John Templeton (botanist)
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John Templeton was a pioneering Irish naturalist, sometimes referred to as the "Father of Irish Botany". He was a leading figure in Belfast's late eighteenth-century enlightenment, initially supported
Watercolour of Orobanche rubra by John Templeton
Cranmore House 1886
Partial reconstruction of the Cranmore garden
Plants in the tropical house in the Botanic Gardens, Belfast
The Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society was founded in 1821 to promote the scientific study of animals, plants, fossils, rocks and minerals.
John Templeton (botanist)
…foundation of the Belfast Academical Institution. With the staff and scholars of the Institution's early Collegiate Department, he then helped form the Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society (the origin of both the Botanical Gardens and what is now the Ulster Museum). Although always ready to communicate his own findings, Templeton did not…
The Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society Museum at No. 7 College Square North, completed in 1831. The portico is an exact copy of the octagon tower of Andronicus in Athens.
The Museum in 1831. The architects were Thomas Duff and Thomas Jackson. The building has three stories. In the lower story were the lecture-room and library. Each of the upper stories is a single room, forty-seven feet in length, and twenty-seven feet wide, which housed the public museum. A laboratory was later attached to the lecture room.
Specimen of an emperor penguin donated to the Belfast Natural History Society by Francis Crozier
Plate from On the Polyphony of the Assyrio-Babylonian Cuneiform Writing Edward Hincks