The World Museum is located on William Brown Street in Liverpool city centre. It is the oldest of the museums and galleries in Liverpool and is home to treasures from around the world, including antiquities, botany, ethnology, zoology, geology as well an impressive aquarium, bug house and Planetarium.
The World Museum is a Grade II listed building that was built to house Liverpool’s natural history and archaeology collections, which originally started with a donation from the 13th Earl of Derby.
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The World Museum is operated by National Museums Liverpool. It opened on 8th March 1853 in the Ropeworks district of Liverpool. The 13th Earl of Derby left his natural history collection to the town of Liverpool when he died in 1851. When the museum first opened it showed a tiny part of the Earl of Derby's collection, some paintings, models of Liverpool, and samples of imports that had been shown at the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. In 1857 the curator installed aquarium tanks in the museum - the second public aquarium in the world.
The museum moved to its present site on William Brown Street in 1860, when William Brown (1784-1864), a wealthy Liverpool merchant, banker and politician, offered to finance the building. He originally offered £6,000 for the building, but actually spent more than £20,000 on it. The new museum and library building were handed over on 18th October 1860 to the Mayor of Liverpool. The museum was renamed the Liverpool Free Public Museum, and it opened to the public a year later on 18th October 1861.
The museum expanded with collections and displays of life sciences, earth sciences and human cultures from around the world. The museum's planetarium, said to be the first in the UK outside London, opened to the public on 22nd May 1970.
In April 1986 it was one of a group of museums and galleries that were 'nationalised' under the new organisation, National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside, now called National Museums Liverpool.
The museum's ground-breaking Natural History Centre opened on 1st August 1987. It was the first hands-on centre in a museum and has been imitated across the globe.
On 29th April 2005 it was renamed World Museum and a new aquarium, refurbished galleries and a new entrance were opened.
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The following report about the museum by Nick Tyrrell appeared in the Liverpool Echo on 17th January 2021;
'World Museum Liverpool's slavery links to be marked with a plaque'" It will acknowledge the role museum funders the Brown family played in the slave trade
Liverpool's plans to more publicly recognise the role of slavery in the development of the city are continuing to gather pace, with an installation recently approved for a key city site.
The council's planning department recently approved an application to install a plaque on the World Museum on William Brown Street.
That plaque acknowledges the role in the slave trade of the Brown family, who funded aspects of the museum and the neighbouring Central Library.
It comes as part of a much wider council scheme announced last year to contextualise some of the city's road names and landmarks that have taken their names from those linked with slavery.
According the reports submitted to the council's planning department, the plaque on the World Museum will read: "Liverpool's Central Library and World Museum have their origins in wealth accrued through slavery.
"William Brown, the benefactor of both institutions, became one of the premier importers of slave-produced cotton into Liverpool during the first half of the nineteenth century.
"The Brown family also owned many enslaved people on their plantations in the United States.
"Shaw's Brow, the thoroughfare on which the museum and library were erected, was renamed William Brown Street in gratitude to him for donating £40,000 for their building.
"Both organisations opened to the public, 8 October 1860."
It is one of many plaques that will be installed on streets across the city, including Bold Street, Falkner Street, Parr Street and Colquitt Street.
Historian Laurence Westgaph was commissioned last year to lead the program, working with a panel from numerous organisations in the city to move the proposals forward.
The scheme is named in honour of city historian Eric Lynch.
Speaking last year, his son Andrew Lynch said: “Eric Lynch and his family are deeply moved and proud that local organisations and the City Council have chosen to honour his work in such a tangible way.
“These plaques are a tribute to Eric’s long years of work as a Black community activist and educator, teaching the people of Liverpool to acknowledge and understand their historic inheritance in an honest and open way, and uncovering the true contribution made by Black people throughout the growth and life of our great city.”
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