X Международная студенческая научная конференция Студенческий научный форум - 2018

History.

Explore the history of Manchester Museum to find out more about how our collection and historic buildings developed.

The origins of The Manchester Museum lie in the collection of the Manchester manufacturer and collector John Leigh Philips (1761-1814). After his death, a small group of wealthy men banded together to buy his 'cabinet', and in 1821 they set up the Manchester Natural History Society.

The museum was the major focus of the Society, and it was housed from 1835 in grand premises on Peter Street. The collections continued to grow as members and others donated object from around the world. In 1850 the museum absorbed the collections of the Manchester Geological Society.

By the 1860s the Natural History Society had little money and the building was full. The museum was transferred in 1868 to Owens College, which later became the University of Manchester. The College asked the famous architect Alfred Waterhouse to design a museum building, which was opened to the public in 1890. Waterhouse also designed Manchester's Town Hall and the Natural History Museum in London.

Now known as the 'Manchester Museum', the collections were used by many people, from Owens College professors to schoolchildren. Many more objects were donated and the Museum was extended in 1912-1913 and again in 1927. These new buildings, designed by Waterhouse's son and grandson, displayed new ethnographic and Egyptology collections. They were funded largely by Jesse Haworth, a local textile merchant and keen Egyptologist.

During the First World War, many local schools were used as military hospitals. In cooperation with the local education authorities, the Manchester Museum gave classes to the displaced school children. This system, which continued for 80 years, was one of the first of its kind in the country.

Over the twentieth century, the collection was split into archery, archaeology, botany, Egyptology, entomology, ethnography, mineralogy, palaeontology, numismatics and zoology, as well as live specimens in the aquarium and vivarium. Overall, the collection grew to six million items, and the staff expanded from four 'keepers' to over 70 museum professionals. Many of these were world-class scholars, and the Museum was the site for cutting-edge research in the natural sciences and humanities.

This was matched with growing public interest and an emphasis on exhibitions. From the 1950s, the Museum staged a variety of temporary exhibitions in a special gallery near the entrance. With key exhibits such as the Moon Rock in 1969 and 'Lindow Man' (in 1987 and 1991), the Museum attracted up to 250,000 visitors.

The Museum expanded again in 1977 into the former Dental School. In 1997 the Museum was awarded a £12.5 million grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund and this, together with money from the European Regional Development Fund, the University of Manchester, the Wellcome Trust, The Wolfson Foundation and other sponsors has enabled the Museum to undertake the refurbishment and building which opened in 2003.

Identification

Found something interesting?

The Museum has some great resources to help you identify rocks, coins, bones and other types of objects. The Study (on the third floor of the Museum) has lots of identification keys and guides, as well as expert advice on how to go about identifying things including bones, meteorites and archaeological objects. If you want to compare things you’ve found with our collections, you can book an appointment at the Collections Study Centre. If you still can’t work out what your object is, you can leave it with the Collections Study Centre and a member of staff will see if they can identify it within a fortnight.

Vanessa Oakden records archaeological and numismatic discoveries for the Portable Antiquities Scheme

Research Facilities

We encourage people to carry out their own research on our collection, history and activities, whether they are doing this as part of their education, their job or for their own interest. Depending on the nature of the request and the collections involved, you might work directly with a Curator or Curatorial Assistant, or in the Collections Study Centre.

Image request service

Images of our collection are available for purchase, either for private use or for publication. We can supply images for many of the objects and specimens in our collection or can arrange for new photography if necessary. They will always do our best to meet your deadlines, but it is helpful to be given as much notice as possible, especially where new photography is needed. As a rough guide, please allow at least six weeks for us to organize photography and supply the image to you. To request an image please complete our request form (below) and return it to us by email. We will then contact you with a quotation for any costs involved. For more information on our image reproduction service please download our guidelines below.

Collection

From Darwin to Turing, from natural history and the environment to technology and the environmental, via objects as remarkable as dinosaur skeletons and mummies from Ancient Egypt: our collection spans millennia, and over four million objects.

Archaeology

In Manchester Museum's archaeology collection can be found objects from several hundred thousand years ago right up to the 20th century. Historically the Museum has supported excavations in the eastern Mediterranean, western Asia, and Mesopotamia. Highlights include a massive carved stone relief from Nineveh, cuneiform tablets, ivories from Nimrud, and John Allegro’s photographs of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The collection also boasts a fine collection of painted vases, carved gems, terracotta figures and metalwork from Bronze Age Mycenae and Crete, and from Etruscan Italy. Analysis of a Corinthian bronze helmet shows that it was once dedicated in an ancient Greek temple.

The prehistoric collection features Neanderthal stone tools from Creswell Crags in Derbyshire, a pair of early Bronze Age gold arm-ring from Malpas in Cheshire and the incredibly well-preserved early Bronze Age wooden shovel from Alderley Edge. Also notable are an Iron Age gold neck-ring or torc from Burnley and an iron slave-chain, still in working order, from Bigbury in Kent.

From the Roman fort at Castlefield in the centre of Manchester comes a piece of broken pottery inscribed with a word square, which may be the earliest evidence for Christianity in northern Britain. A Roman soldier's bronze diploma or citizenship award, dated 27 February 158 AD, was found on the beach at Ravenglass in Cumbria.

The Whitworth Park excavation provides the most recent objects such as children’s toys lost in the boating lake when the site was a significant Victorian and Edwardian amenity.

Earth Sciences

Fossils, rocks, minerals and meteorites are essential to help us understand Space, our Planet and the diversity of life on Earth. Manchester Museum has an outstanding collection of approximately 140,000 specimens from all over the world.

Enthusiastic members of the Manchester Geological Society started the collection in 1838. The original Manchester Museum on Peter Street, included some spectacular geology. Some of the highlights were a large Ichthyosaur (on display in the museum today), a hexagonal basalt pillar from the Giant’s Causeway and models of famous diamonds.

Manchester Museum has a collection of around 100,000 fossils ranging from fossil algae from the dawn of life hundreds of millions of years ago, to ferns, Ice Age animals and dinosaurs. Our Type and Figured collection is available online.

The mineral collection contains a wide range of stunning specimens, which include meteorites, gemstones, ore samples and rare minerals. The rock collection contains a diverse range of objects, which include building stones, volcanic rocks, and coal.

The Museum has one of the most important collections of Ice Age animals in Europe, particularly from Creswell Crags. It has helped transform our understanding of climate change. The fossils from Creswell Crags give a rare glimpse into what was happening at the extreme northerly edge of life in the last Ice Age and a window into the world of the first people to live in Britain.

Animals

From Aardvarks to Zebras, giant whales to microscopic single-celled animals, the Museum collection includes roughly one million preserved animals.

The zoology collection includes many mounted mammals (most of the best are on display), one of the largest collections of shells in the UK, large collections of birds, eggs, bryozoa (small marine animals) and a very diverse collection of specimens preserved in spirit. The collection is worldwide in scope, with specimens from the Arctic to the Antarctic, and from all the world’s oceans. It is particularly rich in animals from the North West, the UK, and from the former British empire. The collection includes many famous ‘characters’, including Maharajah the Elephant and Maude the Tigon (both lived in Manchester’s Belle Vue Zoo), and the skull of Old Billy, the oldest horse in the world (he died aged 62). The collection also includes specimens from famous experts and researchers, including birds collected on the Galapagos by Charles Darwin in 1835.

Researchers use the stored collections to understand where animals lived in the past (using the information from data labels). They also explore how the environment has changed over time by sampling our specimens for levels of different chemicals. Modern techniques enable scientists to study the DNA of specimens, showing their relationships, and helping scientists understand how populations have changed over time.

Plants and Fungi

Manchester Museum’s extensive botanical collection brings together plants from all over the globe.

Containing around three-quarters of a million specimens, the botanical collection forms a physical record of where plants and fungi have been found. The Museum collection has grown from the mid-19th century onwards as people with a passion for the natural world have donated their personal collections. The backbone of the collection was created by merging three large private collections from James Cosmo Melvill (worldwide plants donated in 1904), Leopold Hartley Grindon (cultivated plants donated in 1910) and Charles Bailey (European plants donated in 1917). The most recent significant addition has been the collection of British brambles donated by Alan Newton in 2012.

Housed in the Museum’s botanical storeroom, the herbarium, most of the botanical specimens are dried, pressed and mounted onto sheets of paper or stored in paper envelopes. These are all labelled with the plant name, who picked it, where from and when. As well as the pressed plants the collection also contains dried fruits and seeds, timbers, microscope slides, illustrations, models, fungi and jars of medicinal plants.

Money

The Money Gallery of Manchester Museum shows a wide range of coins used by different peoples and civilisations across the world.

The displays are arranged in chronological order, starting with the coinage of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and leading up to the modern credit card. There are selections of Islamic coins, the coinage of India and Chinese paper money intended for use in the afterlife.

Coins, tokens and medals associated with Manchester are also shown, including tokens advertising local attractions such as Belle Vue Zoological Gardens, a medal commemorating the visit of Pope John Paul in 1982 and a Manchester Ship Canal medallion.

Vivarium

The Vivarium is particularly notable for its large collection of Costa Rican Frogs, and the museum has been responsible for establishing important captive breeding programmes for some of the country’s most Critically Endangered species.

One example of this is the programme initiated for the Lemur Leaf Frog, one of the world’s most Critically Endangered amphibians. Live specimens of this species maintained at The Manchester Museum are from the last remaining population in Costa Rica, which are on the very brink of extinction. In 2001 the Manchester Museum initiated the first captive breeding programme for this species and over the years 400 young bred at the Museum have been distributed to National and International Zoos, including Bristol Zoo in England, The Vancouver Aquarium, Canada, and The Atlanta Botanical Gardens in the US.

Leaf frogs exhibit unusual characteristics and behaviours that set them apart from many amphibians, and maintaining them in captivity this has provided many new research opportunities to investigate them that would otherwise have been impossible. Curatorial staff are highly involved with supporting amphibian-related studies that aims to provide a much better understanding of the animals, help in their captive care, and specifically aid their conservation. All the studies are completely non-invasive and normally combine fieldwork with captive observations. On an annual basis curatorial staff also supervise a variety of undergraduate and graduate student projects in the department and sometimes abroad, as well as leading expeditions to remote areas of the world to search for and work with rare frogs.

In conclusion:

I think that this is a great place for visiting. You can get more knowledge about ancient time and history.

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