THE Earliest English terrestrial globe at Petworth House and Park is focus of new fundraising campaign.
Petworth House and Park is launching a new fundraising campaign to redisplay its Molyneux Globe, an artefact of Elizabethan naval supremacy and international geographical ingenuity.
Made in 1592, the Molyneux Globe at Petworth House is thought to be the earliest English terrestrial globe in existence and at its time of publishing would have been the most accurately recorded depiction of how the Earth was geographically understood across the world.
Known for its extraordinary collection of paintings, sculptures, furniture and objects, Petworth House and Park, part of the National Trust registered charity, works to preserve this internationally important collection and to display it for future generations to explore.
Through a mixture of raffles and donations the fundraising team are calling on the community to support them in their aim to raise £25,000 to redisplay this world-class object of national and international object in a new specialised display case complete with sophisticated lighting.
‘The Molyneux Globe has always been a favourite for our visitors’ said Jo Cartwright, General Manager for Petworth House and Park.
‘A new display case would give this important artefact of British history the attention it deserves and highlight its fascinating details from the alarming sea monsters that symbolise the perils early explorers would have faced, to the rugged coastlines of the New World only recently discovered.’
Published only four years after the failed 1588 Spanish Armada that sought to invade England, the globe would have been an international symbol of the watershed of Spanish naval power and the supremacy of Elizabethan maritime prowess and geographical ingenuity.
Family tradition has it that Petworth’s Molyneux Globe was owned by Sir Walter Raleigh before he gifted it to Petworth nobleman Henry Percy, the ninth Earl of Northumberland, when they were both confined in the Tower of London.
The globe has been at Petworth since the Earl’s release in 1621 but has become just one of a number of important exhibits clustered in the North Gallery in more recent years, underestimated in its current protective wooden display case.
Made of layers ofpieces of paper overlaid with a coat of plaster, the globe is incredibly fragile.
Over centuries portions of the globe have disappeared and in particular, England, which is now only partially visible, most likely from hands and fingers pointing to their location.
The aim of the campaign would see the globe given the attention it merits in a modern display case that still preserves this fragile object but adds to the visitor experience and enjoyment with better lighting and more information on the significance of this important artefact.
Petworth’s Molyenux Globe is only one of two surviving terrestrial globes made by the pioneering globe-maker Emery Molyneux who died in relative poverty, only six years after their publication, in 1598.
It shares its title of earliest English terrestrial globe with another in London’s Middle Temple, which also displays one of Molyneux’s celestial globes.
Of particular note outlined on the globe is the route of Sir Francis Drake’s circumnavigation made in 1577-80 and the route of Thomas Cavendish’s circumnavigation in 1586-7.
The first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe, consensus has it that on the journey Francis Drake landed in northern California, in what is modern day Point Reyes, not far from San Francisco and the Golden Gate, and named the land ‘Nova Albion’, meaning ‘New England’.
To have reached this destination would have made Drake the first European to sail that far north up the west coast of America and for Molyneux, who is known to have taken at least part of the voyage with Drake, it would have meant the terrestrial globe, published 12 years later, would be the most accurate depiction of the contours of the New World across the world.
An international wonder, the globe exemplifies the golden age of British history.