Worcester Museum

The Museum holds a small, but nevertheless important collection of British Butterflies. It is mainly made up of specimens collected in the heydays of 'the Natural History collecting mania' of the Victorian and Edwardian times.

The Museum has representatives of all the British Butterflies that are found flying in Britain today, together with the ones that are now rare. Some of these species are now extinct so this is another great place to see these rare butterfly specimens. There are drawers of all these butterflies, which shows the male and female of each type, along with variants and unusually coloured specimens.

By the way, if you do want to see these butterflies, you'll have to make an appointment well in advance. In common with many museums, major parts of collections are not kept on display and so arrangements will need to be made to see them. See the link at the end of this page for details on how to go about this.

The main part of the butterfly collection came from Carleton Rea, a local expert in Flora and Fauna, who presented three large cabinets of Lepidoptera sometime around 1945. Other collectors of note include A. Ford and J. E. Fletcher of Hallow.

The collection was increased in 1970 when the Museum agreed to take the insect collection housed at Malvern Library. These were originally given to the Library by the Malvern Field Club in 1934. Most of the specimens had been collected by the Reverend Day and Mr Walter Sanders.