Isle of Wight National Poo Museum in Sandown officially opens

Curator, Daniel Roberts, couldn’t be happier with the turnout over the last couple of days, as word of mouth spread and more and more people began to visit his unique exhibit. 

And the place does have an incredible amount of charm, in spite of what some might consider an unpalatable subject matter. 

You can find the micro-museum opposite the children's playground off Lake Hill, in Sandown Barrack Battery; a Victorian fort perched atop the seaside cliffs. 

It features faeces from various wild and domesticated animals; the likes of lions, crocodiles and wombats — the latter's curiously cubic in shape. 

The museum also has a wealth of other creative displays, such as a page turning machine visitors can crank, and Queen Victoria's favourite water closet — The Optimus — invented by Stevens Hellyer, circa 1870. 

It's so rich with content, it belies its small size; the museum aptly contained inside a renovated public toilets.

“It really all began back in 2016, when I was a part of a creative collective looking at creating a hireable exhibition," said Daniel.

“We didn’t know what it was going to be about, and it just so happened that I was off on a walk in the wilds of Sweden.

“There was this specimen in the middle of the path, and it turned out to be a Lynx poo.

“And that’s how it all started. I thought, why don’t we do an exhibition about poo?

“For the rest of the walk, I had all these thoughts going round, thinking: this is perfect. Poo is relatively easy to get hold of. It’s cheap, it’s all around us.

“And it’s almost a little bit taboo, but at the same time, it’s universal. It unites us with every other species on the planet.

“We devised a system for preserving the poo; we gave it a go with resin, and our first one came out perfectly: it was beautiful.

“To seal it in resin, it has to be completely dry — partly so that it won’t decompose, and also because the tiniest amount of water stops the resin from setting, and you end up with this gooey mess.

"So we had to build our own bespoke drying machines. Top of the range, we made them out of a bit of old drain pipe with an electric fan. 

“People just seem to love that you can get up close to them, and they don't smell, apart from the ones we want to smell. 

"We have one or two exhibits that do smell, and we even have our own National Poo Museum perfume.

"There's so many bizarre things we never knew about at the beginning of the project that we've learnt along the way.

"We didn't know about poo perfume, or the fact that you can get gold out of poo, or that wombats do square poos.

"There was actually a poo museum which opened up in Italy, about six months before us, and at first we were a little bit disappointed. 

"But then we suddenly realised that makes us number two!

"We had a little tester session at the half-term, and we were worried nobody would come along, but we were absolutely overrun.

"We hope to welcome many more people now we're officially open."

For opening times, visit The National Poo Museum website.