The Natural History Museum, together with the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Science Museum are the three large museums on Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London. It faces Cromwell Road.
The Natural History Museum has some 70 million items broken into five main categories: Botany, Entomology, Mineralogy, Palaeontology and Zoology. It is a world-renowned centre of research, specialising in taxonomy, identification and conservation. The specimens include those collected by Charles Darwin, so they are of scientific as well as historical value.
The Natural History Museum is famous for its spectacular exhibits of dinosaur skeletons. Its ornate architecture is also awe-inspiring, lending it to be dubbed the "Cathedral of Nature". The Natural History Museum originally was part of the British Museum. Indeed, up to 1992, it was known formally as the British Museum (Natural History). Its abbreviation was BMNH. It was through the British Museum Act 1963 that the British Museum (Natural History) became an independent entity. Then in 1992, with the Museums and Galleries Act, the museum finally adopted the name of Natural History Museum.
The museum's collection began when Dr Hans Sloane allowed his collections to be bought over by the British Government at a price well below market value. Sloane's collection included dried plants, and animal as well as human skeletons. They were initially housed at the British Museum's premises at Montagnue House House in Bloomsbury in 1756.
Front facade of the Natural History Museum
Photo: Diliff, GNU Free Documentation License
The main hall of the Natural History Museum
Photo: Eusebius, GNU Free Documentation License
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Large Mammals Hall, Natural History Museum
Photo: Brendan Adkins, GNU Free Documentation License
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In 1850, Professor Robert Owen, the Superintendent of the natural history departments of the British Museum, realised that space was running out. He needed a bigger, separate building for the growing collection. A piece of land at South Kensington was purchased for the purpose and in 1864, a competition was held to design the new museum building. The competition was won by Captain Francis Fawke, who died shortly afterward. The design was taken over by Alfred Waterhouse, who significantly altered it, and designed a façade in his own idiosyncratic Romanesque style. Work began in 1873, and the new museum building, called the Waterhouse Building, was occupied from 1881, though moving was not completed until 1883.
Terracotta tiles are used on both the interior and exterior of the Waterhouse Building. This is to resist the sooty climate of Victorian London. The tiles and bricks show sculptures of flora and fauna, with the existing and the extinct separated to the west and east wings of the museum. This is done because Professor Robert Owens want to rebut Darwin's attempt at linking present species with the past through his theory of natural selection.
The central axis of the Natural History Museum is aligned with the tower of Imperial College London (formerly the Imperial Institute), Royal Albert Hall and the Albert Memorial. Together these organisations form a complex known colloquially as Albertopolis.
External Site
Official website of the Natural History Museum
Another view of the main entrance of the cathedral-like Natural History Museum
public domain
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