Sitting along New Walk in Leicester, not far from the city centre, Leicester Museum and Art Gallery has been open to the public since 1849, making it one of the earliest public museums established in the United Kingdom. The original building was designed by Joseph Hansom, the same architect who invented the hansom cab, and the museum has been extended several times over the years, most recently in 2011. Until 2020 it operated under the name New Walk Museum and Art Gallery. Its collections span science, history, and art, covering both local and international subjects.
Dinosaurs, Fossils, and Prehistoric Life
The museum’s palaeontology collection is among its most notable. Two Mesozoic reptile skeletons are on permanent display: a cetiosaur unearthed in Rutland and a plesiosaur recovered from Barrow upon Soar. The cetiosaur, a specimen of Cetiosaurus oxoniensis affectionately known as George, stretches 15 metres and is considered one of the most complete sauropod skeletons in the world. Discovered in June 1968 at the Williamson Cliffe quarry near Little Casterton in Rutland, its bones have been housed at the museum since 1975, with most of the display using replicas because the originals are too fragile to exhibit. The skeleton gained wider public attention when it appeared on Blue Peter and was formally opened by presenter Janet Ellis in 1985. The plesiosaur, nicknamed the Barrow Kipper after its flattened appearance, was found in Barrow upon Soar in 1851 and has since been reclassified more than once, with its precise genus still a matter of scientific debate. In September 2011, David Attenborough opened an expanded Dinosaur Gallery, which added a new room and reorganised the fossil displays to focus largely on extinct marine reptiles. That gallery also includes a Leedsichthys fossil and a fragment of the Barwell Meteorite.
The Charnia Fossil and Other Permanent Exhibits
Among the museum’s most scientifically significant objects is the Charnia fossil, described by the museum itself as Leicester’s fossil celebrity. It holds the distinction of being the first fossil ever formally described from undoubted Precambrian rocks, at a time when it was widely assumed that such ancient strata could not contain large life forms. The specimen on display is a holotype, meaning it is the actual physical example used when the species was first identified and described. Charnia masoni takes its name from Roger Mason, who discovered it as a schoolboy in 1957 at Charnwood Forest and later pursued a career as an academic geologist. Beyond palaeontology, the museum’s permanent galleries include an Egyptian area, displays of Leicestershire minerals, and a wildspace area with taxidermy animals from around the world.