Ipswich Museum - The Curatorship of Frank Woolnough, 1893-1920

The Curatorship of Frank Woolnough, 1893-1920

Dr. Taylor died bankrupt in 1895 and his friend Frank Woolnough (1845-1930) succeeded him as Curator 1893–1920. In 1895 the Tudor house in the park on the north side of Ipswich, Christchurch Mansion, was given to the town by Felix Cobbold and eventually became the art and local history department of the Borough's Museums. Woolnough made himself a polymath and developed both departments of the museum and also the Schools with great vigour. He was also active in the Museums Association, securing Congress visits in 1908 and 1916, and was local Secretary for the Ipswich Congresses of the British Association for the Advancement of Science of 1895 and of the Royal Archaeological Institute in 1899.

Prehistoric archaeology owed a special debt to Suffolk since it was at Hoxne during the 1790s that John Frere recognised humanly-worked flints together with the remains of extinct animals, and the general realisation of the greater antiquity of humankind first began. The Prehistoric Society of East Anglia was created in 1908, centred at Norwich and Ipswich Museums, then the only Society dedicated specifically to this study. Interest developed strongly at Ipswich. The Ipswich investigator James Reid Moir became very active in all the Suffolk county societies and in the Museum, encouraged by his mentor Sir Ray Lankester, who was Museum President 1901-29.

At the same time archaeology of various periods (but especially the Prehistoric) in Ipswich and East Anglia was strongly developed by Nina Frances Layard (1853-1935), who in 1920-21 was among the first women admitted as Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of London. She was also the first woman President of the Prehistoric Society, and in the second year of lady Fellows admitted to the Linnean Society (1906). She maintained a long collaboration with Ipswich Museum and bequeathed most of her collections to it.

An important acquisition of this time was the collection of stuffed British birds presented by the Ogilvie family in 1918. Collected in Suffolk and Scotland, they represent the long collaboration of F.M. Ogilvie with the Norwich taxidermist Thomas Gunn. This large collection, still intact, on display and in good condition, has extremely beautiful simulated habitats and is now a rare survival. Woolnough also acquired gorillas shot by Paul du Chaillu, a stuffed giraffe in glass case, and an overstuffed rhino (known variously as 'Gladys' or 'Rosie' by generations of Ipswich schoolchildren), and he completely re-stocked the former lion case with African animals obtained from Messrs Rowland Ward Ltd. Another noted acquisition was a collection of Western Australian aboriginal material acquired from Emile Clement.