The Booth Museum, Dyke Road, brighton
On Monday we made a trip to Brighton, we often go there to unwind and as we’ve been having a hard time recently we thought it would be wise to take a day off.
I had mentioned the Booth Museum to Fi in the past and it had become an obsession of hers, so this time she insisted that we go. I was a bit reluctant as the last time I’d visited was in the 1980’s and the museum was still full of old mahogany display cases which gave the exhibits an extraordinary presence. After so many years I was worried that it would have been modernized and lost it’s interest. Luckily, although they have moved the skeletons into modern displays (which made them easier to see – good for us to take photos for our work}, most of it remained the same.
Baby Skeleton
The Booth museum is a eccentric Victorian’s collection of taxidermy and skeletons housed in the structure he built to store the specimins when his house became full.
It’s free and about 30mins walk from the city centre.
The place is dominated by birds – this was the collectors main passion, still exhibited in the original boxed scenarios. Also on view are a large collection of butterflies, motha and assorted bugs, a few stuffed animals and a room full of skeletons – human, animal and bird.
You want some!!
no more pecking for him!
what's that you say - IT'S FREE!!
Wandering around the museum we came across something that I’d seen years before in the Brighton Museum but as I hadn’t seen it on show I thought it had been completely lost.
The Merman!!
After the renovation of Brighton Museum they passed this exhibit into the Booth Museum – we were both very happy to see it.
Along side the exhibit was a brief explanation – the top half is carved from wood with the addition of a few monkey parts, and joined to the lower half of a fish.
Apparently this was a tribal representation of a river god, made to frighten off evil spirits – but some ingenious European traveller brought it back and made money by exhibiting it to the public as a Merman (Mermen have only two nipples, Mermaids have more).
The Lost Merman
We completed our visit with an ‘all you can eat’ pizza deal and a walk on the pier.
lights on Brighton pier
