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
Sorry. I cannot find the answer based on the context. Egyptian antiquities - like the Rosetta Stone. Sorry. I cannot find the answer based on the context. A vast range of specimens from various segments of natural history
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
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 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
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 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
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 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 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
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
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
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
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
(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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
(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
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
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
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
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
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
The roof was hidden by a balustrade decorated by urns alternating with stone spheres. This format of design was typical of the rare late English Baroque, and can be seen in a less sophisticated form at Sherborne House in Dorset and in its full fruition at Chatsworth and Easton Neston. The interior of Wingerworth was arranged around a central double height hall described as "a model of English Baroque".
Wingerworth Hall | Introduction
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
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 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 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
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
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
"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 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
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
The garden was restored by the late Dowager Marchioness of Salisbury and only plants found in Tudor England are used. The craftsmen were selected by David Honour, former head of design at Historic Royal Palaces.
Crosby Hall, London | Christopher Moran
The museum's most striking feature is its 200 ft high Victorian standpipe tower. This is not a chimney stack; it houses two systems of vertical pipes through which water was pumped before it entered the mains water supply. The brick tower, of Italianate design, was constructed in 1867 to replace an earlier open metal lattice structure. It is a Grade I listed building. The tower is rarely open to the Public.
London Museum of Water &amp; Steam | The tower
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
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
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
The original iron and glass building is in the Jugendstil-style. It measures in size with towers which rise . The varnished roof is of natural pine; it is treated with synthetic rubber for waterproofing.
Museo Universitario del Chopo | Architecture and fittings
Under the ceiling trusses are four carved limestone corbels from the House of Commons that are carved with a Tudor rose. Two corbels remain uncarved to emphasize the original carved corbels. The window frames, set in limestone, are characteristic of the Tudor period, and contain old imported glass, seeded and tinted, and encased in small, diamond-shaped leaded frames. Stained-glass window medallions depict the coats of arms of English towns and cities, literary and political figures, scholars of the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, and the Houses of Lords and Commons. Portraits of University of Pittsburgh alumnus and former Ambassador to the Court of St.
Nationality Rooms | English
The attic storey is more highly decorated. At window sill level a projecting square profile string course runs along the Gloucester and Essex Street facades. Style: Commercial Italian Renaissance Palazzo; Storeys: Six; Facade: Stone and face-brickwork; Internal Walls: The walls are largely undecorated and finished with painted plaster over brickwork.; Floor Frame: Timber (original); Roof Frame: Terracotta pan tiles; Ceilings: Moulded plasterwork embellished ceiling (the main lecture hall); Fire Stairs: South-western corner of the building.; Lifts: Two (opposite the entrance doors), original lift (southern side). Items of moveable heritage including chairs, projectors, heaters and numerous other items are temporarily stored in ASN Co building, Bay 4, Circular Quay West.
Science House | Description
The ceiling consists of panels painted with the arms of the university.
Duke Humfrey's Library | History
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
The central ceiling panel shows a sunflower at the centre, surrounded by four scenes of ports, each framed by shells, a reference to the Roman water goddess Venus and the Egyptian protector of ports and sailors, Isis. The panel nearest the fireplace (in Burlington's time the doorway) depicts two "putti", one of whom sketches a female bust. The other holds his finger to his lips illustrating the need for silence.
Architecture of Chiswick House | Summer Parlour
The main bed is an oak box bed dating to 1712, obtained from Star House in Baldersdale in 1962. Originally a defensive house in its own right, the lower level of the Old House is an undercroft, or vaulted basement chamber, with 1.5 metre thick walls - in times of attack the original tenant family would have retreated here with their valuables, although in its later use as the farm managers house, it is now presented as a storage and work room, housing a large wooden cheese press. More children would have slept in the attic of the Old House (not accessible as a display).
Beamish Museum | Pockerley Old Hall
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
A collection of around 450,000 specimens in the natural history section includes specimens of national and international significance. The bird collections include 1,800 mounted British specimens, 400 foreign birds and over 1,100 cabinet skins. There are also 300 birds’ nests and a collection of bird's eggs covering most species on the British list. The Herbarium contains approximately 30,000 specimens representative of the flora of the British Isles. There is also a British collection of some 6,000 specimens of critical genera including Rubus, Taraxacum and Hieracium. The Herbarium collection is the basis of Philp's Atlas of the Kent Flora. There is an entomology collection of around 250,000 specimens forming a comprehensive collection of British insects; and an important collection of several thousand shells, mainly of tropical marine origin, but including temperate marine and freshwater, and tropical terrestrial species.
Maidstone Museum | Natural history
Found under layers of paint were palm fronds painted directly onto the ceiling in the four corners of the Sitting Room. Experts used pictures taken around 1900 to find the location of items painted on the ceiling that otherwise would have been lost. The most recent restoration work in Emma's Room/the Regency Room is almost completed.
Pabst Mansion | Historic preservation
It is now in the Victoria and Albert museum in London. In 2003 it was briefly returned to the Steeple Aston church, and put on display in order to raise funds for roof repairs.
Steeple Aston Cope | Introduction
Two other Grade II-listed buildings are located further south on Dyke Road. The Booth Museum of Natural History was built in 1874 to house the extensive collection of British birds, insects and other specimens collected by naturalist Edward Booth. It originally stood in the grounds of his home, Bleak House, and became a museum in 1890. Many more collections have been added to the stock of over half a million specimens, and in 1998 the museum was designated as a "collection of national importance". Architecturally, the long, low, shed-like building has an Italianate/Romanesque Revival exterior with polychrome brickwork. Set into a full-width brick porch are two arched doorways with voussoirs.
Prestonville, Brighton | Buildings
Its ceiling is adorned with butterflies and fleurs-de-lis, and at the crossing of the main beams is a convex mirror in a gilded surround. Along the length of the beams are paintings of frogs and mice. A frieze of flowers, once painted over, has since been restored. The Golden Bed and the Vita Nuova Washstand designed for this room are now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Burges designated the final room on the first floor an armoury and used it to display his large collection of armour. The collection was bequeathed to the British Museum upon his death. A carved chimneypiece in the armoury has three roundels carved with the goddesses Minerva, Venus and Juno in medieval attire.
The Tower House | First floor and garret
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 interior millwork of the principal room is finely executed and includes a gouged-carved cornice and a matching pair of gouge-carved mantel pieces, one of which is original and the other a matching reproduction dating to the restoration. The room includes a regionally unique ceiling dome that provided extra height for a lighting fixture and was probably lined with tin to reflect light.
House on Ellicott's Hill | 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
Special tiles were custom designed for the floors, modern concrete was used for some of the structural elements, and antique capitals sit atop modern columns. The interior garden courtyard is covered by a glass roof, with steel support structure original to the building.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum | Design
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
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
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
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
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 remaining panelling in the library is not original. The hammerbeam roof is concealed by a decorated plasterwork ceiling, probably dating from the 17th century. It has broad coving decorated with painted coats of arms, probably added in the 19th century.
Combermere Abbey | Interior
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
The building is timber framed with plaster infill. The old part is a two bay cruck-framed hall. The main roof is formed by a bent oak tree, split in half lengthways to form a pair of cruck blades. There is also the modern addition of a thin bay with a gallery. The original windows were smaller and higher up than in the reconstruction and were formed by cloth soaked in animal fat, rather than glass.
Minworth Greaves | History
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
Two "Norman" capitals and the capital of a "Saxon" column, decorated with twisted serpents, were also found. One of the serpent capitals - now considered to be 12th century - is in the British Museum. These remains could, however have belonged to either of churches on the site of the school, or possibly to one of the houses nearby. It is not known whether there had been any medieval rebuilding or enlargement of the church. However, because the structure described in the 1550s was apparently very simple, it is possible that this was the original church, altered little if at all.
All Hallows Honey Lane | Architecture
The undercroft contains a large oak beam and brick barrel vaults. At the row level, the great hall occupies the two storeys. On the west wall of the hall is an ornate sandstone fireplace with decorated pilasters carrying a carved frieze and cornice. On the fireplace is a painting of the arms of the Gamul family, which Pevsner considers was executed by Randle Holme. The barrel-vaulted plaster ceiling has eight richly-carved pendants.
Gamul House | Interior
The British Museum Library constructed a new reading room in the courtyard of its museum building between 1854 and 1857. The round room, about 42.6 meters in diameter and inspired by the Pantheon, was surmounted by a dome with a ring of windows at the base and an oculus at the top. Hidden iron framing supported a suspended ceiling made of papier-mâché. A cast iron dome was built between 1860 and 1867 over the reading room of the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris. Inspired by the prestigious British Museum reading room, the first iron dome in Canada was built in the early 1870s over the reading room of the Library of Parliament building in Ottawa.
History of modern period domes | Libraries
The drawing room or parlour formed part of the original house, presumably fulfilling a similar function as a private room apart from the hall. The fireplace is from North Bore, and the stained glass is reproduction. The curtains are original 1880s and rare enough to be noted as such in the guide book. Above the drawing room is a solar with a similar, if smaller-scale, roof to that of the hall. The oriel window dates from the restoration but is based upon the plan of the original. Flanking the oriel are two original windows with rare slots to carry vertical shutters.
Stoneacre, Kent | Interior
Beyond the facade Smirke built two smaller wings, with Doric pilasters, containing houses, the western one for the Director of the museum. The major surviving interiors are the entrance hall with the Great Stair – in the form of an Imperial staircase– rising to the west, and the "King's Library". This, built to house 65,000 books, is 300 feet long, 41 feet wide and 31 feet high, the centre section being slightly wider, with four great granite Corinthian columns. The only major interior to survive in the north wing is the "Arched Room" at the west end. The "Egyptian Gallery" matches the "King's Library" but is much plainer in decoration.
Robert Smirke (architect) | British Museum
The London Museum and Institute of Natural History was a private natural history museum of the Georgian era. It opened to a paying public in 1807. The museum was founded by Edward Donovan at Catherine Street, the Strand, London, England. Unlike William Bullock's Egyptian Hall Donovan's museum focused on specimens found in Great Britain and was a scientific collection arranged according to the Linnaean system. The museum exhibited hundreds of cases of specimens of British mammals, birds, reptiles, fishes, insects, shells, corals, minerals, fossils (or "productions of the Antediluvian World") and botanical specimens. The 1808 catalogue numbers the collection at "nearly thirty thousand individual articles" and describes the museum as "a national academy of the natural history of the country".
London Museum and Institute of Natural History | Introduction
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
Farmer & Brindley were favoured for sculpture, working on nearly one hundred of Waterhouses's buildings, including a tombstone in West Norwood Cemetery, the pulpit in Stanmore Church and the extensive carving on Eaton Hall, plus all the models for the terracotta decoration on the Prudential Assurance buildings. The ceiling of the Great Hall, at the Natural History Museum, is decorated with paintings of plants from across the world, the paintings are executed in a subdued palette and with gilding for highlights, the individual panels have the Latin name of the plant below. Designed by Waterhouse the ceiling was painted by Best & Lea of John Dalton Street, Manchester.
Alfred Waterhouse | Artists, suppliers and sub-contractors
The vestibule and staircase show the Victorian eclectic Gothic Revivalist taste. The hammer-beam roof over the staircase imitates the 15th century, the staircase window the 14th century, and the vestibule arches the 13th century. The window was designed by Powells of Leeds. The top roundel features a copy of Raphael's "Madonna and Child". All ten main lights of the window once contained Victorian figures in Tudor costume, but most of these were removed by Frederick Butterfield, to be replaced with clear lights or small roundels.
Cliffe Castle Museum | Entrance vestibule
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 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
Fine chimney pieces and fireplaces can also be found in the library, and in the first floor drawing room which also features original hand-painted wallpaper and fine, early- to mid-nineteenth century plasterwork. The former chapel, which no longer has any of its original fittings, has a groined, vaulted ceiling, and is flanked by engaged, fluted pilasters.
Letterfourie House | Interior
"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
He was born in Corfu; then a territory of the Republic of Venice. Little is written about his biography and training. He is best known for an allegorical ceiling piece, "The East Offering its Riches to Britannia" (1778), commissioned by the East India Company for the Revenue Committee Room in the East India House in London. The painting generally represents the era's panegyric to Britain's imperial and colonialist domination; it is now in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London. A reproduction is held in the British Library in London. Other works in British National Trust collections include "An Illusionistic Gothic Patron's Pew, in the Extension of the Chapel" (c.1769/1771).
Spiridione Roma | Biography
In the summer, the glazing in the picture galleries was shaded with calico to prevent damage to the artworks, and firemen played water on the roof as a form of rudimentary air conditioning when the interior temperature exceeded . Young & Co's original quote of £24,500 proved over-optimistic, and cost overruns pushed the final bill up to £37,461.
Art Treasures Exhibition, Manchester 1857 | Exhibition hall
The Corp de Logis "THIS SEAT, on an open barren Estate" "Was planned, planted, built, decorated". "And inhabited the middle of the XVIIIth Century" "By THO's COKE EARL of LEICESTER" has shallow plasterwork beams outlining a circle in the centre with two semicircles from the side walls touching it, there are large rosettes in each corner and paired above the fireplace and opposite in front of the middle window. The four doorways on the side walls have entablatures. The dado, ceiling and door surrounds are white highlighted in gilt. The central chandelier is of gilded bronze and hangs from a plaster pendant.
Art collections of Holkham Hall | Description of the major interiors
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
The facade is symmetrical, however the curve-topped windows of the central projection are taller than the flat-topped windows of the wings, thus uniformity at roof level is achieved by an upward curve to the central section from the wings. These motifs, examples of baroque architecture are exceedingly rare in Britain, where baroque was fashionable for a very brief period at the end of the 17th century and beginning of the 18th. The main door opens to a fine panelled Great Hall, in the manner of William Kent with a classical double-height ceiling depicting Herse and her sisters sacrificing to Flora.
Chicheley Hall | Current hall
The Palm House contains "Garden Figure", a sculpture by Frederick Hibbard. The Fern Room or Fernery, approximately five and a half feet below grade, was opened in 1895. It contains plants of the forest floor, primarily a vast collection of ferns and one of the most historical plants, the cycads. Fossils of these plants date back at least 250 million years. These plants are similar to conifers and the ginkgo tree rather than palm trees. The Tropical Room was originally called the stove house. Opened in 1895, it contained an assortment of tropical plants suspended from bark-covered walls. It is now called the Orchid Room and has a collection of approximately 25,000 natural species.
Lincoln Park Conservatory | Halls