museums – rustenivy

Penlee House and the Bronte family

19/05/2024 rustenivy

If you have been following my travel posts you will have noticed by now that I love museums and art galleries. So, of course, I had to visit Penlee House while in Penzance as it has both.

You may be wondering what Penlee House has to do with the Bronte family and if you read their website you would be no wiser about the connection, as they do not mention it. I read on some other websites that the mother and aunt of the Bronte sisters, Maria and Elizabeth Branwell, lived on Chapel Street and one mentioned that they came from a successful Penzance family of merchants. ^[1] Penlee House was built in 1864 for ‘the wealthy Penzance miller and merchant, John Richards Branwell’. So of course, the genealogist in me immediately asked, can I find a connection between these families?

But first, a bit about Penlee House and its collections.

Penlee House is located in Penlee Park, a short walk from my accommodation. It was bought for the town in 1946 as a War Memorial, and to house historic and art collections. The original museum dates back to 1839 and its focus was, like many of that time, natural history and ‘antiquities’. It still houses exhibitions about Cornwall’s past, including archaeological discoveries and the history of mining. It also hosts art exhibitions featuring local artists and artists from the Newlyn School of art. Newlyn is the next town along from Penzance and the Newlyn School was a colony of artists that were resident there in the late 1880s.

Collecting seaweed for farming, Mount’s Bay (Photographer unknown)

The Bronte connection

So, back to the Bronte sisters and the Branwell families.

I researched John Richards Branwell, the original owner of Penlee House. I added him to Wikitree, then extended his family back in time. I got a wonderful surprise then, as Wikitree informed me that he was related to me! Fourth cousin five times removed, but that kind of distance does not bother us genealogists! It turns out that his grandmother was Anne Pollard and the mother of my Cornwall convict (Lydia Matthews) was also a Pollard.

Maria Branwell was born in Penzance in 1783, to Thomas Branwell and Anne Carne. ^[2] It was a little tricky finding the connection as the Branwells were not terribly imaginative with their sons’ names, so there were a lot of Richards, Roberts and Johns, and I had to correctly allocate each to the right family. Eventually, though, I made the connection. John Richards Branwell, owner of Penlee House, was the second cousin once removed of the Bronte sisters.

Sources

Holland, Nick, ‘The Brontes and the Cornwall Connection‘, Anne Bronte, 2 July 2017
Anon, ‘Maria Branwell‘, Wikipedia; ‘Maria Bronte formerly Branwell‘, Wikitree

Posts

London Docklands

11/05/2024 rustenivy

The London Docklands were for centuries the heart of London. They were integral to the establishment and expansion of the British Empire. They were the places where goods arrived from exotic locations such as Constantinople and they were the places from which so many ships left on voyages of exploration and conquest.^{[1] p105} In the 17th and 18th centuries, they became the centre of industry.^{[1] p163}

The Docklands are in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, south of Poplar. They are, as the name suggests, associated with the history of the River Thames and England’s shipping industry.

Museum of London Docklands

I visited the Museum of London Docklands to find out more about this history. If you have not been there yet, I highly recommend it. Though be aware that it has a lot of school groups and they are noisy and annoying!

Entry to the museum is free. Bookings are only required for temporary exhibitions. It is located at No 1, West India Quay. I got there by taking the tube to Canary Wharf and walking over the footbridge.

Slavery exhibition

Some of my ancestors on my father’s adoptive line were Jamaican slave owners, so I was very interested to view the museum’s slavery exhibition.

The museum has made a great attempt at a more honest portrayal of British involvement in slavery, acknowledging how the empire was built on the profits of slave trade. It includes perspectives from the enslaved themselves, notes how the campaign took over fifty years to make a difference and also acknowledges the crucial involvement of women in the abolition campaign. Although I did overhear a tour guide still contributing the abolition of slavery to Wilberforce. The Brits do love their ‘heros’.

Watermen and lightermen

Many of my father’s ancestors were watermen and lightermen on the Thames. I was delighted to find many images of lightermen, models of their boats and also a waterman’s uniform and buckle.

Model of a lighterman's barge — Model of a lighterman’s barge

Uniform warn by Thames watermen, London — Uniform worn by Thames watermen, London

Sources

Ackroyd, Peter, Thames. Sacred River, Vintage Books, London, 2008

Posts

British Museum

10/05/2024 rustenivy

I feel sad that I am starting to think about museums and galleries the way I think about zoos. Since reading Geoffrey Robertson’s book, Who Owns History and watching shows such as Stuff the British Stole , I have a greater awareness of the practices behind the growth of the collections.^[1][2] I can no longer go to zoos. It hurts me too much to see animals in captivity. I still go to museums and galleries, but I feel guilty.

Having collections (of animals or objects) helps us learn about them and appreciate them. But I also wish that they could be where they are meant to be. This issue is massive and complex, so I will not get into it further here except to say that I think it is important, when viewing collections, to understand the context and history, not just of the cultures that they came from but how they came into the collections. Unfortunately, I usually find the short descriptions in museums frustratingly inadequate for this purpose.

Rosetta stone (room 4). My first university degree was in prehistory and archaeology. So you can imagine how excited I got when I realised that one of the exhibits in the British Museum is the Rosetta Stone. The actual real Rosetta Stone. For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, the Rosetta Stone was the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics. It contains a decree written in three different scripts in Egypt in 196 BC. One of the scripts is Ancient Greek, which was already known, so it was used to decipher the other scripts.

For me, the Rosetta Stone symbolises research and understanding, the joy of discovery and the value of good historical documentation!

Rosetta Stone British Museum — Rosetta Stone

Robertson says that the Rosetta Stone is one of the objects in the museum which appears to have been obtained legally and, since he is a barrister, I will take his word for it.^[1] It was found by French soldiers and surrendered to England as part of the peace treaty after their defeat at Aboukir Bay. One reason that there is no pressure to return it to Egypt is that many others have since been found. There are seventeen others in the Cairo Museum. ^{[1] pp179-180}

The Sloane Astrolabe (room 1) crafted around 1300, it is one of the oldest mathematical instruments in the museum. An astrolabe is an astronomical instrument, used to identify stars or planets, determine latitude and tell time. It is a precursor to the sextant.

Sloane Astrolab, British Museum — Sloane Astrolabe

This Astrolabe was owned by Hans Sloane and it was his collection that became the basis for both the British Museum and the British Library. While his collection was seemingly bequeathed to the King quite legally, as a collector he was not without controversy. He worked as a doctor on slave plantations in Jamaica and it is claimed that is how he financed his collection.^[3] In 2020, a bust of Sloane was removed from display within the museum in what the Director of the Museum described as an acknowledgement of links to slavery and a commitment to a ‘rewrite our shared, complicated and, at times, very painful history.’ ^[4]

The Parthenon sculptures (room 18) are from the Parthenon temple in Athens and date to between 447BC and 432BC. Renamed by the museum from ‘the Elgin marbles’ in an obvious attempt to try to disentangle them from the person who stole them from Greece, they are perhaps the most well known of the contested items in the museum. I will not get into the debate here, but if you are interested in it, Geoffrey Robinson’s book presents the case for their return to Greece and the museum’s website presents the case for them remaining in England. The fact that they need three rooms to display them emphasises the scale of the act.

The Parthenon Sculptures, aka the Elgin Marbles, British Museum — The Parthenon sculptures aka the Elgin Marbles

Special exhibitions

There is so much to see in the museum, I could probably have spent a week there. Instead I visited two paid exhibitions – Michelangelo and the Romans. Just a couple of photos for you here: