The Natural History Dioramas at the Powell-Cotton Museum

One of the museum's dioramas of animals staged in their natural habitats. Acabashi (CC BY-SA 4.0)

One of the over 16,000 specimens on display at the musuem. Acabashi (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Museum Entrance. Acabashi (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Lion and buffalo taxidermy. Acabashi (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Infant chimpanzee skeleton Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

The taxidermy specimen of a benevolent looking male gorilla Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

Diorama scene showing lions , giraffe, topi antelope and striped and spotted hyena Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

Female and infant gorilla taxidermy Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

Colobus monkey taxidermy specimens in the primate tree diorama Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

Photo album of pictures taken by Cotton and family on expeditions. These date from the early 1900's to the late 1930's Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

A framed 1920's vintage poster advertising the museum to Margate tourists Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

Drama in the Himalayan diorama : A herd of bharal wild sheep on a cliff Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

Angolan diorama detail : Unsuspecting antelope watched by a leopard preparing to ambush (and squirrel in tree) Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

A duiker antelope being constricted by a rock python while companions attempt to rescue it Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

Himalayan brown bear with wild goat prey , Himalayan diorama Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

Scene from the oldest diorama , the Himalayan diorama, showing marmots and various Tibetan antelope Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

An Asian sloth bear hunting termites in the "An indian jungle at midnight" diorama Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

A menacing Bengal tiger in the "An Indian jungle at midnight" diorama Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

Tibetan grey wolf with it's ibex prey , Himalayan diorama Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

Himalayan taxidermy diorama ( Hanuman langur and rhesus monkeys and a flying squirrel) Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

A Markhor goat falling to its death as a wolf and buzzard look on from the cliff , Himalayan diorama Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

The mounted head of a sinister looking brown hyena Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

Mounted heads of various Asian ungulates including water buffalo, wild gaur cattle , wild goats , deer and antelope etc. Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

Powell-Cotton Dioramas Monsieur Mictlan

A charismatic nyala antelope taxidermy Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

A chimpanzee taxidermy specimen with an expression of acute existential angst Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

Diorama detail : Puff adder snake , porcupine and spotted hyena Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

Detail of gallery 5 diorama , showing African elephant , Nile crocodile , Cheetah and a Serval Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

Several gazelle and antelope species in the Somalian diorama of gallery 1 Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

A secretive looking Somali wild ass (a wild relative of the donkey) , Somalian diorama Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

Pinned African insects/ arachnids display Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

Part of the pinned butterfly collection Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

One of the smaller denizens of the gallery 5 diorama , an African pouched rat taxidermy Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

Colobus monkey taxidermy specimens (subspecies "discovered" by Cotton) perched in the primate tree diorama Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

Aardvark , a jackal trio and various antelope species Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

A pair of Abyssinian gelada baboon taxidermy specimens in the primate tree diorama Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

The herd diorama of gallery 1 , showing cape buffalo , wildebeest and zebra Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

Northern white rhinos, this subspecies was discovered by Cotton. Now at only two individuals left in existence the species is a heartbeat from extinction. Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

Portrait and the exploration gear of Powell Cotton Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

Diorama detail showing zebra , wildebeest and bushbuck Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

A giant sable antelope (Symbol of the Museum) in the Angolan diorama Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

Detail from diorama 5 , showing various antelope species and several giraffe Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

Detail of gallery 1 diorama , showing bushbuck , widebeest , zebra and a roan antelope Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

Detail of the diorama of gallery 1 , showing a bush pig , zebra and cape buffalo Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

Happy looking taxidermied monkeys : Patas monkey, Debrazza monkey (top) and vervet monkeys (bottom right corner). Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

Powell Cotton's lion mauled exploration gear and hunting rifle Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

View of the primate tree diorama with its monkeys and apes Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

A moustached guenon monkey , primate tree diorama Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

View of the oldest naturalistic taxidermy diorama : The Himalayan diorama Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

Steve 55 (Atlas Obscura User)

Left: "Indian jungle in the moonlight" diorama, and Right : "Seasonal forest" or Somalian diorama Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

The skull of a gorilla Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

The snarl of a Bengal tiger Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

Detail showing forest buffalo , African elephant and Cheetah Monsieur Mictlan (Atlas Obscura User)

The Powell-Cotton Museum started out as a single room, built on the grounds of explorer and conservationist Percy Powell-Cotton’s Birchington-on-Sea estate in 1896 to house the collection of natural history specimens gathered on his trips to India and Tibet. It grew to include more than 16,000 artworks, zoological specimens, and ethnographic objects that he and his family collected on their travels. But it’s the dioramas at the museum that are truly notable. These artfully arranged, lifelike displays made Powell-Cotton a pioneer in the field of taxidermy.

Powell-Cotton created his dioramas to show the animals in surrounding that echoed their natural habitats. At a time when many natural history displays were just mounted animal heads, Powell-Cotton recognized the scientific and educational benefits that exhibiting whole animals could have. He posed the animals in ways to show their facial expressions, body movements, and anatomy. In some instances, the animals’ veins and blood vessels are visible.

The painted landscapes in some of the dioramas have impressive and interesting backstories. Many were painted during WWI by a shell shocked Belgian soldier, who was part of a refugee group in exile staying at Quex Park during the war. The soldier, who had become mute due to battle trauma, was a talented landscape painter before the war and was encouraged to craft the backgrounds by Cotton’s daughter as a form of art therapy.

Although he was an avid hunter, Powell-Cotton’s interests were far more varied than that. He took an interest in helping to catalog many of the animals he came in contact with, taking field notes and photographs. He also took an interest in the people he met along the way, collecting objects and stories that spoke to their lives, experiences, and cultures. Many new species and subspecies were “scientifically discovered” by the major during his trips and a lot of African mammals bear his name. Species “discovered” by the major include the nearly extinct Northern White rhino, (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) a subspecies of honey badger with purely black fur (Mellivora capensis cottoni), a subspecies of the Angolan Colobus monkey (Powell-Cotton’s Angolan Colobus), and a subspecies of the African Golden cat (Profelis aurata cottoni) among others.

Between the years 1887 and 1939, he traveled throughout Africa and Asia 28 times to collect zoological specimens. In the late 19th and early 20th-century, dioramas were an innovative way to display wildlife, and Powell-Cotton’s were certainly no exception. In the days before affordable global travel or nature documentaries, for many poorer Edwardians, visiting the museum on a day trip from a seaside holiday in nearby Margate was a top attraction and the only way that they could experience what the distant jungles of the Congo and mountains of the Himalayas and see what their wildlife might look like.

His collection is now displayed in eight galleries, each representing a different aspect of Powell-Cotton’s travels, from Chinese Imperial porcelain to his remarkable dioramas. In Gallery 2, a diorama representing the Himalayas at dawn is considered the oldest untouched diorama of its type in any museum, and to this day remains visually impressive. There are also over 30 films (some of which may be watched on visual displays) Powell-Cotton and his daughters made of their travels to Sudan, Somalia, and Angola.

Many of the specimens within the dioramas have fascinating and eccentric stories behind them. For example, the magnificent lion that is locked in an eternal primeval struggle to the death with a buffalo in gallery three, thanks to the wonders of Victorian taxidermy, is the skin of the same individual lion that had attacked and almost killed the major during his honeymoon trip to Africa in 1906. The wounded animal suddenly charged the major, pinning him to the ground and clawing him before his security was able to shoot it dead. According to his own accounts his life was saved by a rolled up copy of the satirical magazine Punch, which kept the lion’s claws tearing into the flesh of his stomach. In gallery two you can see the mangled magazine and the major’s badly mauled hunting outfit. The Buffalo also has an interesting story as well, as the major essentially “discovered” this subspecies of the Cape Buffalo, Bos brachyceros cotton, hence it being named after him.

Today, the museum is also active in the field of conservation, working to help protect animals threatened by over-hunting and habitat loss. Artifacts from the museum have helped researchers find solutions for the declining black rhino population through contributing to genetic research and help conserve primates through taxonomic research and to protect habitats.

Know Before You Go

Gallery 6 at the end of the museum is an impressive handling exhibition where visitors are able to handle objects from the museum's collection ranging from tiger and colobus monkey skins, lion or Chimpanzee skulls, Antelope horns, taxidermy crocodile infants, Bronze West African sculptures and Japanese netsukes.