The ceilings of the Natural History Museum are a pair of decorated ceilings in the main Central Hall (officially Hintze Hall since 2014) and smaller North Hall of the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, London, unveiled at the building's opening in 1881. They were designed by the museum's architect Alfred Waterhouse and painted by the artist Charles James Lea. The ceiling of the Central Hall consists of 162 panels, 108 of which depict plants considered significant to the history of the museum, to the British Empire or the museum's visitors and the remainder are highly stylised decorative botanical paintings.
Introduction
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Introduction
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who designed the ceilings of the natural history museum in london?
user
Alfred Waterhouse
assistant
what drawings do those depict?
user
The central hall depicts plants considered significant to the history of the museum, o the British Empire and the smaller North Hall depicts plants growing in the British Isles.
assistant
what special antique pieces will you find under that roof?
user
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assistant
are they any room sections in the museum that come that ceiling?
user
The design was intended to draw the viewer's eye upwards, and to give the impression that the plants are growing.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Main ceiling
The ceiling of the smaller North Hall consists of 36 panels, 18 of which depict plants growing in the British Isles. Painted directly onto the plaster of the ceilings, they also make use of gilding for visual effect. The natural history collections had originally shared a building with their parent institution the British Museum, but with the expansion of the British Empire there was a significant increase in both public and commercial interest in natural history, and in the number of specimens added to the museum's natural history collections. In 1860 it was agreed that a separate museum of natural history would be created in a large building, capable of displaying the largest specimens, such as whales.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Introduction
Between the main entrance and the landing of the main staircase, the lower two rows of panels all have a pale cream background, intended to draw the viewer's attention to the plant being illustrated; each plant chosen was considered significant either to visitors, or to the museum itself. Each block of three columns depicts a different species, but all have a broadly similar design. The central column in the lowest row depicts the trunk or stalk of the plant in question, while the panels on either side and the three panels of the row above depict the branches of the plant spreading from the lower central panel.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Main ceiling
The ceiling of the smaller North Hall comprises just four rows of panels. The two uppermost rows are of a simple design of heraldic symbols of the then constituent countries of the United Kingdom; each panel in the lower two rows depicts a different plant found in Britain or Ireland, in keeping with the room's intended purpose as a display of British natural history.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Introduction
As with the rest of the Hall, the ceiling is still divided into blocks of nine panels. The archaic panels still run the full length, providing a thematic and visual connection with the rest of the ceiling. The six lower panels of each set do not depict a single plant spreading across each set of panels; instead, each of the 36 panels in the lower two rows depicts a different plant. These each represent a plant considered of particular significance to the British Empire.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | South landing
The ceilings of the Natural History Museum are a pair of decorated ceilings in the main Central Hall (officially Hintze Hall since 2014) and smaller North Hall of the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, London, unveiled at the building's opening in 1881. They were designed by the museum's architect Alfred Waterhouse and painted by the artist Charles James Lea. The ceiling of the Central Hall consists of 162 panels, 108 of which depict plants considered significant to the history of the museum, to the British Empire or the museum's visitors and the remainder are highly stylised decorative botanical paintings.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Introduction
During the construction of the building Waterhouse had been under intense pressure from the trustees to cut costs, and consequently was forced to abandon his proposed wooden ceiling. Instead, beneath a slate roof, the ceilings were constructed of lath and plaster. The ribs that frame the panels were reinforced with animal hair, but the panels themselves were not reinforced. As a consequence, the ceiling panels are unusually susceptible to vibration and to expansion and contraction caused by temperature variations. The elaborate nature of the building's design means that its roof slopes at multiple angles, with numerous gutters and gullies, all of which are easily blocked by leaves and wind-blown detritus.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Deterioration, restoration and conservation
Knapp & Press (2005) speculate that the apparent lack of public interest in the design of the ceiling could be owing to the prevalence of William Morris's ornate floral wallpaper and fabric designs rendering the decorations of the ceiling less unusual to Victorian audiences than might be expected.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | After completion
The ceiling of the balconies flanking the Central Hall are also decorated, albeit to a far more simple design. The ceilings are painted with a stencilled motif of square panels, each containing a small illustration of a different plant or animal. All the birds and insects from the archaic panels are included; the panels also feature cacti, cockatoos, crabs, daisies, fish, hawks, lizards, octopuses, pinecones, pomegranates, snails and snakes. The ceilings of the lobbies at the northern end of each balcony—originally the entrances to the museum's refreshment room—are each decorated with a single large panel of stencilled birds, insects, butterflies and paterae.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Balconies
The panels are arranged in blocks of nine. The two central, uppermost rows (55–108) constitute the archaic panels. Of the outer two rows, in the six blocks at the southern end of the hall above the landing and the main entrance (1–18 and 109–126) each panel depicts a different plant considered of particular significance to the British Empire, while the twelve six-panel blocks above the main hall (19–54 and 127–162) each depict a single plant considered of particular importance to visitors or to the history of the museum, spreading across six panels.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Central Hall panels
The ceiling of the Central Hall consists of six rows of painted panels, three on each side of the roof's apex. Above the landing at the southern end of the building, the ceiling is divided into nine-panel blocks. The uppermost three panels in each block consist of what Waterhouse termed "archaic" panels, depicting stylised plants on a green background. Each of the lower six panels in each block depicts a plant considered of particular significance to the British Empire, against a pale background. Above the remainder of the Central Hall the archaic panels remain in the same style, but each set of six lower panels depicts a single plant, spreading across the six panels and against the same pale background; these represent plants considered of particular significance either to visitors, or to the history of the museum.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Introduction
The lowest of the beams, separating the panels from the skylights, is painted deep burgundy and is labelled with the scientific name of the plant depicted in the panels above; the names are flanked with a motif of gilt dots and highly stylised roses. At Owen's request, the plants were labelled with their binomial names rather than their English names, as he felt this would serve an educational purpose to visitors. Other than on the outermost edges of the panels at the two ends of the hall, each set of nine panels is flanked alongside the girders by an almost abstract design of leaves; these decorations continue along the space between the skylights and the girders to reach the terracotta walls below, providing a visible connection between the walls and the ceiling designs.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Main ceiling
Waterhouse and Lea's design for the ceiling is based on a theme of growth and power. From the skylights on each side, three rows of panels run the length of the main hall, with the third, uppermost rows on each side meeting at the apex of the roof. The two lower rows are divided into blocks of six panels apiece, each block depicting a different plant species. Plants spread their branches upwards towards the apex, representing the theme of growth. The supporting girders of the ceiling are spaced at every third column of panels, dividing the panels into square blocks of nine; the girders are an integral part of the design, designed to be barely visible from the ground but highly visible from the upper galleries, representing industry working with nature.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Main ceiling
Although the terracotta decorations of the museum do contain some botanical motifs, most of the decor of the building with the exception of the ceiling depicts animals, with extinct species depicted on the east wing and extant species on the west. A statue of Adam originally stood between the two wings over the main entrance, celebrating humanity as the peak of creation, but was dislodged during the Second World War and not replaced. Much was written at the time of the museum's opening about the terracotta decorations of the museum, but very little was written about how the ceiling was received.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | After completion
The superintendent of the natural history departments, Richard Owen, envisaged that visitors would enter a large central hall containing what he termed an "index collection" of representative exhibits, from which other galleries would radiate, and a smaller hall to the north would display the natural history of the British Isles. Waterhouse's Romanesque design for the museum included decorative painted ceilings. Acton Smee Ayrton, the First Commissioner of Works, refused to permit the decoration of the ceilings on grounds of cost, but Waterhouse convinced him that provided the painting took place while the scaffolding from the museum's construction was still in place it would incur no extra cost; he further managed to convince Ayrton that the ceiling would be more appealing if elements of the paintings were gilded.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Introduction
Best & Lea agreed a fee of £1975 (about £ in 2020 terms) for the work. How the panels were painted is not recorded, but it is likely Lea painted directly onto the ceiling from the scaffolding.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Central Hall
The girders themselves are based on 12th-century German architecture. Each comprises a round arch, braced with repeating triangles to create a zig-zag pattern. Within each upward-facing triangle is a highly stylised gilded leaf; the six different leaf designs repeat across the length of the hall. Running perpendicular to the girders—i.e., along the length of the hall—are seven iron support beams. The topmost of these forms the apex of the roof, and the next beam down on each side, separating the topmost from the middle row of panels, is painted with a geometric design of cream and green rectangles. The next beam down on each side, separating the middle from the lowest row of panels, is decorated in the same shades of cream and green, but this time with a design of green triangles pointing upwards.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Main ceiling
There are two rows of nine panels apiece on each side of the apex. The central (highest) rows on each side consist of plain green panels, each containing a heraldic rose, thistle or shamrock in representation of England, Scotland and Ireland, the three nations then constituting the United Kingdom. The nine lower panels on each side each illustrate a different plant found in Britain or Ireland.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | North Hall panels
In 1823 Robert Smirke was hired to design a replacement building, the first parts of which opened in 1827 and which was completed in the 1840s.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Background
As such, during periods of heavy rainfall water often penetrates the slate roof and reaches the fragile plaster ceiling. In 1924 and 1975, the museum has been obliged to repair and restore the ceilings owing to water damage. The height of the Central Hall ceiling made this a complicated and expensive process, requiring floor-to-ceiling scaffolding across the length and width of the Central Hall. The need to avoid damage to the fragile mosaic flooring and the terracotta tiling on the walls caused further difficulty in erecting the scaffolding. The exact nature and the cost of the repairs conducted in 1924 and 1975 is unknown, as is the identity of the restorers, as the relevant records have been lost, although it is known that cracks in the ceiling were filled with plaster and the paintwork and gilding retouched; it is possible that some of the panels were replaced entirely.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Deterioration, restoration and conservation
Above the six-panel sets and adjacent to the apex of the roof lie the top rows of panels. These panels, called the "archaic" panels by Waterhouse, are of a radically different design to those below. Each panel is surrounded by gilded strips and set against a dark green background, rather than the pale cream of the six-panel sets; the archaic panels also continue beyond the six panel sets and over the landing of the main staircase, to run the full length of the Central Hall. The archaic panels depict flattened, stylised plants in pale colours with gilt highlighting, sometimes accompanied by birds, butterflies and insects.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Archaic panels
(Wales was not represented, as in this period it was considered a part of England.) In keeping with Owen's intent that the room be used for a display on the topic of the British Isles, the nine lower panels on each side each illustrate a different plant found in Britain or Ireland. The plants depicted were chosen to illustrate the variety of plant habitats in the British Isles. Uniquely in the building, the ceiling panels of the North Hall make use of silver leaf as well as gilt. (During conservation work in 2016 it was found that initially some panels in the Central Hall had also made use of silver leaf, but the silver sections had subsequently been overpainted with ochre.) The style of illustration is similar to that of those over the south landing, but instead of the pale backgrounds of the main ceiling and the panels above the landing, the illustrations in the North Hall are set against a dark green background; Waterhouse's intent was that the darker colour scheme would create an intimate feel by making the ceiling appear lower.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | North Hall
Unlike the cavernous, intentionally cathedral-like feel of the main space of the Central Hall, the ceiling of the landing above the main entrance, connecting the balconies to the upper level, has a different design. Instead of the exposed and decorated iron girders of the main space, the structural girders of this end of the building are faced in the same terracotta style as the building's walls. As the structure of the landing and staircases meant that the ceiling at this end of the room was not clearly visible from the ground floor, there was less of a need to make the designs appear attractive from far below; instead, the design of this stretch of the ceiling was intended to be viewed from a relatively close distance.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | South landing
Unlike the six-panel sets the archaic panels are not labelled, and while some plants on the archaic panels are recognisable others are stylised beyond recognition. No records survive of how Waterhouse and Lea selected the designs for the archaic panels, or on from which images they were derived. Owing to the flattened nature of the designs, it is possible that they were based on pressed flowers in the museum's herbarium, or on illustrations in the British Museum's collection of books on botany. Some of the archaic panels appear to be simplified versions of the illustrations in Nathaniel Wallich's book "Plantae Asiaticae Rariores".
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Archaic panels
As a consequence, it posed a difficulty to Waterhouse's plans to decorate the building. As the skylights were lower than the ceiling the roof was in relative darkness compared to the rest of the room, and owing to the routes to be taken by visitors, the design needed to be attractive when viewed both from the floor below, and from the raised balconies to the each side. To address this, Waterhouse decided to decorate the ceiling with painted botanical panels. Acton Smee Ayrton, the First Commissioner of Works, was hostile to the museum project, and sought to cut costs wherever possible; he disliked art, and felt that it was his responsibility to restrain the excesses of artists and architects.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Central Hall
Archways flanking the northern staircase to the balcony level lead to the North Hall, intended by Owen for a display of the natural history of the United Kingdom. Waterhouse designed a ceiling for the North Hall representing this theme. As with the Central Hall, this ceiling comprises rows of panels above a long skylight along each side of the room; there are two rows per side rather than three, and nine panels on each row. Unlike the archaic panels in the top row of the Central Hall, the upper rows on each side consist of plain green panels, each containing a heraldic rose, thistle or shamrock in representation of England, Scotland and Ireland, the three nations then constituting the constituent parts of the United Kingdom.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | North Hall
One of the last parts of the initial museum to be completed, the display of British natural history in the North Hall was somewhat arbitrary, and did not reflect Owen's original intentions. Stuffed native animals such as birds and rats were exhibited, alongside prize-winning racehorses, common domesticated animals such as cows and ducks, and an exhibit on commonly grown crops and garden vegetables and on the control of insects. The display was unsuccessful, and was later removed, with the North Hall used as a space for temporary exhibitions before eventually becoming the museum's cafeteria.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | North Hall
As well as being large, the Central Hall was to be very high, rising the full height of the building to a plaster-lined mansard roof, with skylights running the length of the hall at the junction between the roof and the wall. A grand staircase at the northern end of the hall, flanked by archways leading to the smaller North Hall, led to balconies running almost the full length of the hall to a staircase which in turn led to a large landing above the main entrance, such that a visitor entering the hall would walk the full length of the floor of the hall to reach the first staircase, and then the full length of the balcony to reach the second.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Central Hall
Records do not survive of how the plants to be represented were chosen and who created the initial designs. Knapp & Press (2005) believe that it was almost certainly Waterhouse himself, likely working from specimens in the museum's botanical collections, while William T. Stearn, writing in 1980, believes that the illustrations were chosen by botanist William Carruthers, who at the time was the museum's Keeper of Botany. To create the painted panels from the initial cartoons, Waterhouse commissioned Manchester artist Charles James Lea of Best & Lea, with whom he had already worked on Pilmore Hall in Hurworth-on-Tees. Waterhouse provided Lea with a selection of botanical drawings, and requested that Lea "select and prepare drawings of fruits and flowers most suitable and gild same in the upper panels of the roof"; it is not recorded who drew the cartoons for the paintings, or how the species were chosen.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Central Hall
During the Second World War, South Kensington was heavily bombed. The north, east, south and west of the building sustained direct bomb hits; the east wing in particular suffered severe damage and its upper floor was left a burned-out shell. The bombs missed the centre of the museum, leaving the fragile ceilings of the Central and North Halls undamaged. Since the 1975 restoration the ceiling once more began to deteriorate, individual sections of plaster becoming unkeyed (detached from their underlying laths), paintwork peeling from some panels, and the delicate plasterwork cracking. The ends of the Central Hall suffered the worst deterioration, with some cracks above the landing and the northern end of the hall becoming large enough to be visible to the naked eye, while the gilding in the North Hall became gradually tarnished.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Deterioration, restoration and conservation
Having already insisted that Waterhouse's original design for wooden ceilings and a lead roof be replaced with cheaper plaster and slate, Ayrton vetoed Waterhouse's plan to decorate the ceiling. Waterhouse eventually persuaded Ayrton that provided the ceiling were decorated while the scaffolding from its construction remained in place, a decorated ceiling would be no more expensive than a plain white one. He prepared two sample paintings of the pomegranate and magnolia for Ayrton, who approved £1435 (about £ in 2020 terms) to decorate the ceiling. Having obtained approval for the paintings, Waterhouse managed to convince Ayrton that the paintings' appeal would be enhanced if certain elements were gilded.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Central Hall
(It was reported that when the Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction asked Owen how much space would be needed, he replied "I shall want space for seventy whales, to begin with".) In October 1861 Owen gave William Ewart Gladstone, the newly appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, a tour of the cramped natural history departments of the British Museum, to demonstrate how overcrowded and poorly lit the museum's galleries and storerooms were, and to impress on him the need for a much larger building. After much debate over a potential site, in 1864 the site formerly occupied by the 1862 International Exhibition in South Kensington was chosen.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Plans for a Natural History building
However, he decided that it would diminish the significance of his new museum were it not to cover the whole of nature, and when the Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction was convened in 1870 to review the national policy on scientific education Owen successfully lobbied for the museum to retain its botanical collections. In 1873 construction finally began on the new museum building.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Plans for a Natural History building
Other collectors continued to sell, donate or bequeath their collections to the museum, and by 1807 it was clear that Montagu House was unable to accommodate the museum's holdings. In 1808–09, in an effort to save space, the newly appointed keeper of the natural history department George Shaw felt obliged to destroy large numbers of the museum's specimens in a series of bonfires in the museum's gardens. The 1821 bequest of the library of 60,000 books assembled by George III forced the trustees to address the issue, as the bequest was on condition that the collection be displayed in a single room, and Montagu House had no such room available.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Background
Waterhouse's design was a Romanesque scheme, loosely based on German religious architecture; Owen was a leading creationist, and felt that the museum served a religious purpose in displaying the works of God. The design was centred around a very large rectangular central hall and a smaller hall to the north. Visitors would enter from the street into the Central Hall, which would hold what Owen termed an "index collection" of typical specimens, intended to serve as an introduction to the museum's collections for those unfamiliar with natural history. Extended galleries were to radiate to the east and west from this central hall to form the south face of the museum, with further galleries to the east, west and north to be added when funds allowed to complete a rectangular shape.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Waterhouse's building
In 1858 a group of 120 leading scientists wrote to Benjamin Disraeli, at the time the Chancellor of the Exchequer, complaining about the inadequacy of the existing building for displaying and storing the natural history collections. In January 1860, the trustees of the museum approved Owen's proposal. (Only nine of the British Museum's fifty trustees supported Owen's scheme, but 33 trustees failed to turn up to the meeting. As a consequence, Owen's plan passed by nine votes to eight.) Owen envisaged a huge new building of for the natural history collections, capable of exhibiting the largest specimens. Owen felt that exhibiting large animals would attract visitors to the new museum; in particular, he hoped to collect and display whole specimens of large whales while he still had the opportunity, as he felt that the larger species of whale were on the verge of extinction.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Plans for a Natural History building
By the time of Owen's appointment, the collections of the natural history departments had increased tenfold in size in the preceding 20 years, and the museum was again suffering from a chronic lack of space. There had also long been criticism that because of the varied nature of its displays the museum was confusing and lacked coherence; as early as 1824 Sir Robert Peel, the Home Secretary, had commented that "what with marbles, statues, butterflies, manuscripts, books and pictures, I think the museum is a farrago that distracts attention". Owen proposed that the museum be split into separate buildings, with one building to house the works of Man (art, antiquities, books and manuscripts) and one to house the works of God (the natural history departments); he argued that the expansion of the British Empire had led to an increased ability to procure specimens, and that increased space to store and display these specimens would both aid scholarship, and enhance Britain's prestige.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Plans for a Natural History building
Uniquely for the time, Waterhouse's building was faced inside and out with terracotta, the first building in England to be so designed; although expensive to build, this was resistant to the acid rain of heavily polluted London, allowed the building to be washed clean, and also allowed it to be decorated with intricate mouldings and sculptures. A smaller North Hall, immediately north of the Central Hall, would be used for exhibits specifically relating to British natural history. On 18 April 1881 the new British Museum (Natural History) opened to the public. As relocating exhibits from Bloomsbury was a difficult and time-consuming process, much of the building remained empty at the time the museum opened.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Waterhouse's building
With more space for displays and able to accommodate large numbers of visitors, the new British Museum proved a success with the public, and the natural history department proved particularly popular. Although the museum's management had traditionally been dominated by classicists and antiquarians, in 1856 the natural history department was split into separate departments of botany, zoology, mineralogy and geology, each with their own keeper and with botanist and palaeontologist Richard Owen as superintendent of the four departments. By this time the expansion of the British Empire had led to an increased appreciation of the importance of natural history on the part of the authorities, as territorial expansion had given British companies access to unfamiliar species, the commercial possibilities of which needed to be investigated.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Plans for a Natural History building
The library was originally also the smoking room, so it is surprising that the original painted ceiling has survived and could be fully restored. The ceiling is heavily painted, gilded and sculptured in an eclectic manner, taking its general design from classical sources. The background is cream, but there is much use of Pompeiian red, an earth colour which gained popularity in Victorian England after the renewed excavations by Giuseppe Fiorelli in 1860. Small panels feature clearly painted classical motifs and portraits with distressed backgrounds, to look like pieces of ancient frescoes. Four medallions show the named poets Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer and Tennyson, all admired by the Romantics.
Bankfield Museum | Ceiling
Francis Fowke, who had designed the buildings for the International Exhibition, was commissioned to build Owen's museum. In December 1865 Fowke died, and the Office of Works commissioned little-known architect Alfred Waterhouse, who had never previously worked on a building of this scale, to complete Fowke's design. Dissatisfied with Fowke's scheme, in 1868 Waterhouse submitted his own revised design, which was endorsed by the trustees. Owen, who considered animals more important than plants, was unhappy with the museum containing botanical specimens at all, and during the negotiations that led to the new building supported transferring the botanical collections to the new Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew to amalgamate the national collections of living and preserved plants.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Plans for a Natural History building
The huge collection of the conchologist Hugh Cuming was acquired by the museum, and Gray's own wife had carried the open trays across the courtyard in a gale: all the labels blew away. That collection is said never to have recovered.
Natural History Museum, London | Early history
Following his death on 11 January 1753, Sloane stipulated that his collection—by this time filling two large houses—was to be kept together for the public benefit if at all possible. The collection was initially offered to King George II, who was reluctant to meet the £20,000 (about £ in 2020 terms) purchase cost stipulated in Sloane's will. Parliament ultimately agreed to establish a national lottery to fund the purchase of Sloane's collection and the Harleian Library which was also currently for sale, and to unite them with the Cotton library, which had been bequeathed to the nation in 1702, to create a national collection.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Background
Nevertheless, mankind stands in the center of these events: a man, wrapped in a red cloth, holds an hourglass (presumably an allusion to Chronos, the god of time).
Natural History Museum, Vienna | Ceiling painting
On 7 June 1753 the British Museum Act 1753 was passed, authorising the unification of the three collections as the British Museum and establishing the national lottery to fund the purchase of the collections and to provide funds for their maintenance. The trustees settled on Montagu House in Bloomsbury as a home for the new British Museum, opening it to the public for the first time on 15 January 1759. With the British Museum now established numerous other collectors began to donate and bequeath items to the museum's collections, which were further swelled by large quantities of exhibits brought to England in 1771 by the first voyage of James Cook, by a large collection of Egyptian antiquities (including the Rosetta Stone) ceded by the French in the Capitulation of Alexandria, by the 1816 purchase of the Elgin Marbles by the British government who in turn passed them to the museum, and by the 1820 bequest of the vast botanical collections of Joseph Banks.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Background
The ceiling consists of panels painted with the arms of the university.
Duke Humfrey's Library | History
The central atrium design by Neal Potter overcame visitors' reluctance to visit the upper galleries by "pulling" them through a model of the Earth made up of random plates on an escalator. The new design covered the walls in recycled slate and sandblasted the major stars and planets onto the wall. The museum's 'star' geological exhibits are displayed within the walls. Six iconic figures were the backdrop to discussing how previous generations have viewed Earth. These were later removed to make place for a "Stegosaurus" skeleton that was put on display in late 2015.
Natural History Museum, London | Geological Museum
Irish physician Hans Sloane was born in 1660, and since childhood had a fascination with natural history. In 1687 Sloane was appointed personal doctor to Christopher Monck, the newly appointed Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica, and lived on that island until Monck died in October 1688. During his free time in Jamaica Sloane indulged his passion for biology and botany, and on his return to London brought with him a collection of plants, animal and mineral specimens and numerous drawings and notes regarding the local wildlife, which eventually became the basis for his major work "A Voyage to the Islands , Barbados, Nieves, S.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Background
All the spaces on the cream background are filled with illustrations imitating the original maiolica style, featuring stylised goats and fauns, cornucopia, grapes, birds and flowers, but also angels and putti in the centre. The decoration around the edge has a Green Man.
Bankfield Museum | Ceiling
The museum is particularly famous for its exhibition of dinosaur skeletons and ornate architecture—sometimes dubbed a "cathedral of nature"—both exemplified by the large "Diplodocus" cast that dominated the vaulted central hall before it was replaced in 2017 with the skeleton of a blue whale hanging from the ceiling. The Natural History Museum Library contains extensive books, journals, manuscripts, and artwork collections linked to the work and research of the scientific departments; access to the library is by appointment only. The museum is recognised as the pre-eminent centre of natural history and research of related fields in the world. Although commonly referred to as the Natural History Museum, it was officially known as British Museum (Natural History) until 1992, despite legal separation from the British Museum itself in 1963.
Natural History Museum, London | Introduction
The wainscoting of dark wood is surmounted with pomegranate hangings, and the ceiling is effectively decorated in plain and harmonious tints. Incandescent lights placed in the ceiling in a novel and original manner, are used throughout the store and galleries."
Williams &amp; Everett | History
Christophers and Jamaica" (1707–1725). He became one of England's leading doctors, credited with the invention of chocolate milk and with the popularisation of quinine as a medicine, and in 1727 King George II appointed him Physician in Ordinary (doctor to the Royal Household). Building on the collection he had brought from Jamaica, Sloane continued to collect throughout his life, using his new-found wealth to buy items from other collectors and to buy out the collections of existing museums. During Sloane's life there were few public museums in England, and by 1710 Sloane's collection filled 11 large rooms, which he allowed the public to visit.
Ceilings of the Natural History Museum, London | Background
The Main Hall has a gallery at first floor level running down both its flanks, that links the two parts of the main staircases. Immediately north of the Main Hall is the North Hall. Although Romanesque in style, the drama is more akin to Baroque architecture. The front part of the building has three floors of public galleries. Flanking the Main Hall on each side are three large top lit galleries, the large galleries are separated from each other by narrower galleries. The roofs of these single floor galleries is the same form as the Main and North Halls, the lower half of the slope is glass the upper solid.
Alfred Waterhouse | Natural History Museum
The National Museum of Scotland displays a ceiling from Rossend Castle, Burntisland, Fife, and a screen from Wester Livilands, near Stirling. Stirling Smith Museum and Art Gallery has a ceiling from Robert Drummond of Carnock's house. A room from Alexander Seton, 1st Earl of Dunfermline's Pinkie House is displayed at the Museum of Edinburgh. Painted beams from Midhope Castle were moved to Abbey Strand, Edinburgh, and a ceiling from Prestongrange House is at Merchiston Tower, though these last two are not regularly open to the public. Two rooms in the G&V Hotel in Edinburgh still have painted ceilings from the original early seventeenth century tenement building on the Lawnmarket.
Scottish Renaissance painted ceilings | Types of patterns
The space these would have occupied are now taken by the Earth Galleries and Darwin Centre. 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 of the Waterhouse building make extensive use of architectural terracotta tiles to resist the sooty atmosphere of Victorian London, manufactured by the Tamworth-based company of Gibbs and Canning Limited. The tiles and bricks feature many relief sculptures of flora and fauna, with living and extinct species featured within the west and east wings respectively.
Natural History Museum, London | Planning and architecture of new building
The ceiling is a plaster vault painted with stars. Pollard and Pevsner in the "Buildings of England" series say of the interior: "This is a rare survival of an all but complete pre-Ecclesiological Victorian church".
Church of St Clement, Liverpool | Interior
"Earth's Treasury" shows specimens of rocks, minerals and gemstones behind glass in a dimly lit gallery. "Lasting Impressions" is a small gallery containing specimens of rocks, plants and minerals, of which most can be touched.
Natural History Museum, London | Galleries
The frieze can be seen in the British Museum's Gallery 16, near the Elgin Marbles. The room is not always open, but researchers can request it be made available. Cockerell also decorated the walls of the Ashmolean Museum's Great Staircase and that of the Travellers Club with plaster casts of the same frieze. The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford is open to the public. The wealthy landowner Thomas Legh was one of the excavators of the temple and a plaster cast copy of the frieze is displayed in the Bright Gallery of Lyme Hall, Cheshire, one of his stately homes.
Bassae Frieze | Access
The earliest pictorial record of a natural history cabinet is the engraving in Ferrante Imperato's "Dell'Historia Naturale" (Naples 1599) ("illustration, left"). It serves to authenticate its author's credibility as a source of natural history information, in showing his open bookcases at the right, in which many volumes are stored lying down and stacked, in the medieval fashion, or with their spines upward, to protect the pages from dust. Some of the volumes doubtless represent his herbarium. Every surface of the vaulted ceiling is occupied with preserved fishes, stuffed mammals and curious shells, with a stuffed crocodile suspended in the centre.
Cabinet of curiosities | History
All the ground floor galleries open to the south off an east-west corridor that links them to the Main Hall. Leading off the corridors are links to the ground floor galleries along the Museum's main facade.
Alfred Waterhouse | Natural History Museum
Report by C. Davies Sherborn and J. Hartley Durrant. 1 March 1911. Note: The drawings were shortly thereafter withdrawn from sale and given to the British Museum. As of January 2018, of the known, surviving bound sets, that held by the Natural History Museum, London (subscribed for by the Earl of Sheffield) originally comprised second edition versions of parts 1 - 30 but was corrected some time prior to 1911 by the separate acquisition of a first edition of Volume I. The set belonging to the Linnaen Society is all good except that it contains a number of uncoloured illustrations.
British Entomology | Surviving copies
The ceiling is a quotation from one of the structures at Palmyra, as reproduced in Robert Wood's "Ruins of Palmyra". For details see the forthcoming monograph by Jason M. Kelly. This property was designed in 1780 for the patron of the living Sir Francis Dashwood and is Revett's only known complete domestic building.</'Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'<J Newman 'Kent: West Kent and the Weald'(New Haven and London 2012).
Nicholas Revett | Additions
Originating from collections within the British Museum, the landmark Alfred Waterhouse building was built and opened by 1881 and later incorporated the Geological Museum. The Darwin Centre is a more recent addition, partly designed as a modern facility for storing the valuable collections.
Natural History Museum, London | Introduction
Typical dimensions would be wide, to or long. The great thickness of its walls, averaging makes the useful space of the inner chamber small. Most ceilings were not preserved, but presumably they were of natural material with a pitched roof made of thick branches in the form of beams, and covered with branches, leaves and mud, all supported on a number columns arranged along the longitudinal axis of the building. The only preserved ceiling is made of stone slabs, but it is not believed to be typical, as the fact of its being made of stone may have been the determining factor in its present-day existence.
Naviforme | Construction
Among the paintings decorating the walls and ceilings of the building are those of Benjamin West and Angelica Kauffman, in the entrance hall (Hutchison 1968, p. 153), moved from the previous building at Somerset House. In the centre is West's roundel "The Graces unveiling Nature" c. 1779, surrounded by panels depicting the elements, Fire, Water, Air and Earth. At each end are mounted two of Kauffman's circular paintings, "Composition" at the West end, and "Painting or Colour" and "Genius or Invention" at the East end.
Royal Academy of Arts | Wall and ceiling paintings
Elaborate C18 plasterwork to entrance hall including doorcase, niches, chimney- piece etc. Naturalistic classical ceiling. Medallion of Charles I dated 1735. Large panelled room over entrance hall. Fine mid C18 open staircase with open string, closely spaced, turned balusters, column newels and swept, moulded handrail.
Bowden, Ashprington | Listing description
The East Hall is the first area that most visitors see as they enter the building, stretching up through three floors. On the ground, the area is mostly filled with iconic steam engines of various sorts, including the oldest surviving James Watt beam engine, which together tell the story of the British industrial revolution. Up in the air, suspended from the ceiling is a giant metallic ring (which has since been removed), the inside of which is covered in white LEDs which form patterns and display messages typed into kiosks by visitors in the Energy gallery. Also on display is a recreation of James Watt's garret workshop from his home, Heathfield Hall, using over 8,300 objects removed from the room, which was sealed after his 1819 death, when the hall was demolished in 1927.
Science Museum, London | The Energy Hall
In addition to the collection at the RIBA, the Natural History Museum holds a significant quantity of drawings by Waterhouse relating to the design of the terracotta sculpture on the building. The 136 pages of drawings are bound together in two volumes and cover the period 1874 to 1878. The subject matter is not just flora, insects, fish, lizards, snakes and animals, some of extinct species, but ornament as well. Extinct species decorated the eastern side of the building internally and externally, living species likewise decorated the western half of the building as well as the North Hall and Main Hall.
Alfred Waterhouse | The Waterhouse drawings collection
The room where the frieze is displayed was specially constructed to be the same size as the main room in the Temple of Apollo. However, in the original placing they would have been seven metres in the air and close to the ceiling. The reconstruction puts the frieze at an easily viewable height. The table below shows the various proposals for how the frieze may have been originally designed to be displayed. There have been a number of ideas as to how the frieze should be arranged. The arrangement made by the British Museum follows that proposed by Peter Corbett, but others by the American scholar W.B.
Bassae Frieze | Reconstruction in the British Museum
Ceilings have frequently been decorated with fresco painting, mosaic tiles and other surface treatments. While hard to execute (at least in place) a decorated ceiling has the advantage that it is largely protected from damage by fingers and dust. In the past, however, this was more than compensated for by the damage from smoke from candles or a fireplace. Many historic buildings have celebrated ceilings. Perhaps the most famous is the Sistine Chapel ceiling by Michelangelo. Ceiling height may have psychological impacts.
Ceiling | Elements
These collections occupy the basement and lower seven floors of the Frick Building, while the top three floors contain laboratories and offices. It is inside this particular building that many of the museum's intensive research programs into vertebrate paleontology are carried out. Other areas of the museum contain repositories of life from the past. The Whale Bone Storage Room is a cavernous space in which powerful winches come down from the ceiling to move the giant fossil bones about. The museum attic upstairs includes even more storage facilities, such as the Elephant Room, while the tusk vault and boar vault are downstairs from the attic.
American Museum of Natural History | Fossil halls
The detailed two page inventory from August 1759, made after more valuable items had been removed, gave a guide to the furnishings of the house. The paired curtains mentioned in the inventory, although in vogue in the 1720s, had fallen out of fashion by the 1750s. On the first floor the curtains would have been of green silk, but are listed only for the back room; possibly there were none in the rehearsal room in the front for acoustic reasons.
Handel &amp; Hendrix in London | Restoration
The botany section was described as the "most perfect assemblage of the botanical productions of Great Britain that can exist in any museum".
London Museum and Institute of Natural History | Introduction
Parody things are apparently also shown such as Kitty Angela in her stuffed unicorn costume, a piranha fish, a frog caught in reserved scrubs. But this room is very important to remind us...
Museum of Natural History, Lima | 100 Years of Natural Sciencies
The museum's vertebrates collections is mainly focused on birds collected locally in the early 20th century. This includes examples of the Hastings Rarities. There are a few examples of larger mammal and fish also in the collection. The Entomology and Invertebrates collections are limited to butterflies, moths and other insects, shells, corals and sponges.
Hastings Museum and Art Gallery | Natural history
John Cornforth admired the contribution of the Stenhouse Conservation Centre as antiquarian and romantic. More recently, Michael Bath, emeritus professor of English, Strathclyde University, has re-assessed the corpus with a particular focus on the emblems used and their origins and meanings to the Scottish patrons. Bath has published a number of articles and a detailed illustrated 2003 monograph exploring sources with a useful comprehensive inventory of examples both extant and destroyed. Ailsa Murray's 2009 article and Chantal‐Helen Thuer's 2011 report and explore conservation methods. Michael Bath, Anne Crone and Michael Pearce (2017) reflected on Anne Crone's dendrochronogy work on the salvaged timbers stored by Historic Environment Scotland.
Scottish Renaissance painted ceilings | Critical literature
The foundation of the collection was that of the Ulster doctor Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753), who allowed his significant collections to be purchased by the British Government at a price well below their market value at the time. This purchase was funded by a lottery. Sloane's collection, which included dried plants, and animal and human skeletons, was initially housed in Montagu House, Bloomsbury, in 1756, which was the home of the British Museum. Most of the Sloane collection had disappeared by the early decades of the nineteenth century. Dr George Shaw (Keeper of Natural History 1806–13) sold many specimens to the Royal College of Surgeons and had periodic "cremations" of material in the grounds of the museum.
Natural History Museum, London | Early history
Painted ceilings concealed by later plasterwork continue to be discovered. A ceiling with grotesques and scrollwork "of exceptional quality" was found at Moubray House on Edinburgh's Royal Mile in 1999. After restoration the whole building was pledged as a gift to Historic Scotland by an American benefactor in 2012. Another ceiling on Edinburgh's Royal Mile was discovered in 2010 in Clement Cor's house in Advocate's Close. A part of the ceiling was varnished with pine resin. The joints in the floorboards had been sealed with paper tape.
Scottish Renaissance painted ceilings | Types of patterns
He goes on to add that a new dome was added in 1849 and in 1870, due to the dangerous state of the dome it was replaced by a ceiling light.
Museum of Lancashire | History
Cloistered arcades run around the ground and first floor of the building, with stone columns each made from a different British stone, selected by geologist John Phillips (the Keeper of the Museum). The ornamentation of the stonework and iron pillars incorporates natural forms such as leaves and branches, combining the Pre-Raphaelite style with the scientific role of the building. Statues of eminent men of science stand around the ground floor of the court—from Aristotle and Bacon through to Darwin and Linnaeus. Although the university paid for the construction of the building, the ornamentation was funded by public subscription, and much of it remains incomplete.
Oxford University Museum of Natural History | The building
On the balustrade visitors can see sculptures of famous researchers and scientists who represent the continuing progress of human knowledge. These fundamental ideas are also the basis for the sculptures and paintings in the Dome Hall and the grand staircase; the highlight here is Hans Canon’s ceiling fresco “The Circle of Life”. The internal structure of the building is dictated by the systematic organization of the exhibition and the individual departments. The mezzanine covers inanimate nature (Department of Mineralogy, Halls 1 – 5), sediments and traces of life early in Earth's history (Department of Geology & Paleontology, Halls 6 – 10), early human history (Department of Prehistory, Halls 11 – 13) and human development (Department of Anthropology, Halls 14 – 15).
Natural History Museum, Vienna | Architecture
His successors also applied to the trustees for permission to destroy decayed specimens. In 1833, the Annual Report states that, of the 5,500 insects listed in the Sloane catalogue, none remained. The inability of the natural history departments to conserve its specimens became notorious: the Treasury refused to entrust it with specimens collected at the government's expense. Appointments of staff were bedevilled by gentlemanly favouritism; in 1862 a nephew of the mistress of a Trustee was appointed Entomological Assistant despite not knowing the difference between a butterfly and a moth. J. E. Gray (Keeper of Zoology 1840–74) complained of the incidence of mental illness amongst staff: George Shaw threatened to put his foot on any shell not in the 12th edition of Linnaeus' "Systema Naturae"; another had removed all the labels and registration numbers from entomological cases arranged by a rival.
Natural History Museum, London | Early history
The ceiling was recoloured in 1895 by Charles Eamer Kempe, a move which has been both extensively praised and criticised; one commenter in the 1970s remarked that "anything as strange and curious as Arts and Craft aestheticism overlaid on seventeenth-century fake Gothic, which in turn disguises a genuine fifteenth-century hammer-beam roof is certainly worth keeping - if only for the sheer zaniness of it all".
Chapel of Brasenose College, Oxford | Late Victorian and onwards
Today the museum no longer houses collections of natural history, and the books and manuscripts it once held now form part of the independent British Library. The museum nevertheless preserves its universality in its collections of artefacts representing the cultures of the world, ancient and modern. The original 1753 collection has grown to over 13 million objects at the British Museum, 70 million at the Natural History Museum and 150 million at the British Library. The Round Reading Room, which was designed by the architect Sydney Smirke, opened in 1857. For almost 150 years researchers came here to consult the museum's vast library.
British Museum | The British Museum today
As well as period rooms, the collection includes parts of buildings, for example the two top stories of the facade of Sir Paul Pindar's house dated 1600 from Bishopsgate with elaborately carved wood work and leaded windows, a rare survivor of the Great Fire of London, there is a brick portal from a London house of the English Restoration period and a fireplace from the gallery of Northumberland house. European examples include a dormer window dated 1523–1535 from the chateau of Montal. There are several examples from Italian Renaissance buildings including, portals, fireplaces, balconies and a stone buffet that used to have a built in fountain.
Victoria and Albert Museum | Architecture
One of the most famous and certainly most prominent of the exhibits—nicknamed "Dippy"—is a -long replica of a "Diplodocus carnegii" skeleton which was on display for many years within the central hall. The cast was given as a gift by the Scottish-American industrialist Andrew Carnegie, after a discussion with King Edward VII, then a keen trustee of the British Museum. Carnegie paid £2,000 for the casting, copying the original held at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. The pieces were sent to London in 36 crates, and on 12 May 1905, the exhibit was unveiled to great public and media interest.
Natural History Museum, London | Major specimens and exhibits
A basking shark hangs from this ceiling. This grouping of Irish fauna in one room dates from 1910, when the collections were arranged by geography rather than purely taxonomy. The "first floor" contains mammals from around the world, including extinct or endangered species, including in turn a thylacine, and a pygmy hippopotamus. Also on display is the polar bear shot by Admiral Sir Francis Leopold McClintock. Many of the mounted specimens were purchased from or donated by the Royal Zoological Gardens, Dublin. Part of the large collection of Irish birds bequeathed by Richard Barrington is mounted along one wall.
National Museum of Ireland – Natural History | Exhibition
The Natural History Museum in London is a natural history museum that exhibits a vast range of specimens from various segments of natural history. It is one of three major museums on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, the others being the Science Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. The Natural History Museum's main frontage, however, is on Cromwell Road. The museum is home to life and earth science specimens comprising some 80 million items within five main collections: botany, entomology, mineralogy, palaeontology and zoology. The museum is a centre of research specialising in taxonomy, identification and conservation. Given the age of the institution, many of the collections have great historical as well as scientific value, such as specimens collected by Charles Darwin.
Natural History Museum, London | Introduction
Since the Baroque period the abbots had accumulated a collection of "curiosities" and scientific specimens of various sorts, which were entirely destroyed in the fire of 1865. As part of the reconstruction Father Gabriel Strobl determined to replace the lost collections, and so formed the nucleus of the modern museums. Father Strobl was himself a botanist but also worked on building up the insect collection, so much so that he became one of the great entomologists of his day. The Natural History museum now contains over 250,000 insect specimens, including one of the three largest collections of flies, or Diptera, in Europe.
Admont Abbey | Museums
"The Magazine of Art", vol 4, 1881 p36 described the style of the Museum: The distinctive features of the building's facade are the end pavilions with their octagonal attic towers supporting steep roofs, and the twin towers 190 feet high flanking the arched main entrances. Entering through the main doors, these are reached via an exterior staircase. The visitor passes from the Entrance Hall beneath the arch supporting the main staircase from the 1st to the 2nd floor, ahead on the end wall of the main hall, lies the main staircase imperial in form, rising from the ground to the first floor.
Alfred Waterhouse | Natural History Museum
The original wood of the ceiling was professionally grained to simulate its original appearance. The Agent's Office was stripped down to its original tine ceiling and the Conductor's Room was converted into a kitchen by the Lion's Club.
Palmerston Railway Heritage Museum | Restoration
Roofs are fitted with flat or coffered ceilings. They are not left open as in Medieval architecture. They are frequently painted or decorated.
Renaissance architecture | Ceilings
All rooms, with the exception of room 1 have 150mm wide tongue and groove beaded ceiling timbers fixed directly to the underside of the joists. They are dated to about 1860/70. The timbers used in Room 1 are wider, approx. 200-250mm wide and are tongue and groove without any moulding at the joint.
Exeter Farm | Ceilings
With a collection of this size, only 1% of the collection is exhibited at any given time. The rest of the collection is stored in temperature controlled vaults.
National Palace Museum | Statistics
The ceilings were executed by William Kent in the ‘Grotesque’ style- a mode of painting found predominantly in subterranean Rome and popularised by the artist Raphael. This style, rare in Britain until reintroduced by William Kent at Kensington Palace, consisted of foliage forms interwoven with mythical creatures, such as cherubs or sphinxes. In the ceiling of the Summer Parlour, Kent also added small owls, a motif that incorporated the owl of the Savile heraldic device. Kent designed two tables with matching mirror frames containing the owl device (the owl was also associated with the owl-faced Roman goddess Minerva, like Lady Burlington a great patroness of the arts).
Architecture of Chiswick House | Summer Parlour
The ceiling repeats the exposed timber beam motif that characterises the other main rooms.
Gladswood House | Study
Booth donated the museum to the city in 1890 with the proviso that the display of over 300 dioramas should not be altered, and it was opened under Brighton civic ownership in 1891. In 1971 the Booth became a Museum of Natural History. The museum continues to feature the dioramas of British birds in their habitat settings, as well as collections of butterflies, and British fossils and animal bones. Other items have been added to the museum's collection through the years, and it is now home to a collection of 525,000 insects, 50,000 minerals and rocks, 30,000 plants and 5,000 microscopic slides.
Booth Museum of Natural History | History
The ceiling is divided into caskets for oil-painted panels with various scenes.
Capela Dourada | History and description
The walls are covered by the tapestries of the four continents, Europe, America & Africa are Brussels tapestries all signed A. Auwercx. Asia is a Mortlake tapestry in the same style, either side of the central window are two small Mortlake tapestries of Sleep & Vigilance, all woven by Paul Saunders and George Smith Bradshaw in 1757. The canopied bed, seat furniture and curtains, have retained their original multicoloured Genoa velvet upholstery and was designed by William Kent. There are two small pier-tables with marble tops between the windows.
Art collections of Holkham Hall | Description of the major interiors
This ceiling was moved to the tower of Merchiston Castle for Napier University. At Rossend Castle (now in the National Museum of Scotland), emblems by Claude Paradin, Gabriele Simeoni and Alciato were used, again with ornamental detail from Vredeman de Vries's "Grottesco", with devices of European princes. A ceiling at Riddle's Court in Edinburgh has the eagle of the Holy Roman Empire combined with a thistle, perhaps to commemorate the visit of the Duke of Holstein in 1598.
Scottish Renaissance painted ceilings | Sources of the designs