Lectures

1st March 2023: The Museum at Quex House

Our talk on 1st March was “The Museum at Quex House” by Hazel Basford, archivist at the Powell-Cotton Museum Quex House and Gardens.

The Powell-Cotton Museum was established by the hunter and explorer Percy Horace Gordon PowellCotton (1866-1940). The museum is unique for its natural history dioramas of African and Asian animals and wildlife, and of cultural objects and photographs. The museum is part of the Quex Estate near Birchington consisting of a house and gardens that date from the 1400s. The Quex Estate has been in the Powell-Cotton family since 1777, when John Powell purchased it from the MP Charles Fox.

Percy started out in a military carrer, but behind this was a keen interest in natural history and photography, and above all an enthusiasm for meticulous record keeping of these activities. Indeed, this record keeping is borne out in the way he went on to build his museum collection, which today is key to helping historians and scienists in their research studies using the collection.

Percy embarked on overseas expeditions in the late 1880s, firstly to Asia. In 1894 he inherited the Quex estate from his father Henry Horace Powell-Cotton, and assembled the specimens he had collected in the house. As he began to run out space he decided to build his own museum. Initially, the museum consisted of a single gallery – The Pavillion (1896). Today the museum consists of a total of nine galleries.

From 1900 onwards the expeditions concentrated on Africa, starting in Ethiopia when the Emperor Menelik II granted Percy permission to hunt there. In subsequent years he travelled all over East Africa, and to the Congo, and to Southern Africa.

In 1905, while in Nairobi, Percy married Hannah Brayton Slater. The two of them spent their honeymoon travelling across East Africa, a trip that was to last for 2 years. In 1907, still on their honeymoon expedition, Percy was mauled by a lion he mistakenly thought he had shot and killed. Percy escaped relatively unharmed – despite 17 claw wounds in his back. He claims he was saved from mortal wounding by a rolled up copy of Punch magazine in his breast pocket. Everything that was part of the incident was saved, including the clothing, the guns, the whip, the copy of Punch, and even the lion. All are on display in the museum. Indeed, the lion is part of a dramatic display of lion and bufalo locked in mortal combat in the African savannah. The zoological specimens that Percy brought back from his early travels were prepared for display by taxidermist Rowland Ward (1848-1912).

In later years Percey was joined on expeditions by his daughters, Antoinette and Diana, who shared their father's passion for collecting. He only stopped travelling in 1939, the year before his death.

Other notable items in the house collection include the hand-painted wallpaper in the Chinese Room, a desk that belonged to Lady Paget, lady-in-waiting to Queen Mary, and a fine collection of Royal Worcester porcelain.

Margaret Bray