LEAFY STREETS | CRYSTAL PALACE PARK | DINOSAURS | DULWICH GALLERY |
FARM | HORNIMAN MUSEUM | SYDENHAM HILL WOOD | TRANSPORT | WELLS PARK

Family friendly collection
Just a stone's throw from Sydenham and set in the striking Arts and Crafts building designed by Harrison Townsend, the Horniman has a unique range of exhibitions, events and activities illustrating the cultural and natural world in a child-friendly format. Its famous exhibits include a large collection of musical instruments and stuffed animals. It also has a great aquarium noted for its unique layout.

Commissioned in 1898, the museum was founded by Victorian tea trader Frederick John Horniman and opened in 1901. Like most Victorian collections, the assemblage looks impressively eccentric, due to its apparently random nature. However, there are some extraordinary objects here, well worth the journey to deepest Forrest Hill.

The Horniman’s most popular exhibit is probably its stuffed walrus. Taxidermists assembled this from skin alone, without having any idea of what a walrus actually looked like. Not knowing that the walrus is deeply wrinkled, they stuffed it to the limit, so the finished item looks like a balloon with tusks, and is the size of a small car. Happily, the museum has never corrected this error.

The real jewels of the collection are the ethnography collection, generally reckoned to be third in importance after the British Museum and the Pitt Rivers collection in Oxford. There is a large amount of fine African statuary –an estimated 22,000 objects, not all of them on display– including systematic collections from the Sua of Zaire and the Hadza of Tanzania.

Best of all is the musical gallery, which was completely renovated between 1999 and 2002. The room is lined with glass cabinets holding instruments from all over the world, and interactive tables allow you to play recordings of any of them.

Other things to look out for include a stuffed mermaid (the marriage of a dead monkey and a fish by a perverted taxidermist), a glass-walled beehive, and a disconcerting life-size statue of Kali trampling some very serene heads. The shop is full of quirky little presents.

The museum is set in 16 acres of landscaped gardens with a beautiful Grade II listed conservatory, a nature trail, a small animal enclosure, and a bandstand from 1912. The gardens contain an eclectic collection of sundials, including a butterfly, a stained glass window, and an analemmatic sundial, where you can tell the time using your own shadow. So make sure you visit on a sunny day.