My three favourite Port Lockroy artefacts

05/03/2025

Museum manager Aoife McKenna picks out her three favourite artefacts from Bransfield House.

Port Lockroy may be best known for being the Penguin Post Office, but it is also a museum and heritage site – one of six that the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust looks after as a charity. Bransfield House, the building that, today, houses the shop and post office, was the first permanent British base established in Antarctica.  

The base was established in 1944 as part of Operation Tabarin, a wartime operation to create a British presence in Antarctica. The first team at Port Lockroy was led by James Marr, who had previously accompanied Sir Ernest Shackleton on his final Quest Expedition as a young man. The base remained active until 1962 when it closed and then lay abandoned for three decades.

Aoife is currently packing up the museum at Port Lockroy (UKAHT/Aoife McKenna)

In 1996, Port Lockroy was restored with support from UKAHT, who then took over full management of the site in 2006. Since then, we’ve been welcoming visitors to the museum and the world’s southernmost post office, while capturing important data on our resident gentoo colony.

Today, the museum is a living museum, where visitors can see how the men of Port Lockroy used to live in Bransfield House from 1944 to 1962. Personal possessions, food, paintings and scientific equipment from this era can all be viewed by visitors to the site. People are always amused to see objects that are familiar to them, such as tins of beans and boxes of oats, and thrilled to see bulky expedition clothing that conjure up images of the golden age of Antarctic exploration.  

In a previous blog, I mentioned the library books on base being some of my favourite objects on the site: here are three more of my must-see artefacts at Port Lockroy!  

1. Evan Watson’s pin-up

One of my favourite artefacts in the museum can be found in the shop, which used to be the engine shed for the base. On the back of the door into the shop, there is a pin-up painting. It is one of several in Bransfield House painted by Evan Watson, an overwintering diesel mechanic, in 1962. 

Is that Marilyn or Jayne behind Aoife? (UKAHT/Aoife McKenna)

The painting in the shop is believed to be of Marilyn Monroe, presumably because of her blonde hair and forward-leaning pose. Though this is a highly credible theory, we have also wondered if the painting might be of another blonde bombshell, Jayne Mansfield. Doing some research, we discovered a photo of Mansfield in an outfit similar to the one painted, the expression and the teeth also seem to match!  

We may never know which actress the image is supposed to be, but it has been an entertaining talking point to ask visitors’ opinions throughout the season! 

2. Ship in a bottle

Another favourite artefact is also a craft-related one: a ship in a bottle created by Chippy Ashton, one of the first people to live and work at Port Lockroy as part of Operation Tabarin. Ashton spent his free time making ships in bottles. Today, members of Port Lockroy teams also spend their free time crafting: knitting has been a big hit this season! 

Chippy Ashton's ship in a bottle (UKAHT/Aoife McKenna)

It is lovely to be able to show visitors to the base the photograph of Chippy Ashton making a ship in a bottle, and then directing them to see one of his creations in real life. 

3. Sun sphere

Many visitors to our site like our Ionospherics Room, often described as the best room in Bransfield House. When the base was an active scientific site, this was used for research into the weather of Antarctica and the Ionosphere, the layer of the Earth's atmosphere which reflects radio waves. 

The room is still packed with scientific equipment for visitors to see, but the object we get the most questions about is the sun sphere. This is a solid glass ball held in a kind of metal cradle used to measure the strength and time of the sun’s rays. The sun would pass through the solid glass and burn a treated strip of paper to indicate the strength of its rays and how long the sun shone for in a day. Burning anything near an entirely wooden building was very risky, but thankfully there were never any accidents! 

Port Lockroy's sun sphere is still functional (UKAHT/Aoife McKenna)

I find the Sun Sphere interesting as an object because it is still functional, and could still be used for recording data if it wasn’t a museum object! Many things found in museums are so old or so delicate that they can no longer perform their intended function, but many of our scientific objects could still be used today. 

– Aoife McKenna, Museum Manager, Port Lockroy