G. Scharf, ‘Cambridge Geological Museum, 1842’
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Some 10,000 fossils, rocks, minerals, shells, plants and archaeological and ethnographic artefacts are housed in the cabinets of the physician, natural historian and antiquary John Woodward (1665–1728). It is the foundation collection for what is now the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences. Conyers Middleton had encouraged Woodward in his plans to found a professorship at Cambridge. Under the terms of Woodward’s will, the Woodwardian Professor of Geology was required to be available between the hours of 9 and 11 and 2 to 4, three days a week, except during Long Vacation, ‘to shew the said Fossils gratis, to all such curious and intelligent persons as shall desire a view of them for their information and instruction’.

At first, the cabinets shared space with the Library collections, but in 1735 the room at the north end of the Philosophy School underneath the Library was fitted out for them. They remained there until 1842, when they were moved to the ground floor of the new Cockerell Building as part of the Geological Museum shown here, also underneath the Library. After almost two hundred years in the Old Schools alongside the Library collections, they finally left the building in 1904 and moved to the newly opened Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences.