Horniman Museum & Gardens - London Road, Forest Hill, London, UK
N 51° 26.436 W 000° 03.651
30U E 704259 N 5702921
This Greater London Council blue plaque, that mentions the Horniman Museum and Gardens, is attached to the museum's clock tower on the north side of London Road in Forest Hill is south London.
Waymark Code: WMMJY2
Location: London, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 09/30/2014
Views: 1
The blue plaque, that is maintained in good condition, tells us:
Greater London Council
The
Horniman
Museum
and Gardens
were given to
the people of London
in 1901 by
Frederick John
Horniman
who lived near
this site
Wikipedia has an article about the museum and gardens that tells us:
The Horniman Museum is a museum in Forest Hill, London. Commissioned in 1898, it opened in 1901 and was designed by Charles Harrison Townsend in the Arts and Crafts style.The museum was founded in 1901 by Frederick John Horniman. Frederick had inherited his father's Horniman's Tea business, which by 1891 had become the world's biggest tea trading business.
The cash from the business allowed Horniman to indulge his lifelong passion for collecting, and which after travelling extensively had some 30,000 items in his various collections, ranging from natural history, cultural artefacts and musical instruments.
In 1911, an additional building to the west of the main building, originally containing a lecture hall and library, was donated by Frederick Horniman's son Emslie Horniman. This was also designed by Townsend.
The Horniman specialises in anthropology, natural history and musical instruments and has a collection of 350,000 objects. The ethnography and music collections have Designated status. One of its most famous exhibits is the large collection of stuffed animals. It also has an aquarium noted for its unique layout.
The museum is set in 16 acres (65,000 m²) of gardens, which include the following features:
- A Grade II listed conservatory from 1894 which was moved from Horniman's family house in Croydon to the present site in the 1980s.
- A bandstand from 1912
- An enclosure for small animals
- A nature trail
- An ornamental garden
- Plants for materials; medicines; foods and dyes
- A sound garden with large musical instruments for playing
- A new building, the Pavilion, for working on materials that are outside of the collections, such as from the gardens.
It is a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and is constituted as a company and registered charity under English law.
The Horniman website tells us about Frederick John Horniman:
Tea merchant and collector (1835 - 1906)
Frederick John Horniman was born in 1835 in Bridgewater, Somerset, and came from a Quaker family. His father, John (1803-1893), was the co-founder and owner of the tea company ‘Horniman and Co.’
Frederick Horniman was educated at Friends College in Croydon, a Quaker school, and then entered the family business at the age of 14 in 1849. He married Rebekah Emslie in 1859, and they had two children: a daughter, Annie (1860-1937), and son, Emslie (born 1863).
Frederick moved into Surrey House on London Road, Forest Hill, in 1868, and began collecting ethnographic objects, natural history specimens, and musical instruments. He initially began buying objects from merchants, dealers, auction houses, and exhibitions, and expanded his collections in the late 1890s through visits to India, Sri Lanka, Japan, China, Burma, USA, and Egypt.
As his collections expanded, he moved his family to a new house, Surrey Mount, and opened Surrey House as a museum.
In 1896 Horniman’s wife Rebekah died after a short illness. In the same year Frederick was elected as Liberal MP for Falmouth and Penryn, an office that he held until 1904. In 1897 Horniman re-married, to Minifred Louisa Bennet.
By 1898, Surrey House was too small to house Horniman’s growing collections. He hired the architect, Charles Harrison Townsend, to design the new purpose built museum on the site where Surrey House stood. This was finished in 1901, and was opened by the Duke of Fife on 10th June. In July 1901 Frederick Horniman gave the museum and gardens, and six houses, to London County Council as a gift to the people of London. He continued to contribute objects to the museum’s collections until his death on 5th March 1906, after which he was buried next to his first wife Rebekah in a cemetery in Forest Hill.