MUSEUMS

See Also: THE BRITISH MUSEUM; GALLERIES; HERITAGE; LEARNED SOCIETIES; LIBRARIES; THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM; PERIOD PROPERTIES Period Rooms; PHILANTHROPY; PHYSIOLOGY The Hunterian Museum; TAXIDERMY; TRANSPORT FOR LONDON The London Transport Museum

The Ashmolean

John Tradescant the younger's Musaeum Tradescantium was the first printed catalogue of an English collection of curios. This was bequeathed to Elias Ashmole, who in turn left it to University of Oxford. The Ashmolean Museum (1683) in Broad Street, Oxford, (which came to be known as the Old Ashmolean) was Britain's first public museum.

See Also: PLANTS The Tradescants; WATER SUPPLY The New River Company

Website: https://ashmole.com/elias-ashmole-history

The Design Museum

The Design Museum is a museum of contemporary design. It was established with the support of the designer and restaurateur Sir Terence Conran. In 1989 the institution opened in a former banana warehouse on Shad Thames.

In 2013 it was the case that changes were being made to the former Commonwealth Institute building on Kensington High Street. This was so that it could become the new home of the Design Museum. At its Shad Thames home the Museum had only hosted exhibitions. However, its new West London one it was planning to display a permanent collection of its own

Location: 224-238 Kensington High Street, W8 6NQ. Present home. (purple, pink)

28 Shad Thames, SE1 2YD. Former home.

See Also: FRINGE THEATRES & SMALL THEATRES The Donmar Warehouse; LONDON UNDERGROUND The Underground Map; MUSEUMS The Museum of Brands, Packaging & Advertising; MUSEUMS The Museum of The Home

Website: www.designmuseum.org www.oma.eu (The alternations to the former Commonwealth Institute building were designed by the OMA. Rem Koolhaas is one of the firm's partners.)

The Grant Museum

The Grant Museum is a small natural history museum. Its collection includes the remains of a number of animals that have become extinct, e.g. the dodo, the quagga (a variety of zebra), and the thylcacine (the Tasmanian tiger).

While living in Edinburgh, Robert Grant gave up his medical career in order to devote himself to the study of invertebrate zoology and marine biology. He came to believe that sponges were the key to understanding natural history. He became an adherent of the French naturalist Lamarck. The young Charles Darwin spent a period studying at the city's university. For a while he was a close associate of the lapsed physician.

Grant identified himself with a number of progressive social campaigns and reformist political causes. These stances facilitated his appointment to be the inaugural Professor of Zoology at London's University College. Subsequently, the institution also conferred its chair of Comparative Anatomy upon him.

In the early 1830s he was one of the leading scientists in Britain. However, amongst his peers the Lamarckian approach started to lose ground to the Cuvierian one. His response to the new school's ideas was to ignore them. As a result, his scholarly standing began to decline. In the middle and late 1830s there was a reaction to the preceding liberal era. The professor's radical, non-scientific opinions compounded the process by which he became increasingly a marginal figure. In 1836 H.M.S. Beagle returned to Britain, Darwin assessed the nature of the prevailing intellectual trends and opted to keep a distance between himself and his former mentor.

Grant had the misfortune to have Richard Owen of the Royal College of Surgeons as his principal professional rival. The younger man was a far more adept career politician that the academic was. Owen sided with the reactionary elements within the Zoological Society of London in opposition to the professor. The former and his associates prevailed in part because the latter had a tendency to make Achilles-like withdrawals. As a result, the principal resource for comparative anatomy in London passed out of the older man's orbit.

The professor allowed his own research to slide. He was poorly paid. He compensated for this by giving hundreds of lectures every year at a range of educational establishments. He delivered these while attired in evening dress. As the decades passed, the garment, like the discourses, became ever more anachronistic.

Grant was sympathetic to the ideas that were set out in Origin of Species (1859). However, T.H. Huxley, for his part, did not believe that the professor's public support would help advance the standing of Darwinian evolution.

Location: The Rockefeller Building, 21 University Street, WC1E 6DE (purple, pink)

See Also: THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM; UNIVERSITIES Imperial College, T.H. Huxley; UNIVERSITIES University College

Website: www.ucl.ac.uk/culture/grant-museum-zoology

Dodo

In 1662 the last recorded sighting of a dodo was made by Volkert Evertsz, a Dutchman.

In 2003 the scientific journal Nature published a statistical analysis by researchers at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts. This indicated that the likeliest extinction date for the dodo was 1690 but that the species may have survived until as late as 1797.

See Also: BIRDS

The Horniman Museum & Gardens

In 1840 John Horniman invented a machine that could package goods in sealed packets. He established a tea packaging venture. His sons William Henry and Frederick John Horniman entered the firm, which, in 1868 became W.H. & F.J. Horniman & Company. By the 1890s it was the biggest tea business in the world.

As a child, Frederick collected curious objects. As he grew older the amount he could spend increased exponentially. He used travellers and missionaries as agents for acquiring artefacts. In time, he started to travel extensively himself. In 1868 he acquired Surrey House in Forest Hill. Eventually the tea magnate's collection became so large that he moved out of the property into the neighbouring Surrey Mount. In 1890 he opened Surrey House as a public museum. In 1901 an extension was completed that consisted of two large galleries and a tower. These were designed by Charles Harrison Townsend. Soon afterwards the house, its grounds, and Horniman's collection were given to the London County Council to hold on behalf of the people of London.

In 1903 the Museum acquired a public aquarium. Horniman's son Emslie Horniman presented the institution with the financial means to build a lecture hall and a library.

(In 1918 J. Lyons acquired a controlling interest in the Horniman tea business.)

The Horniman has the remains of a man-eating tiger.

Location: 100 London Road, Forest Hill, SE23 3PQ

See Also: LOCAL GOVERNMENT The London County Council; PHILANTHROPY The Wellcome Trust; TAXIDERMY The Horniman Walrus; TEA

Website: www.horniman.ac.uk

The Imperial War Museum

The politician and government minister Sir Alfred Mond forwarded the idea for what became the Imperial War Museum. His family wealth derived from Brunner, Mond & Company, a chemicals business. During the First World War the firm manufactured armaments.

In 1917 the Cabinet resolved that a museum should be established to hold material about the Great War (the First World War). The Imperial War Museum has one of Britain's largest film archives. When it was established in 1919 Kodak and government chemists gave advice on film preservation. The following year an Act of Parliament was passed to enable the institution to be set up. It opened later that year in the Crystal Palace. In 1936 the museum moved to its present site in the former Bedlam Hospital (1815).¹

Alan Borg, a former Director of the Imperial War Museum, is reputed to have once remarked that the institution's name was formed from the three most off-putting words in the English language .

The museum has a number of satellites: the Churchill Museum & Cabinet War Museums, H.M.S. Belfast, I.W.M. Duxford, and I.W.M. North.

Location: Lambeth Road, SE1 6HZ

See Also: THE ARMY The National Army Museum; WINSTON CHURCHILL The Cabinet War Rooms; GALLERIES Military Art; LIBRARIES The Wiener Library; MEMORIALS The Cenotaph; MENTAL HEALTH Bedlam; THE NAVY H.M.S. Belfast

Website: www.iwm.org.uk

¹. Bedlam's two wings were demolished after the hospital had vacated the site and before the museum had moved in.

The Museum of Brands, Packaging & Advertising

The Museum of Brands, Packaging & Advertising uses household products to portray the history of consumer culture. It evolved out of the Robert Opie Collection.

Location: The London Lighthouse, 111-117 Lancaster Road, W11 1QT. The former London Lighthouse building. (blue, turquoise)

See Also: CATS Hello Charmmy Kitty; MUSEUMS The Design Museum

Website: www.museumofbrands.com www.robertopiecollection.com

The Museum of The Home

The Geffrye Museum in Hackney occupies a former alms house that was founded in 1715 under the will of Sir Robert Geffrye for members of the Ironmongers Company. Sir Robert had made his wealth through the East India Company and had served as Lord Mayor of London in 1686. In 1911 the building was sold to the London County Council, which used it to house a furniture museum. This evolved into being the Geffrye. The building has eleven period rooms that would have existed in the homes of middling people over the period from 1600 to the present.

In 2019 The Geffrye Museum was renamed The Museum of The Home.

Location: 136 Kingsland Road, E2 8EA (red, grey)

See Also: MUSEUMS The Design Museum; PERIOD PROPERTIES Period Rooms; SOCIAL WELFARE Alms Houses

Website: www.museumofthehome.org.uk

The Museum of London

The Museum of London came into being because Donald Harden, the Director of the London Museum, and Norman Cook, the Director of the Guildhall Museum, concluded that the city would be served best by their institutions being merged with one another. Both men struggled hard for their joint vision to come into being. Formally, they had both retired from their positions before the Museum opened in 1976.

In 2008 The Museum of London had 17,000 skeletons in its possession.

Location: 150 London Wall, EC2Y 5HN. Former home.

1 Warehouse, West India Quay, E14 4AL

See Also: THE CITY OF LONDON; COACHES The Lord Mayor's Coach; THE DOCKS The Museum of London Docklands; LONDON; ROMAN REMAINS; SPECIALIST BOOKSHOPS London Bookshops, The Museum of London

Website: www.museumoflondon.org.uk

The Ranger's House, Greenwich Park

The Ranger's House (1723) was built as a private residence. In 1815 the Crown bought the property. The building now houses the Wernher Collection.

In the early 1870s Julius Wernher joined the London and Paris-based diamond trading business of Jules Porg's. The young German soon became trusted by his employer and was sent out to represent the firm in South Africa's Kimberley diamond field. The smallness of the claims there and the chaos that this generated meant that there was scope for well-organised, properly financed companies to manage the field's consolidation. Wernher founded Compagnie Fran aise des Mines du Cap in 1880 to participate in this process. Four years later Alfred Beit joined the Porg's firm. The new partner had good relations with Cecil Rhodes, who controlled De Beers. Wernher was thus able to establish a constructive dialogue with Rhodes, who, in 1887, bought the French Company . In 1886 gold was discovered in Witwatersrand. Wernher, Beit & Company, as the Porg's business had been renamed, proved to be able to establish itself as one of the operators that came to dominate the field.

Wernher used part of his vast wealth to purchase Medieval and Renaissance works of art. His son married Anastasia Mikhailovna, a member of the wider Russian imperial family. She was the heiress of a notable collection of artefacts. These, together with Sir Julius's collection, were displayed to the public at the family's Luton Hoo estate. In 1991 the property was sold. The collection came to be housed in The Ranger's House.

Location: The Ranger's House, Chesterfield Walk, Greenwich Park, SE10 8QX

82 Piccadilly, W1J 9DZ. Wernher s townhouse. (purple, blue)

See Also: ART DEALERS, DISAPPEARED The Duveens; PARKS Greenwich Park

Website: www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/rangers-house-the-wernher-collection

The Science Museum

In 1898 a Parliamentary Select Committee recommended that the South Kensington Museum should be divided into scientific and artistic sections - the Science Museum and what became the Victoria & Albert Museum. In 1913 the former body moved westwards across Exhibition Road to its present site.

Location: Exhibition Road, SW7 2DD (red, turquoise)

Website: www.sciencemuseum.org.uk

The Sir John Soane Museum

The Sir John Soane Museum (1813) building was designed and built by the architect Sir John Soane, who lived in it until his death. Previously, he had resided at No. 12 (1792), which he had also created.

In 1833 Sir John obtained an Act of Parliament that still preserves Nos. 13-14 Lincoln's Inn Fields as a public museum. The knight stipulated that his collection of paintings, sculptures, books, and architectural fittings should be neither disturbed nor augmented. Thus, the Museum has retained its original character. It contains William Hogarth's original The Rake's Progress (1735) series of paintings.

Soane was fixated by a shape that was akin to that of a pocket handkerchief held down at the corners. He used it for the dining room of his house in Lincoln's Inn Fields and for his own grave in St Pancras Old Church.¹

Location: 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields, WC2A 3BP (blue, orange)

Pitshangar Manor, The Green, Ealing, W5 5DA. Soane's country house.

St Pancras Old Church, Pancras Road, NW1 1UL. His grave. (purple, pink)

See Also: GALLERIES Dulwich Picture Gallery; WILLIAM HOGARTH; MUSEUMS; PERIOD PROPERTIES Period Houses; STREET FURNITURE Telephone Boxes

Website: www.soane.org

¹. The motif was used by Giles Gilbert Scott (d.1960) for the roof of the K2 red telephone box.

A Staff Contribution

It has been claimed that one member of a certain, world-renowned museum's staff made a singular contribution to the institution's collection.

Somewhere in or near London is a large warehouse in which the museum stores many of the artefacts that it is not displaying. In order to check that nothing untoward is happening, people patrol the building. There is a story that it used to be the institution's practice to have single individuals perambulate the facility. One gentleman embarked upon his rounds. He did not return. It was assumed that he had taken some alternative employment and had not informed the museum's personnel department of his departure from the institution's service. Time passed. One day another member of staff came across a desiccated body that not only did not have an acquisition number attached to it but which was robed in contemporary dress. Thereafter, the museum instituted a policy of always having its staff patrol the warehouse in pairs.

Umbrella Bodies

The Exhibition Road Cultural Group

The Exhibition Road Cultural Group is made up of museums and educational institutions that are located close to South Kensington's Exhibition Road.

See Also: DEVELOPMENTS Albertpolis

Website: www.discoversouthken.com

Museum Mile

Museum Mile is a collection of museums that are located between Euston Road and the north bank of the Thames. Running north to south they are: The British Library, The Wellcome Foundation, The U.C.L. Museums & Collections, The Foundling Museum, The Brunei Gallery (S.O.A.S.), The Charles Dickens Museum, The British Museum, Sir John Soane's Museum, The Library & Museum of Freemasonry, The Royal Opera House, The Hunterian Museum at The Royal College of Surgeons, The London Transport Museum, and The Courtauld Gallery.

Website: www.ucl.ac.uk/culture/about-us/museum-mile.london

The Victoria & Albert Museum¹

The Victoria & Albert Museum is a museum of the applied arts.

Sir Henry Cole and Prince Albert set up the Museum of Manufactures. This opened in Marlborough House in 1852; its collection incorporated that of the Central School of Practical Art. This included a number of exhibits that had been bought by the government at the end of the Great Exhibition. In 1853 the institution changed its name to the Museum of Ornamental Art. Four years later it was merged with the School of Design (founded in 1837) to form the South Kensington Museum. The site became known as the Brompton Boilers.

In 1884 the National Art Library opened within the Museum. In 1899 the latter, after a heavy hint from Queen Victoria, renamed itself in honour of her and her late husband.

The V. & A. contains some works of fine art. It has collections of drawings by Raphael and paintings by John Constable, as well as numerous statues. The institution has a number of satellites. These include the Museum of Childhood in east London's Bethnal Green.

In the post-Second World era the V.& A.'s circulation department was the only portion of the museum that had a strong interest in the post-1830s. The department was headed by Peter Floud, an enigmatic Communist. Together with his colleagues Elizabeth, Shirley Bury, and Barbara Morris (n e Trotman) (1918-2009), he organised the 1952 Victorian and Edwardian Decorative Arts exhibition. These proved far more popular than had been anticipated and placed the museum at the forefront of the revival of interest in matters Victorian.

In 1982 the Victoria & Albert Museum opened The Boilerhouse Project to provide an exhibition space for the display of modern design. The project was underwritten by the retailer Terence Conran. Its initial director was Stephen Bayley

In 1992 the V.& A. appointed its first plastics conservator.

Location: Cromwell Gardens, SW7 2RL (orange, grey)

See Also: ART COLLEGES The Royal College of Art; CHRISTMAS Christmas Cards; CLOTHES DESIGN ASSOCIATED The Fashion & Textile Museum; CLOTHES SHOPS, DISAPPEARED; EXHIBITIONS The Great Exhibition of 1851; PUBS Pub Names, The Black Lion; THEATRE RELATED The Victoria & Albert Museum; TOYS & GAMES The Museum of Childhood

Website: www.vam.ac.uk

^1. See Also: EXHIBITIONS The Great Exhibition of 1851

The Wallace Collection

The art and artefacts in the Wallace Collection date from Renaissance and Early Modern periods. Within Britain, the institution's best-known item is Frans Hals's painting The Laughing Cavalier (1624).

In 1797 Manchester House (1788) (subsequently Hertford House) was leased to the 3^rd Marquis of Hertford. The peer married an illegitimate daughter of the Marchesa Fagnani. Both the 4^th Duke of Queensberry and George Selwyn believed themselves to be the father of the marchioness. Therefore, they both left her large bequests. The Seymour-Conway family's fortune was thereby increased. The marquis spent much of his life living in Europe. He utilised the opportunities created by France's political instability to become a major purchaser of ancien r gime art and artefacts. In his later years the peer led a dissipated lifestyle and thus became the basis for characters in novels that Benjamin Disraeli and William Makepeace Thackeray wrote.

The 4^th marquis was raised by his mother largely in Paris. He lived principally in France and devoted himself to collecting objects of beauty. His tastes were broader and deeper than those of his father had been. He too availed himself of the opportunities that France's political instability engendered. In 1848 there was a series of revolutions across Europe. The peer appreciated the benefits of Britain's political stability; in 1850 he began to store items in Hertford House. He never married. Sir Richard Wallace was his illegitimate son by a Mrs Agnes Jackson. While the peer never acknowledged his paternity of Wallace, he left him his collection and his fortune. Following the death of the knight's widow, Lady Wallace's (d.1897), Hertford House became a public museum.

Location: Hertford House, Manchester Square, W1U 3BN (blue, red)

See Also: FIRE The Pantechnicon; TOWNHOUSES

Website: www.wallacecollection.org

David Backhouse 2024