Robert Pocock of Gravesend; 19th century naturalist & botanist

No, not the Wetherspoons pub….Robert Pocock was Gravesend’s first local historian, printer, creator of it’s first public library and botanist. In the early 1800’s he began a collection of local plants for his herbarium or dried plant collection. Long after his death, the herbarium was donated to the Natural History Museum in London. The herbarium sheets are still there, amongst many thousands of others, effectively ‘lost’ to us for 200 years!

In September 2013, with the support of the Natural History Museum, Kent Wildlife Trust and a Heritage Lottery Grant, a group of volunteers started the search for Robert Pocock’s 240 plant specimens and find this unique record of Gravesend’s botanical heritage and make images of the plant specimens available to us all. To date they have found over 180 specimen sheets.

You can follow their progress at www.pocockherbarium.blogspot.co.uk  and on their Facebook page. See images of the plants on Facebook and Flickr (links are on the website, or search for Robert Pocock Herbarium)).

You can also follow it here:

http://bsbipublicity.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/robert-pocock-herbarium-part-two.html

Speaker: Malcolm Jennings

You can also pay on the door