The Blackfriars Rotunda was a building in Southwark, near the southern end of Blackfriars Bridge across the River Thames in London, that existed from 1787 to 1958 in various forms. It initially housed the collection of the Leverian Museum after it had been disposed of by lottery. For a period it was home to the Surrey Institution. In the early 1830s it notoriously was the centre for the activities of the Rotunda radicals. Its subsequent existence was long but less remarkable.
Street view of the Rotunda as Leverian Museum.
Panorama detail; the portico of the street entrance to the Rotunda stands out.
Leverian Museum admission ticket depicting Father Time and the unveiling and illumination of Mother Nature
Leverian Museum collection in the Rotunda. Engraving by William Skelton after Sarah Stone and Charles Reuben Ryley.
The Leverian collection was a natural history and ethnographic collection assembled by Ashton Lever. It was noted for the content it acquired from the voyages of Captain James Cook. For three decades it was displayed in London, being broken up by auction in 1806.
The first public location of the collection was the Holophusikon, also known as the Leverian Museum, at Leicester House, on Leicester Square, from 1775 to 1786. After it passed from Lever's ownership, it was displayed for nearly twenty years more at the purpose-built Blackfriars Rotunda just across the Thames, sometimes called Parkinson's Museum for its subsequent owner, James Parkinson.
Interior view of Sir Ashton Lever's Museum, Leicester Square, London, 30 March 1785
Aquatint of exhibit of a stuffed hippopotamus from Charles Catton's Animals
Leverian Museum collection in the Rotunda. Engraving by William Skelton after Charles Reuben Ryley