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John's base from 17-30 June 2002 was The Booth Museum of Natural History in Brighton, originally built in 1874 by Thomas Booth as a shed to house his vast collection of stuffed birds. Booth was a bit of a Shedman himself…
Thomas Booth was born in Chalfont St Giles, 2nd June 1840. After his first wife died he married her nurse. He built a house on the windswept downs above Hove and named it Bleak House. He died aged 49 leaving no children. But Booth did leave one of Britain's greatest natural history collections fully catalogued over almost thirty years of collecting. The collection is still housed in the original building he built for it at the side of his bleak estate.
» The Booth Museum
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'Fire Crested Wren:
A female caught alive with a lantern and bell
in a shrubbery at Lancing Sussex December 12 1846.'
Thomas Booth Catalogue
In the citation of its listed building status the museum is described as:
a long shed... The street front is treated in an Italian Romanesque style... Steps up to 2 identical round-arched entrances with voussoirs of red, yellow and black brick under a round-arched hoodmould, the voussoirs dying into a springing band of red, black and blue glazed brick; double doors with decorative wrought iron hinges... elaborate entablature of gauged brick with dentil work, frieze of upright bricks and moulded brick cornice.
The gable is decorated with banding and diaper work in red brick, and one course of blue glazed brick, which forms part of a springing band to an arcade of 5 blank round arches; Lombard frieze and moulded brick cornice to gable. Lantern to ridge of roof.'
The museum is 140 yards long and 40 yards wide.
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'I'm really looking forward to my work during the residency. There are mysteries about Thomas Booth and his extraordinary building that I aim to try and solve - or at least to fathom.
Inside the museum is a wonderland of natural history, frozen in time. Trays and trays of fragile, forgotten butterflies. Cupboards full of curious birds. Jars of creatures, chests of skeletons. The Booth is like an ark, set sail in Victorian times. It's part mausoleum, part zoo, part lab, part archive.
But most of all - it's a shed!'
John Davies
Notes for Project Shed 6.6.02
Read John's poem about
Thomas Booth
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