British Museum (Natural History): Unofficial Archives: Papers of Mervyn Herbert Nevil...

The series contains scientific and antiquarian manuscript and printed papers of Story-Maskelyne, presented to the Museum by his grandson, J A Arnold-Foster, in 1951. They had been preserved at his home, Basset Down House in Wiltshire, since his death in 1911, and relate largely to his unpublished work on historic diamonds and other gemstones. Many of the papers are accompanied by notes made by W Campbell Smith at the time of transfer.

Series held at The Natural History Museum are catalogued more fully in its online catalogue (reference DF MIN/20/1/4). Online descriptions of some individual records can also be viewed on Discovery, see DF 5001.

Letters relating to the donation of these papers, minerals, laboratory equipment and slides, are at:

A manuscript on meteorites is held in the Earth Sciences Library, Mineralogy Manuscripts.

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Museums and galleries

Mervyn Herbert Nevil Story-Maskelyne was born at Basset Down House, near Wroughton, Wiltshire, on 3 September 1823. He was educated at Bruton and graduated in mathematics from Oxford in 1845. He studied law, but abandoned this for science in 1847, attending lectures at the Royal Institution given by Michael Faraday. He lectured on mineralogy at Oxford from 1850, and was appointed Professor of Mineralogy in 1856. Story-Maskelyne became Keeper of Mineralogy at the Museum in 1857, and although he moved to London, he retained his Oxford professorship until 1895. At the Museum he worked with Thomas Davies on the proper documentation of mineral specimens in the collection, and in 1875 he started work on a Scientific Catalogue of the Whole Collection ..., containing both crystallographic and chemical data. He pressed for the establishment of a chemical laboratory, and studied and published papers on meteorites. Outside his Museum work, Story-Maskelyne was a man of wide antiquarian and classical interests. He published papers on ancient mineralogy and, as papers in the series show, made detailed study of the history of the Koh-i-noor diamond. He was also a popular lecturer, and gave a notable series to the Chemical Society in 1874. He inherited the family estate of Basset Down in 1879 and resigned from the keepership in 1880 to devote himself to its management. However, he continued to work and publish in mineralogy, and was elected Member of Parliament for Cricklade.