Ravensmoor, North Yorkshire
A cabinet the size of a building
Nine galleries of specimens, instruments and things nobody has yet explained.
Ravensmoor began as one man's overcrowded parlour. Alfred Sowerby spent forty years filling it with fossils, barometers, moths and mislabelled minerals, and in 1874 the town politely asked him to put it somewhere else. The building on Fold Lane has been open ever since.
The permanent collection is free. Ticketed exhibitions change three times a year.
On now
All exhibitions-
Under Ravensmoor
What came out of the ground when the town dug its sewers, from ammonites to a surprising quantity of clay…
-
Weather Made Visible
Two centuries of instruments built to argue with the sky: barographs, sunshine recorders, and one anemometer that has never worked.
-
Free entrySowerby's Moths
Six hundred specimens pinned by a man who could not tell two species apart, and the modern rework that finally…
Latest news
All news-
Sowerby's moths finally identified
A three year reidentification project has renamed 214 specimens, and confirmed that Alfred Sowerby could not reliably tell a burnet from a footman.
-
Reading room reopens on Thursdays
The archive reading room returns to two days a week from the start of next month.
-
We have been given a barometer we cannot explain
A donation arrived last week with no maker's mark, no provenance and an extra scale nobody recognises.