Horniman Museum and Gardens

The Horniman Museum and Gardens stands in Forest Hill, a leafy corner of south-east London. Designed by Charles Harrison Townsend and opened in 1901, the building is Grade II* listed and houses anthropology, natural history and musical instruments. Its collections grew from Frederick Horniman’s 30,000 items gathered on world travels. A 2002 extension by Allies and Morrison enlarged the galleries, and in 2022 the museum was named Museum of the Year by the Art Fund. In 2007 a Walking with Beasts exhibition featured life-sized models of Smilodon and the Woolly Mammoth. The museum also returned seventy-two Benin Bronzes to Nigeria in 2022. The grounds cover sixteen acres of Grade II listed gardens. A 1894 conservatory, moved from the family home in Croydon, shelters tropical plants beside a 1912 bandstand. A Butterfly House, sound garden with large musical instruments, and a nature trail invite exploration. The gardens include an enclosure for small animals, an ornamental garden, and a Pavilion for working with living materials. A neoclassical mosaic mural on the main building’s wall tells the story of Humanity in the House of Circumstance through more than 117,000 tesserae. Visitors find a totem pole carved from red cedar by Nathan Jackson in 1985 outside the entrance. Inside, the CUE building from 1996 has a grass roof and passive ventilation. The aquarium’s unusual layout and the museum’s 350,000 objects offer varied discovery. The gardens’ historic features and living collections create a place where art, nature and culture meet.