The Horniman Museum

In Forest Hill, Southeast London is a museum devoted to anthropology, natural history and musical instruments. The Horniman Museum opened in 1901, although under a different name, and is now known for its extensive collection of taxidermied animals. The museum resulted from Frederick Horniman’s lifelong passion for collecting artefacts. Horniman gathered around 30,000 items during his lifetime, but the Horniman Museum now boasts a collection of 350,000 objects.

Frederick John Horniman was born in Bridgwater, Somerset, on 8th October 1835 to Quaker parents, John and Ann Horniman. John had founded Horniman’s Tea Company in 1826 in Newport, Isle of Wight. He later moved the business to London, the then-biggest tea trading port in the world. By 1891, Horniman’s was the largest business in the trade. 

Horniman grew up in Croydon, where he attended the Quaker Friends’ School until age 14. Upon leaving school, he joined the family business. During the Victorian era, many immoral traders attempted to increase their profits by adding other items to their products. Tea companies frequently supplemented tea leaves with hedge clippings or dust. The Hornimans, on the other hand, refused to cheat their customers. Instead, John Horniman revolutionised the tea trade by using machines to speed up the process of filling pre-sealed packages. The process was quicker and cheaper than paying workers to fill the packets by hand.

During the 1850s, the government tried to put an end to traders cheating customers by secretly testing their products. In 1855, the test results declared Horniman’s Tea pure and safe for consumption. The company saw an increase in sales following this survey, much to the dismay of its competitors.

In 1859, Frederick Horniman married Rebekah Emslie (1825-95), with whom he had two children, Annie (1860-1937) and Emslie (1863-1932). As the only son, Emslie inherited the tea company on Horniman’s death and sold it to J. Lyons & Co. in 1918. Emslie received a private education and spent some of his youth travelling. He later became a Liberal Party politician. Annie also received a private education at home, but her interests lay in the theatre, which Horniman considered sinful. Nonetheless, Horniman allowed Annie to attend the Slade School of Fine Art, which kick-started her career in the acting world. In 1908, she founded the first repertory company at the Gaiety Theatre in Manchester.

From around 1860, Horniman began collecting objects, specimens and artefacts of interest. He particularly looked for items belonging to ‘natural history and the arts and handicrafts of various peoples of the world’. His passion for collecting soon became a quest to ‘bring the world to Forest Hill’, where he and his family lived, and to educate and enrich the lives of the local community.

Horniman’s mission took him far and wide to places that either appealed to him or may hold a particular interest to people back home. Countries he visited include Burma, Canada, China, Egypt, Japan, Sri Lanka and the United States. Horniman’s family frequently travelled overseas with him, which inspired his son, Emslie, to dabble in anthropology.

For some time, Horniman’s family put up with his eccentric passion for collecting, but by the late 1880s, his wife Rebekah put her foot down. After giving her husband the ultimatum, ‘either the collection goes, or we do,’ Hormian agreed to move to a larger house on Surrey Mount, not overly far from their previous home in Forest Hill.

In 1890, Horniman organised his curiosities into two categories, art and nature, and opened the collection to the public as the Surrey House Museum. Sir Morell Mackenzie (1837-92), a London-based physician, officially opened the museum on Christmas Eve. Over the next nine years, the museum was open on Wednesdays and Saturdays from 2 pm to 9 pm and on bank holidays from 10 am to 9 pm, attracting over half a million visitors. During the first year, it received 42,808 visitors alone, prompting Horniman to build an extension to accommodate guests and his growing collection of artefacts.

Following the successful extension in 1893, Horniman converted the surrounding land into a public garden, which opened on 1st June 1895. Today, there are 16 acres of land to explore, including a “sound garden” inspired by musical instruments, a wildlife garden and a prehistoric garden.

Since the opening of the Surrey House Museum, Horniman’s vast collection rapidly expanded until it outgrew the building. In 1898, Horniman closed the house and began constructing a purpose-built museum. The work cost around £40,000, which Horniman could afford using the profits of the family tea business. He had also been elected as a Member of Parliament for Penryn and Falmouth in Cornwall, which was another source of income.

The museum was designed by Charles Harrison Townsend (1851-1928), who was simultaneously working on the Whitechapel Art Gallery. The new museum was built from Doulting stone from a quarry in Somerset, dating to the Middle Jurassic era (174.1 to 163.5 million years ago), which seems fitting for a museum featuring several ancient artefacts.

The new museum, known as the Horniman Museum, opened on 29th June 1901. Horniman appointed Dr H. S. Harrison as the Director of the Museum and gave him the responsibility of reorganising the collection. Harrison also introduced several more objects to the museum until his retirement in 1937.

On 5th March 1906, Frederick Horniman passed away and was buried next to his first wife, Rebekah, in Camberwell Old Cemetery. When Rebekah died, Horniman married Minnie Louisa Bennett, with whom he had two daughters. As Horniman’s only son, Emslie inherited the museum and the tea trade. Emslie generously donated money to extend the Horniman Museum, creating a library and lecture theatre in 1912.

When Emslie Horniman passed away in 1932, he bequeathed £10,000 to the London County Council to build further extensions at the Horniman Museum. In 1944, the Royal Anthropological Institute established the Emslie Horniman Anthropological Scholarship Fund to “promote the study of the growth of civilisations, habits and customs, religious and physical characteristics of the non-European peoples and of prehistoric and non-industrial man in Europe”.

Since Frederick Horniman’s death, the museum has been looked after by several Directors. Dr Otto Samson, who was interested in ethnomusicology, concentrated on developing a collection of musical instruments. Later, David Boston embellished the museum with his own findings.

Further extensions to the museum have included the conservatory, constructed between 1987 and 1989, and the Centre for Understanding the Environment (CUE) building. The latter was inspired by Walter Segal (1907-85), who developed a system of self-build housing. Local architects built the centre with sustainable materials, including a grass roof.

In 1999, the Horniman Museum held the first exhibition in Britain about African art and culture. It featured a mix of sculptures, religious or spiritual objects, and information about life on the continent. Gradually, the display expanded to include artefacts from South American countries, such as Brazil. In 2018, the World Gallery opened to contain the growing African and South American collections. It also features items from Europe, Asia and Oceania to educate visitors about the diverse cultures throughout the world.

The Natural History Gallery contains hundreds of taxidermied animals from all continents. There are over 250,000 specimens in the collection, which include 4,700 butterflies, 350 examples of British mammals, and 175,000 fossils. Some of these were collected by Frederick Horniman, such as the insects, and others joined the collection during the 20th century.

The largest animal in the Natural History collection is a walrus from Canada. It originally belonged to the explorer James Henry Hubbard, who exhibited it at the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition in South Kensington. When the exhibition closed, Horniman purchased the walrus and several other animals for the museum. Unfortunately, not many people in Britain had seen a walrus, so the taxidermists overstuffed it, removing all its natural wrinkles.

The majority of the Horniman Museum is free to visit, including the Natural History Gallery and the World Gallery. Ticketed temporary exhibitions are displayed throughout the year, and a fee is charged for the aquarium and butterfly house. The Grade II* listed building is also of interest, particularly the clock tower and mosaic.

The mosaic on the wall of the museum is a neoclassical mural entitled Humanity in the House of Circumstance. Although designed by Robert Anning Bell (1863-1933), a group of young women pieced the 117,000 tesserae together over 210 days. The image reveals several classical figures representing Art, Poetry, Music, Endurance, Love, Hope, Humanity, Charity, Wisdom, Meditation and Resignation. An open doorway signifies birth, while another door symbolises death.

On display outside the museum’s entrance is a red cedar totem pole. Nathan Jackson (b.1938), a native Alaskan, carved the pole for an American Arts Festival in 1985. The carvings represent an ancient Tlingit story about a woman who married a bear.

In 2022, the Horniman Museum won the Art Fund Museum of the Year award, and it is not difficult to see why. The museum contains a wealth of information about the cultures of the world, plus thousands of fascinating artefacts. There is no sense of prejudice or racism in the World Gallery, and the museum claims Horniman did not gain any of his money through slavery, even in the tea trade (although the same cannot be said for those with whom he traded).

The Horniman Museum and Gardens are open daily from 10 am until 5:30 pm. There is a lot to take in, so more than one visit may be required to appreciate all the artefacts. Look out for the earliest known example of a hoop-shaped horn and the Carlton drum kit in the Music Gallery, and the Apostle Clock on the balcony of the Natural History gallery, which shows Jesus’ twelve apostles bowing to Him at 4 pm every day (if it is working).

For information about temporary displays and exhibitions, visit the Horniman Museum website.

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