UK – London – South Kensington: Natural History Museum
Image by wallyg
The Natural History Museum is home to life and earth science collections comprising some 70 million items. There are five main collections: Botany, Entomology, Mineralogy, Palaeontology and Zoology. There is also a wgildlife garden containing native fauna and flora. The museum is renowned for its exhibition of dinosaur skeletons, particularly the large Diplodocus cast which dominates the entrance.
The foundation of the collection was a bequest by Irish doctor Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753). Sloane’s collection, which included dried plants, and animal and human skeletons, was initially housed in Montague House, home of the British Museum, in Bloomsbury in 1756. In the late 1850s, Professor Richard Owen, Superintendent of the natural history departments of the British Museum saw a need for a bigger, separate building. Land in South Kensington was purchased, and in 1864 a design competition was held. The winning entry was submitted by Captain Francis Fowke who died shortly afterwards. Alfred Waterhouse substantially revised the agreed plans, and designed the façades in his own Romanesque style. Work began in 1873 and the museum opened in 1881, although the move from the old museum was not fully completed until 1883.
Both the interiors and exteriors made extensive use of terracotta brick to resist the sooty climate of Victorian London. The terracotta for the interior and exterior was made by the famous Gibbs And Canning Limited of Tamworth. The bricks include images of plants, animals and fossils. The central axis of the museum is aligned with the tower of Imperial College London (formerly the Imperial Institute) and the Royal Albert Hall and Albert Memorial further north, forming the complex known colloquially as Albertopolis. The building is a Grade I Listed Building by the English Heritage.
Legally, it remained a department of the British Museum with the formal name British Museum (Natural History), often abbreviated in the scientific literature as B.M.(N.H.) or BMNH. In 1963, the Natural History Museum became an independent museum with its own Board of Trustees, and in 1986 absorbed the adjacent Geological Museum of the British Geological Survey. However, it was not until the Museums and Galleries Act of 1992 that the Museum’s formal title was finally changed from B.M.(N.H.) to The Natural History Museum.
The newly-developed Darwin Centre (named after Charles Darwin) holds a collection of millions of preserved specimens, interactive materials and new workspaces for the Museum’s scientific staff. The Darwin Centre is also home to Archie the squid, an 8 metre long giant squid taken alive in a fishing net near the Falkland Islands. The museum also holds the remains and bones of the River Thames Whale that lost its way in January 2006.
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