About

Christine Taylor, Curator of Natural History for Portsmouth Museums, has researched what local collector HLF Guermonprez means to the city.

Most of Portsmouth's natural history collections come from Guermonprez. Born in 1858, he was eldest child of a Belgian émigré; the family coming to live in Bognor due to poor health. Guermonprez had a passion for natural history and thousands of specimens were collected from around Bognor Regis and West Sussex over a period of 30 years. What makes this an important collection is the data accompanying each specimen, detailing where and when it was collected.

Guermonprez also wrote a weekly column, 'Selborne Notes', for The West Sussex Gazette from 1906 to 1924, which reflected his diverse interest in natural history. After Guermonprez's death in 1924, his collections remained in the family home until 1943, when the house was damaged by a bombing raid. The collections were transferred to Portsmouth Museum in the 1970s.

Please note, this talk takes place in the Church of the Resurrection in Drayton, not at Portsmouth Natural History Museum, Cumberland House.