some are pure decor, some are scripted theatre with actors, and one is a bar sitting on top of a real museum of curiosities.

1. Frankenstein: a gothic church where the monster drops in

Housed in a Category A listed 19th century church on George IV Bridge, the former Elim Pentecostal Church, Frankenstein has spent a quarter of a century turning Mary Shelley into a three-floor drinking den. The monster is the main event, and he runs to a timetable. The venue is operated by Glendola Leisure.

• The concept: a former church turned gothic bar across three floors, each with its own bar. The monster show runs every hour, with the animatronic descending above the main counter to flashing lights, static charges and vats of bubbling liquid.
• What you’ll drink: house cocktails from around £6.95, dropping to £3.95 from Monday to Wednesday. Downstairs the Bier Keller opens on Friday and Saturday evenings with German and continental beer by the stein, long benches and an oompah band.
• The vibe: closer to Rocky Horror than to literary reverence. Karaoke Sundays, DJs at the weekend, silent movie nights midweek, and a crowd of students, stags and people who came for one and stayed for five.
• Best for: a birthday party that needs a built-in moment, or a first night in Edinburgh when nobody can agree on anything.

2. Rhum Tavern: inside the hull of a 1650s pirate ship

Rhum Tavern opened on Margaret Street in September 2024 and describes itself as a love song to The Goonies. Founder Gabriel de-Vere, previously at Sketch and Mr Fogg’s, designed and built much of the interior by hand.

• The concept: the whole room is styled as the hull of a 1650s clipper named The Inferno, with curved timber walls, stacked barrels, ship lanterns and a resin bar cast with gold doubloons.
• What you’ll drink: the bar claims London’s largest rum collection, at over 400 bottles. Dead Men Tell No Tales arrives in a pirate skull, and the Inferno comes in a coconut opened with a drill at the bar. There is a robata grill menu and fortnightly masterclasses.
• The vibe: candlelit and warm rather than theme-park loud. Skull-shaped toilet seats, and a Captain’s Quarters hidden behind a bookshelf that can be hired privately.
• Best for: a cocktail party for a group who have already done every speakeasy in Soho.

3. Valhalla: a Norse mead hall behind the Shambles

A short walk from Shambles Market, Valhalla has run an independent Norse mead hall since September 2017, in a former hairdresser’s, in the one English city where the theme is not a stretch. Matt Bedingham and Vincent Roberts expanded it into the two floors above during the pandemic.

• The concept: three floors, two bars and a function room called the AllFather Hall, decorated in runes and Norse detail, with a rock and metal soundtrack kept at a volume that still lets you talk.
• What you’ll drink: a long mead list including mulled mead, two house ales brewed by Half Moon Brewery, Valhalla Pale and Odins Judgement, plus craft keg and a large rum selection. Food comes on sharing platters named Ragnarok, Odin and Thor, built around Yorkshire producers such as Shambles pork pies and local cheese.
• The vibe: dog friendly throughout, and open to under 18s until 9pm, so it works earlier in the day as well as late. Reputedly haunted, which the bar staff will happily talk about if asked.
• Best for: a party that wants character over polish, or a stop that makes a York weekend feel less like a coach tour.

4. Hexmoor: doing time in a prison for rogue sorcerers

Opened in September 2025 behind iron gates off Hackney Road, Hexmoor casts you as an inmate of a maximum-security prison for wizards convicted of misusing dark magic. It comes from Inventive Productions, the company behind Alcotraz, Avora and Moonshine Saloon, so the format will feel familiar if you have done one of those.

• The concept: one hour 45 of immersive theatre. You are issued a jumpsuit and a file listing your conviction, then handed to Cordelia Constance-Xanthe, the sorceress running the penitentiary. A fireplace opens onto a working wand shop.
• What you’ll drink: three handcrafted cocktails or mocktails, served in character as contraband potions. One is a green gin and elderflower serve that smokes and bubbles, another changes colour as the story moves along.
• The vibe: live actors who never break, cinematic sets and real special effects. No acting is required of you, though the cast rewards anyone who plays along.
• Best for: a corporate party or a birthday group that wants a structured evening rather than an open bar tab.

5. The Washhouse: a laundrette that won’t do your washing

From the pavement, The Washhouse on Shudehill is a working laundrette, machines and magazines included. Pick up the phone in the corner, give the password, and a door opens inside a vending machine.

• The concept: a complete false shopfront leading into a multi-floor bar, with further hidden rooms inside, one of them reached by a slide. Booking is compulsory, and the venue’s own line on this is no booking, no entry.
• What you’ll drink: cocktails served with a lot of ceremony, on a list that rotates through themes. A second hidden bar inside, Kōdo, pours Japanese spirits in a nineties cyberpunk room for up to 45 people.
• The vibe: dark, low and labyrinthine once you are through, with a playlist that leans dirty house rather than lounge jazz.
• Best for: a hen party or any group where you want the arrival itself to be the story people retell.

6. Golf Fang: crazy golf built by graffiti artists

In the Baltic Triangle, inside the old Cains Brewery, Golf Fang is an 18-hole course designed by graffiti artists, which is a more useful description than crazy golf. It is 18 and over only.

• The concept: each hole is a built set rather than a windmill, and the warehouse is painted end to end. Drinks are ordered by QR code as you play, with vending machines dispensing cans around the course. Private karaoke rooms, AR darts and an arcade now sit under the same roof, so you can stack activities into one night.
• What you’ll drink: Liverpool signatures such as Scouse Tan and Gettin’ Bevvied, plus draught, frozen cocktails and bottomless packages on golf, karaoke and darts. The kitchen, Nothing Cheezy, does hand-stretched pizza, loaded fries and fried chicken burgers.
• The vibe: loud and competitive, closer to immersive theatre than to a leisure attraction. It traded as Ghetto Golf until recently, so older reviews and TikToks still use that name.
• Best for: a birthday group or a work team that needs an icebreaker, and a decent template if you are planning your own warehouse party.

7. The Absinthe Parlour: a bar above a cabinet of curiosities

The Absinthe Parlour sits above the Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art and Natural History on Mare Street. Allison Crawbuck and Rhys Everett opened it in 2016, and it is the least manufactured entry on this list, because the collection underneath is a real museum.

• The concept: a bar of velvet and candlelight, with a steep spiral staircase leading down to a wunderkabinett of mermaids, unicorns, two-headed lambs, skeleton fairies and shrunken heads.
• What you’ll drink: the house pour is Devil’s Botany, from the first absinthe distillery in the UK. Cocktails such as Wonder of the Impossible and Soap Bubbles sit alongside a snack list that runs to edible insects.
• The vibe: tarot readings, in-person lectures and menagerie nights where you can handle the animals. Under-18s are admitted only before 5pm and only with an adult.
• Best for: an intimate gathering where you would rather look at a two-headed lamb than a wine list, or a date that needs a talking point.

8. Funny Girls: drag cabaret inside a 1939 Odeon

Funny Girls has been running since 1994 and moved in 2002 into the former Blackpool Odeon, a Grade II listed cinema that opened in 1939 as the largest original Odeon in Britain. Basil Newby restored it in art deco style and still owns it.

• The concept: a drag and cabaret showbar where the building does as much work as the cast. Productions change through the year, with a spring show and a summer show.
• What you’ll drink: standard bar service plus drinks packages built for groups, with the show as the reason you are there rather than the cocktail list.
• The vibe: high camp on a scale Blackpool does better than anywhere, with a cast of drag performers and male dancers, and an audience that runs from hen parties to regulars in their seventies.
• Best for: a big group night that needs no planning beyond the tickets. If it is specifically the art deco cinema look you are after for your own event, you can also hire a cinema space.

9. The Absent Ear: cocktails painted by Glasgow artists

The Absent Ear is hidden somewhere in Merchant City and will not release its address until you have booked. There are no walk-ins. What waits inside is a two-room gallery where every cocktail is built from a commissioned artwork.

• The concept: a speakeasy themed on Vincent van Gogh, where the menu functions as an exhibition. A Glasgow artist produces a piece, then the bar team builds a drink from it.
• What you’ll drink: Fragola-Rama, taken from a work by Sophie Rowan, uses Diplomático Planas rum, manzanilla sherry and strawberry in three forms. Two & a Choux, drawn from Rory Kennedy’s piece Coffee, layers coconut, coffee, birch caramel and pastry cream foam. Liam Grogan leads the drinks development.
• The vibe: small, dark and, in the bar’s own words, delightfully disorientating. Listed in the UK Top 50 Cocktail Bars.
• Best for: a date night, or a drink before dinner in Merchant City for four people rather than fourteen.

10. Little Nan’s: cocktails in teapots under the arches

Under the Grade II listed arches of Deptford Market Yard, part of the 1835 carriage ramp built for the first railway line in London, Little Nan’s is Tristan Scutt’s tribute to his grandmother Jojo.

• The concept: a nan’s front room pushed to breaking point. Leopard print, royal memorabilia, fairy lights, plastic houseplants, doilies and nineties tat, with menus written in felt tip and covered in boy band stickers.
• What you’ll drink: more than 90 cocktails served in vintage teapots, teacups and vases, plus beer in a teapot and Werther’s Original vodka shots. Food is disco fries, fish finger sandwiches and pizza.
• The vibe: joyfully unserious, with Pat Butcher boozy brunches and a disco soundtrack. A larger sister venue opened across the road in 2024, and the fabric work in its ballroom was made by a set builder whose team won an Oscar for Wicked.
• Best for: a bridal shower or a birthday brunch that refuses to be tasteful.

11. The Milk Thistle: a whisky vault in a listed house

The Milk Thistle occupies four floors of a mid-19th century Grade II listed building on Colston Avenue, with nothing on the door to tell you it is there. It is the sister of Hyde & Co, the bar that started the Bristol prohibition revival.

• The concept: four distinct rooms rather than one bar. The Parlour on the ground floor, a lounge above it, a hidden whisky vault and The Attic, a dining room and bar used for private parties. Oak panelling and stained glass throughout.
• What you’ll drink: a regularly changing list of classics and house creations, and one of the strongest whisky collections in the region, used for paired whisky dinners.
• The vibe: hushed rather than raucous, and reads like a private members club that mislaid its members. House spirits are ECO, delivered by a zero-emission service, which is rare enough in the sector to be worth knowing.
• Best for: a private dining room style evening for a small group, or a proper drink before dinner in the old city.

12. The Spirit Circle: let your senses order for you

Across four floors of the 1897 National Bank Building on High Street, above The National Bar, The Spirit Circle runs two experiences that have almost nothing to do with decor.

• The concept: Sensorium is two and a half hours of sensory experiments designed to work out which drink your palate actually wants, including a test for whether you are a supertaster. Belfast by the Glass runs 90 minutes and tells the story of the city across six drinks and six chapters, with projections on the walls.
• What you’ll drink: four cocktails on Sensorium, six themed drinks on Belfast by the Glass, running from light and dark beer through to Irish whiskey punch. Non-alcoholic versions are available on both.
• The vibe: you move between rooms as the session progresses and finish on the rooftop. The talk of your subconscious is the venue’s own framing rather than a scientific claim, and the experiments themselves are good fun regardless.
• Best for: a group who want an activity rather than a bar tab, or a team meeting that needs an evening component people will actually turn up to.

What if none of these bars fits the bill?

It happens. Half of these need booking weeks ahead, several are ticketed by the session, and a few cap out at a dozen people. If your idea is a speakeasy engagement party for forty, or a Halloween night with your own DJ and your own bar, none of the twelve will bend to it.

That is where hiring by the hour changes the arithmetic. A converted loft with industrial character, a rooftop with a view over the city, a house with a garden for the overspill, or a restaurant available for a full buy-out. You bring your own caterer, your own drinks and your own theme, and once you have counted the round-buying, it often works out cheaper per head than a ticketed experience.

So either book one of the twelve above, or build the strange night you actually had in mind. Britain has room for both.