Leverian collection

The Leverian collection was a natural history and ethnographic museum put together by Ashton Lever in the 18th century. It began at his home in Alkrington near Manchester, where he gathered fossils, shells, animals and birds. After opening to paying visitors by carriage or horseback, Lever moved the collection to London in 1775. The museum first stood in Leicester House on Leicester Square, where Lever showed around 25,000 exhibits. Many came from Captain James Cook’s voyages, including a Viking silver thistle brooch found in Cumbria in 1785. The display was arranged as a single large gallery on the first floor. Visitors paid an entrance fee, though Lever later lowered it to half a crown. The collection attracted admirers such as Philip Bury Duncan, who later became keeper of the Ashmolean Museum. After Lever’s death in 1788, James Parkinson took over and moved the collection to a rotunda south of the Thames. The new building housed illustrated catalogues and works by artists like Sarah Stone. Naturalists such as Heinrich Friedrich Link visited to study the specimens. In 1806 the entire collection was sold by auction, with parts later forming the core of the World Museum in Liverpool. Some items survive there today, including birds collected on Cook’s voyages and a critically endangered South Island kōkako.