Cool Little Museums in London - The Grant Museum of Zoology

Want to shake hands with a skeleton, put your head in the jaws of a shark, see a jar of pickled moles and some Dodo bones, then the Grant Museum in London is well worth a visit. 

Free entry (donations welcome) and open from 1pm - 5pm Mon - Saturday it is situated in the Rockefeller Building on University Street, London, WC1E 6DE. 

This compact venue packs in a plethora of curios from 1827 onwards and was established by Robert Edmond Grant, a professor of Zoology, who amassed a collection of specimens for teaching purposes. Grant was persuaded on his death bed to leave this collection to the University of London (UCL). His radical evolutionary views also influenced the young Charles Darwin. 

There is a rather nice pdf guide of ‘Top Ten Objects to view at the Grant Museum’ which you can download here.

One of the rarest skeletons in the world, these are the bones of a Quagga or South African zebra, extinct since 1883.

Extinct Quagga (South African zebra)

Did you know elephants only have four teeth!

Elephants teeth?

Nice drawers.

Grant Museum UCL

Saying hello to Mr Bones.

How do you do?

You can become a friend of the Grant Museum and adopt a specimen.

Grant Museum London

Grant Museum UCL

Not so swift now, a collection of stuffed birds.

Grant Museum

Platypus, Flatypus, Platysausage!

Grant Museum, UCL

Man but not as we know him, a collection of evolutionary skulls.

Homo skulls - Grant Museum

Everywhere you look there is something to see. Here’s a monkey skeleton hanging from the rafters!

Grant Museum, UCL

It is now illegal to collect tortoiseshell and man can replicate it synthetically, too late for these poor blighters however.

Grant Museum, UCL

Real tortoiseshell - Grant Museum, UCL

Erbie liked seeing his face at the back of the shark - kids and mirrors.

Grant Museum, UCL

Grant Museum, UCL

So much to see...

Grant Museum, UCL

Microscope slides

Jar of moles

 A collection of mammal brains.

 A lovely collection of glass jellyfish and other invertebrates, even a slug which were hard to preserve made by the Czech jewellers Blaschka.

Anatomically perfect model in glass - Grant Museum, UCL

There are lots of interesting books to browse through too.

Grant Museum, UCL

Dem bones.

Grant Museum, UCL

Grant Museum, UCL

As Erbie has the attention span of a gnat this little museum was perfect for an afternoon visit. His favourite things were the giant turtle shell and the giant dear skull. Mine were the glass slug and the Dodo bones.

Erbie and I took the 134 bus which stops just across the road on Gower Street. The nearest tubes are Warren Street or Euston Square.

   

Grant Museum location map here.