Visiting London's Natural History Museum as a teenager

[caption id="attachment_3880" align="alignnone" width="1024"] (pic by John Cummings via Wikimedia Commons)[/caption]

Jess, aged 15, writes: I visited the Natural History Museum frequently when I was younger (in fact, one of my earliest memories is looking at the dinosaurs), but I hadn't been for at least five years until one of my friends suggested a visit. It's strange being a teenager at museums: exhibits are either super babyish or ridiculously quiet and intellectual, and attempts at appealing to teenagers usually involve cringe-y "LOL"s and hashtags. We wondered if the museum had changed much since we last visited it, and if there would be anything for us.

We started out in the "Red Zone", which is all about earth's structure. My friend and I were instantly entranced by the entrance: an escalator leading into a giant model of the earth. It seemed like the start of a ride at Disneyworld! The first exhibition was one I remembered from years ago - "Volcanoes and Earthquakes". Despite both of us being Geography GCSE students and already knowing most of the facts, we really enjoyed the exhibition - it was colourful, in depth, relatively up to date, and had lots to see and do. Particular highlights were casts from Pompeii and a supermarket that simulates the 1996 Great Hanshin earthquake.

[caption id="attachment_3878" align="alignnone" width="753"] (photo courtesy of the Natural History Museum)[/caption]

Next, we passed through the "Human Evolution" and "Earth's Treasures" galleries, which we found fascinating. "Human Evolution" features lots of realistic models of different human species over time, and "Earth's Treasures" is full of minerals and jewels of every size and colour. While these were definitely exciting to look at, it was also very interesting to learn about mineral structure and history of metals. My friend and I were pleasantly surprised - we didn't remember any of this from when we were younger, and it was set at a perfect level for us.

Next came the "Blue Zone", which was all about biology. We both remembered this room, which contains a gigantic blue whale model. There was a lot to see and do, and while everything was impressive, we got bored very quickly. Everything was exactly the same as we remembered, and it seemed quite faded and repetitive. However, there was another exhibition about human biology which we really enjoyed - while it was old, unchanged, and some things didn't work, there were lots of games to play and videos to watch. We enjoyed a game where you had to keep a boy alive by monitoring breathing rates, food consumption and more (we failed), circus mirrors, and an unintentionally funny video about getting hurt while being scared of a dog. We learnt nothing, but it was a lot of fun!

Next came the dinosaurs, which we were really looking forward to. This was the busiest part of the museum, and as expected, it was seemingly unchanged from when we were younger. The dinosaurs were as gigantic and awe-inspring as ever, and we spent a long time in the exhibition. However, this wasn't our favourite part of the museum...

The "Treasures" gallery is something I had never ever heard of before, but my friend and I thought it was amazing. It is a collection of 22 of the most remarkable objects in the museums collection, and we spent about 40 minutes just in this small room. This includes pages from the world's most expensive book: ("John James Audubon's Birds of America"), and my personal favourite, an emperor penguin egg collected on Captain Robert Falcon Scott's expedition to Antarctica. This was with the aim of finding a link between reptiles and birds by looking at the penguin's embryo. My friend and I were shocked and amazed by this story, and I went home and looked it up to find out more. Here's a video from the museum:

[kad_youtube url="https://youtu.be/PdBT670fiCQ" width=200 height=100 ]

Overall, my friend and I had a really great time at the Natural History museum. We learnt a lot and had a lot of fun interacting with the exhibits. However, we thought that the famous parts of the museum (the dinosaurs and the mammals) weren't as interesting as the rest of it. We definitely had a good time, but we won't be making a return visit, seeing as it hasn't really changed that much.

Entrance to the Natural History Museum is free, although there is a charge for some exhibitions. The Treasures Gallery is now undergoing refurbishment, but will reopen this summer.

Travelling back in time at 18 Stafford Terrace

[caption id="attachment_3867" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Robert outside 18 Stafford Terrace[/caption]

London is awash with things to do and see, but sometimes it’s good to go off the beaten track and visit somewhere entirely new. This is how we came to be standing outside a gorgeous Victorian house in Kensington one Sunday morning.

Linley Sambourne’s House appealed to me as I have long wanted to peek into these kinds of properties, and unless you’re a multi-millionaire, that’s unlikely to happen in London. But I didn’t realise there was much more to Sambourne’s own story and the house and guides explain that beautifully.

The House is located at 18 Stafford Terrace, W8, which is a great part of London and perfect for mooching about or getting something to eat, either before or afterwards. You can only see around if you book a tour, which we did, for 11am till 12.15 on a Sunday. We went with Robert, aged 11, but be aware that there is also the option of a specific family-friendly tour with costumed guides, which sounds like terrific fun.

Edward Linley Sambourne was a cartoonist and photographer. He and his wife Marion bought the house in 1874 for £2,000 and lived there for 36 years. The house is pretty much how they left it – with their belongings, photographs, ceramics and paintings, furniture and fittings. You can see many of Linley’s own cartoons on the wall (covering the original wallpaper!) and there are also diaries, bills and letters. The house was turned into a “living museum” by Linley’s granddaughter Anne and opened in 1980.

We arrived a few minutes before the tour was due to start, and were ushered into a room where we watched a short introductory film. It actually revealed a royal connection, because the family of Lord Snowdon (who was married to Princess Margaret, the Queen’s sister) once lived here. Because we entered through the basement, and this is now a shop and visitor area, there are no kitchens or scullery area to be seen, but I don’t think that was a major issue.

After the film, you step back in time as your tour starts properly. It was quite special to see a house that has not been done up like a museum, but actually remains as it looked at the time it was lived in. There was so much clutter – I tried to imagine trying to keep all of it clean and dust-free, but think that must have been impossible – and it was quite dark too. And in fact, although it’s in an area where houses sell for millions of pounds, it was quite narrow and nowhere near as big as I would have expected.

The Sambournes collected a lot of art from Japan, China and the Middle East, which was the fashion at the time, and you can see this on the walls. Linley himself also became very interested in photography and there are many photographs on the walls, some quite risqué, in the bathroom (which has a fantastic old bath).

The couple had two children (plus live-in servants). It was interesting to find out that the children were basically kept up in the nursery (at the top of the house), although this later became Linley’s photographic/art studio. Our son found this really surprising, but I think that the Victorian way – out of sight, out of mind.

[caption id="attachment_3870" align="alignnone" width="1200"] One of the servant's rooms[/caption]

Some of the rooms have been modernised as the house was lived in after Linley and his wife died.

We thoroughly enjoyed our visit, which was something completely different for us. If you have younger children, you may want to try the costumed tour, and if you have problems walking up and down stairs, then this isn’t for you. But we thought it was a great way to spend a few hours in London, learning something new and travelling back to the past.

18 Stafford Terrace is open to the public on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays. The costumed tour is on a Saturday at 11 till 12.15 and we did a “conventional” tour on a Sunday at 11am. You can visit without taking a tour, from 2pm till 5.30pm on these days. This will cost you £7 for adults and £5 for children. We paid £10 per adults and £8 for Robert, for our tour. There are also family costume tours in the holidays – check the Linley Sambourne’s House for details

More London gems

Linley Sambourne’s House

The Ceremony of the Keys