​Archives & Libraries​

Archive material relating to pharmaceutical businesses can be

located in the following resource:​​ 

 

Lesley Richmond, Julie Stevenson & Alison Turton, The Pharmaceutical Industry. A Guide to Historical Records (Aldershot, 2003) gives a detailed account of archival histories and locations.​

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• Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew - Comprehensive library for all aspects of medicinal plants and pharmacognosy.

• Royal Pharmaceutical Society, London - Important library and archive, particularly for the history of retail pharmacy. Library Catalogue.

• Wellcome Collection, London - The largest archive and library for the history of medicine. 

• UCL School of Pharmacy Library, London - with a focus on the history of pharmacy education.

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​Museums​

• Royal Pharmaceutical Society Museum, London Comprehensive display on pharmacy history.

• Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries. Science Museum, London - Extensive display on all aspects of the history of medicine, including pharmacy. The Science Museum also holds the vast Wellcome Trust collection of artefacts relating to the history of medicine, kept at its Swindon store and searchable online.

• Old Operating Theatre Museum & Herb Garret, London - Housed in the attic of the early eighteenth-century church of the Old St Thomas’ Hospital, this atmospheric museum offers a unique insight into the history of medicine and surgery. The original timber-framed Herb Garret was once used to dry and store herbs for patients’ medicines.

• Thackray Museum of Medicine, Leeds - Comprehensive display of medical history and pharmacy.

• Park Pharmacy Trust, Plymouth (by appointment only) - Pharmaceutical library, a collection of materia medica, an extensive collection of artefacts and old fashioned proprietary goods.

• Economic Botany Collection, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew - The national collection of 25,000 crude drugs (materia medica), available to researchers by appointment.

• Science Museum, London - Extensive display on all aspects of the history of medicine, including pharmacy. The Science Museum also holds the vast Wellcome Trust collection of artefacts relating to the history of medicine, kept at its Swindon store and searchable online.

• The London Museums of Health and Medicine group includes museums with a range pharmacy history related collections and events. 

• There are lots of other museums that hold pharmacy material, e.g. the Manchester Museum and the George Marshall Medical Museum, Worcester.

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Historic Pharmacies

• Christopher Pharmacy Shop, Bradford on Avon Museum, Wiltshire - Victorian pharmacy with many old bottles and equipment.

• Chemist Shop, Streetlife Museum, Hull - An exact reconstruction of a Yorkshire chemist that once stood at 159 Woodhouse Lane, Leeds.

• Jeyes Heritage & Pharmacy Museum, Northamptonshire - Cabinets filled with items once used and sold in a traditional chemist and druggist store including medicines, perfumes and toiletries and a wide variety of dispensing equipment and containers for the drugs.

• Steward’s Chemist shop, Worcester City Museum - Display set up in 1978 after the closure of Stewards Chemist shop at 27 High Street, when the entire shop along with the fixtures and fittings were purchased and transported to the museum to be redisplayed.

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Gardens

• Chelsea Physic Garden - Seventeenth century garden with medicinal plant displays.

• Dilston Physic Garden, Northumberland - Educational garden on the medicinal and therapeutic uses of plants, established 30 years ago.

• Physic Garden, Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh - A new physic garden next to the historic palace.

• The Medicinal Collection, Oxford Botanical Garden - Eight beds of medicinal plants in this historic garden

• Nosegay Garden, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew - Garden located next to Kew Palace, mainly containing medicinal plants grown in Britain before the year 1700.

• Garden of Medicinal Plants, Royal College of Physicians, London - Comprehensive display of over 1,100 species of medicinal plants.

• William Turner's Herb Garden, The Deanery, Wells. ​

• Apothecary’s Garden, National Botanic Garden of Wales - Each bed in the Apothecary’s Garden contains plants that have been used to treat systems of the body. An extra bed has also been added to show plants that were used by the legendary Welsh herbalists, the Physicians of Myddfai.

• National  Botanic Garden of Wales has an extensive Apothecary's Hall exhibit as well as the garden (which is smaller)