London Open House 2018

This year I signed up to volunteer only on Saturday afternoon, and planned the next day to go and visit buildings at Greenwich. The day dawned - somewhat - it was pouring with rain and I hoped that I would be able to keep warm whilst on duty. I headed off on the train for Piccadilly - Burlington House - the Linnaean Society. By the time I volunteered this was one of the only society/institute buildings that still required volunteers, even though I volunteered early. Never mind. It was easy to find as it is in the forecourt of the Royal Academy, where I am always darkening the doorways with my curiosity and thirst for culture, and I know the toilets well too. 

After finding the place where I would be standing, giving out information sheets, I went to see if the Faraday Museum was open. This museum is housed in the Royal Institution which is in a nearby street - Albemarle Street - and is the most fantastic Regency building. It is a huge frontage for a small street. I thought this building might be open to the public for Open House, but no, there was an event on, and I asked about the Faraday Museum but it is open only during the week.  So I intend to do that another time.

Which Institute do you think this is?

That's the Royal Society of Chemistry. I thought they seemed open and accessible. 

What about this one?

Yes! It is the Geological Society. They have two lecture theatres, and a fine library.

This is why I like Open House, I had never heard of Smith before, and his excellent map.

Mary Anning, the fossil hunter of Lyme Regis. 

I hadn't heard much about the Linnaean Society, except that Darwin lectured on Origin of the Species there, and not in the current building either. It is named for Carl Linnaeus the Swedish naturalist, and contains his collection and all his papers, which seem to be kept in a frozen vault in the basement, in case London suffers a huge disaster. But if you go to their website - this is a link you can see that all their treasures are online, including the diaries of Alfred Russel Wallace, and many other interesting items, and they also put on lectures for the public on all manner of botanical and zoological topics. They have a small part of Burlington House. I enjoyed being with my fellow volunteer and giving out information sheets to all the interesting people - posh, Japanese, very married and quite a few gay, who wanted to see the building. It was a good afternoon and our three hours passed quickly in conversation and in informing people about the other parts of the building open to the public. Loved it.

London Open House - celebrating architecture, buildings

I decided to volunteer for this as I haven't volunteered for anything recently. You volunteer online and then they send you the Open House "catalogue" of places open to the public for free on that weekend. I decided to volunteer at the Brunel Museum in Rotherhythe on Saturday afternoon as I am interested in Brunel; and the Herbarium at Kew Gardens sounded really great too, (and I read about it in my "Plants from Roots to Riches" book) so signed up for Sunday morning. It was quite easy to get to the Brunel Museum on the Jubilee Line, (and you can also go on the East London line), and the Museum director, Robert, was glad to see us as he really needed the help of volunteers to man the shop/café, buy milk, take money, put the rubbish out and generally be there to talk to people. I went to Robert's talk in the morning and read all the signs and then I was pretty well-prepared to answer questions. My fellow volunteer was an interesting American who had moved from California to the locality (why?) and was looking for something to do since she had retired from research into ?finance/ markets???

It was the devil of a job to get to  Kew Gardens on Sunday morning, I went all the wrong way. There was a choice of jobs. I stood in front of the Open Weekend sign for the Tropical Nursery and tried to entice visitors to it. This is where propagation and care of the Tropical plants takes place, and of course the staff can nurse plants up to be looking fabulous and then pop them into the display in the public greenhouses. Unfortunately it is placed right in front of the small children's play area so most of the people there were concerned with toilets/nappy change and the café rather than seeing the botanical care going on. I was lucky to be standing with a horticulturalist called Lorraine who worked in the Tropical Nursery and specialised in cacti and succulents. I asked her all sorts of questions about the plants and what she does all day! It was lucky she was so nice because I was standing there for a long time. In the end I didn't get to see the herbarium at all, and it is only open once a year. I hope it is open next year, and I will definitely go. I did walk around Kew in the afternoon, (free entry for volunteers) and I will post about what I saw.

There are quite a few attractions at Kew for children; it has changed in that respect. There is a sculpture exhibition at the moment - brilliant for the older ones.