About us:

The Alfred Denny Museum is a zoological teaching museum used to illuminate the diversity of the animal kingdom through its large collection of specimens. Since 2012 it has been open to the public with monthly tours, outreach events and specialist visits. Run by Dr. Emma Hughes, Dr Gavin Thomas and a small group of hardworking volunteers, we are a community-lead organization dedicated to sharing the wonders of natural history.

Our Museum is reliant on donations to fund all the behind the scenes work that goes towards achieving our first class tours, we are incredibly grateful for all the support we receive.

How will my support help?

1. New displays and exhibits

To keep every experience new and interesting we want to update our current displays with unique specimens from our archives. In addition to maintaining current displays, there is also an effort to install new ones on different floors of the Alfred Denny Building and within the Museum itself.

Planned updates:

- Developing a museum guidebook featuring information on our specimens – especially the lesser known invertebrate groups and species of interest.

- Installing an egg cabinet to display part of our various egg collections

New displays we hope to install include:

- DIVERSITY OF BRITISH BIRDS

While we currently contain an assortment of birds from all over the world, this display will seek to highlight the diversity a little closer to home. Including taxidermy and skeletons of an assortment of British birds, their eggs and information relating to their habitats, life history and adaptations.

- HISTORY OF TEACHING

Dedicated to the museum's role in education this display will feature old teaching resources such as the lantern slides, examples of historic diagrams/educational displays alongside current teaching resources such as part of the teaching insect collection, fieldwork collection and examples of student work.

- HERBARIUM

Currently an unknown and underused resource, we would like to share information about our herbarium which has around 12,000 dried plant samples spanning 170 years of floral history across the British Isles and beyond. This display would contain herbaria sheets, information about the specimen and collector, as well as information about a project in collaboration with the University Library to digitise a portion of this collection.

2. Behind-the-scenes work:

There is a wealth of behind the scenes work that goes into maintaining the museum and improving the accessibility of its collections for education and research.

This ranges from repairing specimens, curating and maintaining displays , cataloging + databasing items in our archives and much more. Your donations would help fund equipment and support our volunteers.

Thank you!

It is because of public support and great reviews that we are able to continue sharing our unique and interesting resources with you! We are incredibly thankful and grateful for any contributions that we receive from feedback, additional specimens and financial donations.