National Poo Museum: Much-loved UK tourist attraction to close its doors for a year to get museum 'on the road'
A much-loved tourist attraction in the UK is closing for the rest of the year.
THE UK's National Poo Museum, located inside the disused Sandown Barrack Battery fort on the Isle of Wight, has announced that it is closing down for a year. The museum first opened to the public in 2016.
The quirky museum was created by former plumber Daniel Roberts, who started the tiny museum as an exhibition at the Isle of Wight Zoo. Faeces samples were gathered, along with donations from Isle of Wight Zoo and Dinosaur Isle Museum.
The samples were displayed in resin spheres after being prepped for the museum using a specially-built drying machine. Following on from its initial success, the National Poo Museum opened in a former public toilet near Sandown Bay two years later, in 2018.
It now displays samples from around the world and has other features too, including a window frame displaying various specimens from the British Isle. The tiny museum is gearing up for a UK-wide tour.
According to its website, the touring exhibition will feature an illuminated aquarium with yet more preserved number twos. Faeces samples have been collected for the aquarium from a midwife, a policeman, a baby, an artist and a Cambridge scientist.
Each of the samples has been frozen and set in resin before being dropped into a water tank. The tour will begin in the Isle of Wight, with the exhibition appearing in local libraries. However, further tour dates and locations have yet to be revealed.
Director Nigel George told the Isle of Wight Observer: "Since we moved to the Battery, we can’t keep up with demand. It’s a small museum and, most days during the school holidays, there are large queues going right down the road.
“Basically, we have been a victim of our own success. We now want to get the museum on the road and we have been in discussions with three interested organisations, one on the island and two on the mainland."