The Natural History Museum
A cathedral to nature where a blue whale skeleton hangs in the hall, and the building's walls are decorated with carved monkeys, lizards and ferns.
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Quick Facts
- Location
- Cromwell Road, South Kensington, London
- Built
- Construction 1873 to 1880; opened to the public on 18 April 1881
- Architect
- Alfred Waterhouse, who took over from Francis Fowke's design
- Style
- Romanesque Revival, clad in blue-grey and buff terracotta
- Founding figure
- Richard Owen, the first superintendent of the natural history departments of the British Museum
- Star exhibit
- Hope, a blue whale skeleton, hung in Hintze Hall since 2017
- Collection
- About 80 million specimens
- Visitor numbers
- Over 5 million in 2019, among the busiest attractions in the UK
A palace of terracotta, with a zoo carved into the walls
Look closely at the front of the Natural History Museum and you will find the animal kingdom crawling all over it. Alfred Waterhouse covered the building in terracotta tiles, and moulded into them are animals, birds, reptiles and plants. The west wing is decorated with living species, and the east wing with extinct ones. The choice of terracotta was practical as well as pretty. Waterhouse chose it partly because it was durable and could be washed clean in London's polluted air. The museum's terracotta is unglazed. The result looks like a Romanesque cathedral, with arches, towers and a grand central hall. That was deliberate. The Victorians saw the study of nature as something close to a sacred pursuit.
The man who wanted dinosaurs to have a home
The museum exists largely because of Richard Owen, the anatomist who coined the word "dinosaur" in 1842. He was superintendent of the natural history collections at the British Museum in Bloomsbury, and he was running out of room. Owen campaigned for a separate building where the whole natural world could be displayed on a grand scale. The government eventually bought land in South Kensington, where the site had hosted the 1862 International Exhibition. The original architect, Francis Fowke, died in 1865. Alfred Waterhouse was appointed in 1866 to take over the project, and he swapped Fowke's Renaissance proposal for a very different Romanesque design. Work ran from 1873 to 1880, and the doors opened in 1881.
Dippy, Hope and the great hall
For decades, visitors entered under the gaze of a Diplodocus cast nicknamed Dippy, a plaster replica of a skeleton found in Wyoming. It was presented to the museum in 1905, and copies of the cast were sent as diplomatic gifts to other countries. In 2017 Dippy was moved away to tour the UK, and the hall received a new centrepiece: Hope, the skeleton of a blue whale. She is suspended in a diving pose, which gives the vast hall a sense of motion. The animal was washed ashore in Wexford, Ireland, in 1891 and has been in the collection since 1892. The central space is now called Hintze Hall. Look up to see the painted ceiling panels, which show plants from around the world.
What Darwin's world left behind
The collections are astonishing in scale: around 80 million specimens, from beetles and fossils to meteorites and minerals. Many were gathered by explorers and naturalists during the age of empire, and the museum holds material connected to Charles Darwin and other great names in science. The building also contains a statue of Darwin, which sits on the main staircase. It wasn't always there. In 1927 a statue of Richard Owen replaced Darwin's in that spot, a twist for two men who had been rivals. Darwin's statue returned in 2008, ahead of the bicentenary of his birth in 2009. Behind the public galleries, researchers still work on the collections. The museum is a working science institution, not just a display case.
Myths, wartime scars and things to spot
A common misconception is that the museum is still part of the British Museum. In fact it became independent in 1963, though its link to the older institution runs back to the 1750s. The Second World War left its mark too. Bombing in 1940 damaged parts of the building, and repairs followed. When you visit, look for the carved creatures on the walls and pillars, including monkeys climbing the stonework in the main hall. Then head to the Earth Hall, where an escalator rises through a giant metal globe. For many people the dinosaur gallery is the highlight, and the animatronic Tyrannosaurus rex is the one that makes children shriek.
Notable people
- Alfred Waterhouse
- Richard Owen
- Francis Fowke
- Charles Darwin
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