Lapworth Museum of Geology facts for kids
Entrance to the Lapworth Museum
|
|
| Established | 1880 |
|---|---|
| Location | Edgbaston, Birmingham, West Midlands, England |
| Type | Geological museum |
| Visitors | c. 50,000 |
| Public transit access | University railway station |
The Lapworth Museum of Geology is a cool geological museum at the University of Birmingham in Edgbaston, England. It's named after a famous geologist called Charles Lapworth. The museum first started way back in 1880!
In 2016, the museum reopened after a big makeover that cost £2.7 million. This project added awesome new galleries and displays. It also created modern spaces for visitors and school groups.
The Lapworth Museum is free to visit. Its exhibits are great for everyone, from families and kids to university students. The museum uses its huge collections to tell the story of how life and our planet have changed over 4.5 billion years. It especially focuses on how the environment, plants, and animals in the English Midlands have changed over time.
The museum has over 250,000 items! These include fossils, rocks, and minerals that are important for science around the world. It also has old papers that show big scientific discoveries and tell us about past geologists. In 2017, the Lapworth was one of five museums in the UK chosen for the Art Fund Museum of the Year Award.
Contents
Exploring the Museum: What You Can See
The Lapworth Museum has three main public areas. The biggest part is the Evolution of Life gallery. Here, you can see life-size models of a meat-eating dinosaur called Allosaurus and a flying reptile named Pteranodon. There's also a huge rock wall that goes from the floor to the ceiling. It shows different types of rocks and explains the rock cycle.
This gallery uses the museum's fossil collection to show how life has changed from the very beginning of Earth's history until today. Cool animated videos show how the local environment in the Midlands changed over time. Imagine tropical reefs in the Silurian Period, swampy rainforests in the Carboniferous Period, or shallow oceans in the Jurassic Period! You can even see what it was like during the Quaternary Period when ice ages happened. The gallery also has displays about today's biodiversity (all the different kinds of life), human evolution, and the life of Charles Lapworth.
The Active Earth gallery helps you understand how our planet works. It explains things like earthquakes, volcanoes, climate change, and how mountains form. There's an amazing interactive globe that lets you see how the continents have moved over millions of years.
The Mineral Wealth gallery explores the many different kinds of minerals. You can learn how they are found, sorted, and used. This section also tells you about important local people like William Murdoch and Matthew Boulton. You can also see beautiful gemstones and learn about Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter. Don't miss the special display of glowing minerals that light up under ultraviolet light!
Visitor Facilities and Learning Opportunities
The museum has a welcome desk, a small shop, a cafe, and toilets. All parts of the museum are easy to get around, even if you use a wheelchair. There's a special room for school groups to have lessons. The museum also has a small space for changing exhibits, so there's always something new to see!
If you're a student or researcher, you can ask to see the museum's collections and old records. The Lapworth also has a great team of volunteers who help out.
A Look Back in Time: The Museum's Story
The Lapworth Museum is inside the beautiful Aston Webb Building at the University of Birmingham. This building was designed by famous architects Sir Aston Webb and Ingress Bell. It still has many of its original features from the early 1900s. The museum has been in this spot since the 1920s.
But the museum's story actually began in 1880. That's when Mason College, which later became the University of Birmingham, was founded. The museum is named after Professor Charles Lapworth. He was an English geologist and the first Professor of Geology at the university. He was a very important scientist in the 1800s. The museum's collections have always helped geology students at the University of Birmingham learn. Scientists from all over the world still use them for their research today.
The Big Makeover Project
The Lapworth Museum closed in December 2014 for a huge £2.7 million makeover. The goal was to completely update and expand the galleries. They wanted to make them easier to understand and more interesting for everyone, not just scientists. They also added important things that were missing, like a welcome desk, shop, cafe, and toilets. The project made sure all museum areas were easy to access for everyone. It also improved where the museum stores its collections.
A lot of the money for this project came from a big grant of £1.693 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Money also came from people who used to study at the University of Birmingham, and from other groups like Arts Council England.
The museum staff and volunteers worked with outside experts to complete the project. The museum officially reopened in June 2016. It was opened by famous people like Sir Paul Nurse, a Nobel Prize winner, and Professor Alice Roberts, who helps people understand science.
Amazing Collections and Old Records
The museum has over 250,000 items! These include fossils, rocks, and minerals. It also has geological maps, old tools, models, and photographs. You can even find some animal specimens and old stone axes.
The museum also keeps the Lapworth Archive. This is a huge collection of Charles Lapworth's work. It's one of the most complete collections from any geologist in the 1800s! There are also important papers from other geologists like Professor Leonard Johnston Wills and Professor Frederick William Shotton. The archive also has records about the Chinese geologist Li Siguang and pioneering female scientists like Dame Maria Ogilvie Gordon and Dame Ethel Shakespear.
In 2008, the Lapworth's entire collection was officially recognized as super important for the country and the world. This was done by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council and later by Arts Council England. The museum's collections are so important that they even get special funding to help take care of them. In 2009, the Earth Science collection from the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery was moved to the Lapworth Museum to be kept there for a long time.
Fossil Collections
The museum's fossil collections are especially strong in areas that match the local geology and the research of past and present University of Birmingham scientists. One of the most important collections is of Silurian marine animals. These are from the 428-million-year-old Wenlock Limestone near Dudley. This limestone shows us animals that lived in and around ocean reefs when the Midlands was covered by warm, shallow tropical seas.
Many of these fossils were found in the 1700s and 1800s when people were digging up limestone to make iron. The museum has key collections gathered in the 1800s by Charles Ketley and Sir Charles Holcroft.
The museum also has an important collection of graptolites. These are tiny marine creatures that are super useful for figuring out the age of rocks. This is thanks to Charles Lapworth, who was an expert on them. Other cool collections include:
- Plants and animals from the Coal Measures of the South Staffordshire Coalfield.
- Ice age mammals like mammoths and cave bears.
- Amazingly preserved fish fossils from Brazil, Italy, Lebanon, and the USA.
- Specimens from famous fossil sites like the Solnhofen Limestone in Germany and the Burgess Shale in British Columbia.
Mineral Collections
The Lapworth collections include about 12,000 minerals from all over the world. There are especially beautiful examples from mining areas in Cornwall, Cumbria, Shropshire, and Wanlockhead. Many of these specimens come from collections made in the 1700s and 1800s, from mines that are now closed. A very important collection belonged to William Murdoch. He was a Scottish engineer and inventor who worked with James Watt and Matthew Boulton.
Events and Educational Activities
After its big makeover, the Lapworth started a new education program. This includes workshops for different school ages, all linked to the National Curriculum. Schools, colleges, and even home-school groups use the Lapworth as a learning tool. You can arrange talks, hands-on sessions, and "behind the scenes" tours to learn more about natural history.
A new yearly public talk series was also started. It's called the Keith Palmer Lecture Series, named after a big donor to the museum's makeover. These talks aim to help everyone understand natural science better. They feature famous speakers and are for the local community. The first Keith Palmer lecture in 2017 was given by Professor Kenneth Lacovara.
The Lapworth also holds its own series of public talks called the 'Lapworth Lectures'. Leading geologists and palaeontologists give these talks every other Monday during university term time. You can find a list of speakers and dates on the museum's website.
The museum also runs fun family activities at the University of Birmingham's yearly community festival. You can find details about these events on the university's website. The Lapworth also takes part in other university events, like the annual Arts & Science Festival.
The museum also puts on temporary exhibitions several times a year in its special exhibition space.
