While researching the history of the Museum I discovered that the very first museum was just around the corner from my house in Vauxhall/Stockwell. Dubbed ‘Tradescant’s Ark’, the gardener John Tradescant's unsorted and unclassified collection was a microcosm of the entire world. There is little visual material to show what it loooked like, it was on a site beginning around what is now Tradescant Road. John Tradescant is now buried in the Garden Museum in Lambeth. It is possible to take out the book listing his collection from the library in Lambeth near Myatts Field. The collection eventually moved to Oxford and it became the foundation for the Ashmolean Museum's Collection.
