Page 73 - The Secret Museum

THE FIRST MUSEUM IN BRITAIN was The Ark, in Lambeth, London. Two gardeners,

John and John Tradescant, opened it. They were father and son. The duo went on
plant-hunting expeditions around the world to harvest the best of the new lands being
discovered, and on their travels collected things they found interesting.

They were consumed by beauty, and gathered up bundles of flowers to fill English
gardens: poppies and stocks from France; white jasmine from Catalonia; daffodils
from Mount Carmel; tulip trees and a mimic passion flower from North America; as
well as vegetables such as cos lettuce, plums, scarlet runner beans and possibly the
first pineapple in England. In 1630, John Tradescant senior became Keeper of His

Majesty’s Gardens, Vines and Silkworms. When he died, his son took over the role.

The Tradescants’ other great contribution to cultural life in England was their
museum. They had amassed so many treasures while seeking out colourful plants that
they decided, in 1626, to open up their home, Turret House, to the public. They
called it The Ark and began charging people 6d to see the things that they had found
in the New World and Europe. These treasures were things few people in England
had ever seen before, and The Ark was described as a place ‘where a Man might in
one daye behold and collecte into one place more curiosities than hee should see if

hee spent all his life in Travell’. The collection included plants, a chameleon, a
pelican, cheese, an ape’s head, shells, the hand of a mermaid, stones, coins, a toad-
fish, birds from India – even a dodo, which at the time was not yet extinct.

My favourite thing in The Ark is Powhatan’s mantle, a coat belonging to the chief
of the Native American Indian tribe that lived in Virginia when the first settlers
arrived. Powhatan’s daughter was Pocahontas, and she married the leader of the
English settlers, John Smith. Perhaps Tradescant senior collected it when he went
there in 1637, almost certainly at the king’s request. He made three trips to Virginia

and brought back all kinds of flowers, plants, shells and treasures including
Tradescantia virginiania, a plant that still grows in England today.

The Tradescants had a catalogue printed, Musaeum Tradescantianum, which was
the first of its kind in Britain. It listed the objects in their collection, divided into
sections like ‘shell-Creatures, Insects, Mineralls, Outlandish-Fruit’, ‘Utensills,
House-holdstuffe’ and ‘rare curiosities of Art’. Everything was given equal weight,
even things that were made up, like mermaids and unicorns.

Powhatan’s coat was catalogued in the ‘Garments, Vestures, Habits and
Ornaments’ chapter, and described as ‘Pohatan, King of Virginia’s habit, all

embroidered with shells, or Roanoke’. There were other things from Virginia too – a
habit of bearskin and a match-coat made of raccoon skins. Just below these in the list
were ‘Henry the 8, his stirrups, hawkes hods and gloves’ and, further down, ‘Edward
the Confessor’s knit gloves’.

Both the Tradescants were buried in the churchyard at St Mary at Lambeth. Today
the church is the Museum of Garden History, the first museum in the world dedicated
to gardening. If you visit the collection you will see the tomb in the knot garden