00:01I'm at a house of one of the most incredible men in history, a polymath.
00:07The man who was interested in science, physics, nature and a medical doctor.
00:14I'm at the house of Erasmus Darwin and with me is the curator Alex Chong.
00:19Alex, this is an amazing house.
00:25How have you been able to interpret such a polymath as Erasmus Darwin?
00:30The museum itself is a historic building.
00:33So we have some rooms in the museum that are set out like the room we're in now, which is
00:39the parlour,
00:39to show people what domestic and social life would have been like for Erasmus when he was here in the
00:4518th century.
00:46We also have some of the rooms in the museum which are displayed with different artefacts.
00:51So a bit more like you might expect when you go into a museum or gallery.
00:55So we've got quite a combination of different interpretation styles.
00:59Looks have a lot of things for children to engage with as well.
01:03So a lot of interactive elements, which is something Erasmus Darwin House does really well.
01:07Where are you able to source many of the artefacts?
01:10So at Erasmus Darwin House, we have a collection of about 1500 objects, which is actually quite small, really.
01:18We are quite a small museum anyway, but in terms of collection size, it's relatively small.
01:23We have around 200 loaned items as well on top of that.
01:27So these have come from other institutions such as English Heritage, the Holborn Museum in Bath,
01:34George Marshall Medical Museum and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.
01:38So we're really lucky that we've got a lot of great supporters around us.
01:42Which item or items in the museum do you think best represents Erasmus Darwin as the man?
01:48So we were really lucky earlier this year in March, we were donated Erasmus Darwin's chair from University College London.
01:58So UCL really kindly reached out to us.
02:00It's got a really interesting provenance with their Department of Statistics and that is currently upstairs in the library.
02:07So if people want to come to this museum, where is it?
02:11So we are just based off the Cathedral Close in Litchfield.
02:15The museum itself is open Thursday to Tuesday, 11 to 5pm.
02:21So what sort of feedback do you get from the public who visit here? What do they get out of
02:25the museum?
02:26We've been really lucky. Our visitors are really generous in their support.
02:30Obviously, as a small independent museum, we rely so heavily on our visitors coming to see us.
02:36We receive really positive feedback from people who come here.
02:39We're very lucky in that we've recently had a re-display done in our library.
02:44And that has brought in a lot of positive feedback and some first time visitors as well.
02:49Well, thank you, Alex.
02:51I recommend to come to this museum. It's absolutely amazing.
02:53Erasmus Darwin, of course, in my opinion, was the greatest Britain of the millennium.
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