Economic Botany Collections

Pharmaceutical Society at No. 17 Bloomsbury Square, 1930s

© Royal Pharmaceutical Society

Pharmaceutical Society

The Museum was started in 1842 in a ground floor, front room of No. 17 Bloomsbury Square, London. In 1863, the building next door was acquired and three more rooms were allocated to the museum’s collection which had already reached several thousand specimens. During the Second World War the School of Pharmacy was evacuated to Cardiff and the museum collections went to the Natural History Museum, South Kensington for safe keeping. When they were returned after the war, there was no area designated for the exhibition of the collection so it remained in storage, occasionally being used for temporary exhibitions at the Pharmaceutical Society and elsewhere around the country. In 1968 the museum collection went to the University of Bradford, and in 1976 the Pharmaceutical Society’s headquarters were moved to No. 1 Lambeth High Street, where they remain today.

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