Natural History Museum
Not to be confused with the Museum of Natural History. |  | An 1881 plan showing the original arrangement of the Museum. |
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 | The entrance to the Earth Galleries |
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| The architectural detail on the facade of the building represents the contents of the Museum |
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The Museum from the south east |
The
Natural History Museum is one of three large
museums on
Exhibition Road,
South Kensington,
London (the others are the
Science Museum and the
Victoria and Albert Museum). Its main frontage is on
Cromwell Road. The 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 wildlife 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 (
1660â€"
1753). Sloane's collection, which included dried plants, and animal and human skeletons, was initially housed in
Montague House in
Bloomsbury in
1756, which was the home of the
British Museum. In the late
1850s, Professor
Richard Owen, Superintendent of the natural history departments of the British Museum saw that the natural history departments needed a bigger, separate building.
Land in South Kensington was purchased, and in
1864 a competition was held to design the new museum. The winning entry was submitted by Captain
Francis Fowke who died shortly afterwards. The scheme was taken over by
Alfred Waterhouse who substantially revised the agreed plans, and designed the façades in his own idiosyncratic
Romanesque style. Work began in
1873 and was completed in
1880. The new 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 bricks 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. These all form part of the complex known colloquially as
Albertopolis.
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.). 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.
Between
1974 and
1988 the
Geological Museum became world-famous for exhibitions including an active volcano model and an earthquake machine, and housed the world's first computer-enhanced exhibition (
Treasures of the Earth). The museum's galleries were completely rebuilt and relaunched in
1998 as a multimedia exhibition entitled
The Earth Galleries. In the
1990s, the other departments in the Waterhouse building were retitled
The Life Galleries. The Natural History Museum's own Mineralogy displays remain unchanged as an example of the 19th-century display techniques of the Waterhouse building.
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. Lectures and demonstrations occur daily, and are sometimes webcast. The shared space is designed to bring visitors into close contact with working scientists. Phase one of the Darwin Centre has been completed, and houses the
Zoological department's spirit collections â€" organisms preserved in
alcohol. Phase two of the project will bring the
Entomology collections and
Botanical collections under the same (new) roof.
As of 2005, the Entomology Department is storing its collection before the building is pulled down and replaced.
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 squid is currently on display in a prominent position in the large specimen room, in a reinforced glass tank containing a mixture of
formaldehyde and
saline solution.
The museum holds the remains and bones of the
River Thames Whale that lost its way on 20 January 2006 and ended up in the
Thames. Despite major rescue attempts, the Bottlenose Whale died shortly before it was due to be released back into open waters, when it suffered a convulsion and died on board the barge taking it toward the sea. These bones were donated following a campaign by
The Sun newspaper. They will not however be put on display and are instead in their warehouse for the storage of the larger collections such as mammals and paleontology in Wandsworth.
The closest
London Underground station is
South Kensington â€" there is a tunnel from the station that emerges close to the entrances of all three musuems. Admission is free to all, though there are donation boxes in the foyer.
*
Official website*
Kids website*
Darwin Centre webcast page*
Research and Curation site*
Library and Archives website*
Picture Library*
Search all online collections and research data*
Website of the daughter Museum at Tring, Hertfordshire
