Inside the Cabinet of Curiosities

 I spent this morning wandering round Henallt House, which is the stone house next door to the old Nat West Bank building.  This is a Grade II listed building dating to the late Georgian period.

The whole building has been turned into an exhibition space by Botany and Other Stories.  It's a wonderful building to begin with, full of original feature like wide floorboards, doors and a servant's bell in the hall.  It's also bigger than I thought it was - the exhibitions go right up to the attic rooms - and there's a lovely enclosed garden at the back.

Some of the walls are bare plaster, and some have fragments of old wallpaper - but that sets off the exhibits very well.  For instance, on the upper staircase dried flowers are arranged in the gaps in the walls.  

The two front rooms downstairs are full of books about plants and botanical drawings.  Everything is laid out so that there's something new to look at wherever you turn, but the effect is not cluttered at all.

Under the stairs, there's a tiny schoolroom with little chairs facing a stage.  There's even a little display devoted to Gertrude Jekyll in the back entrance hall, on the way out to the garden.  Other displays mention Darwin and Gilbert White.  There are butterflies on the first stair landing. 

One of the first floor rooms is devoted to weaving and dyeing - a length of linen is accompanied by some fascinating information on bleaching linen (white, or blue-white, or yellowish according to fashion).  Another room has a globe made with dried flowers, and a figure in a blue dress decorated with flowers.  Several artists have work on display throughout the house, and I had a very interesting chat with the dried flower lady.

I recognised some exhibits from the exhibition that was put on in the Buttermarket some time ago, like some of the astronomical pieces, but others were new to me.  There was also a lot of information on cards dotted around the exhibits about what humans are doing to the planet - an explanation of Earth Overshoot Day, for instance, or the melting of the world's glaciers.  There was even some information about the ink used in tattooing in the bathroom (and how the UK is not keeping up with the regulations for various toxic substances that have been passed in the EU).

Quite a few people were visiting the house while I was there, but not enough to make it feel crowded.

The exhibition will also be on tomorrow from 10am to 5pm (and one lady I spoke to said that she'd have to come back several times just to take everything in).