Horatio Bland

Horatio Bland was a merchant and collector of artefacts from around the world. He set up a private museum in Berkshire and his collection founded Reading Museum in 1882.

Childhood Bland was born in about 1802 at Bonavista, Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, Canada. His parents were John (1760–1826) and Sarah Bland (1726–1836). He was probably a merchant's agent, first becoming a magistrate and in 1809 he was appointed High Sheriff of Newfoundland. By 1838 he was in South America where he went into business with William Joseph Myers, a Liverpool merchant.

Personal life In 1838 in Valparasio, Chile, Bland had a son Horatio Bland Guerra. and his first wife Anne Alicia Cameron. The Bland's lived in a large Georgian house called Culverlands at Burghfield Hill.

Bland's wife Emily Bland died on a trip to Jerusalem in March 1868 where she is buried in the Protestant Cemetery. at Burghfield Common in memory of his wife. The school bell was a large Japanese temple bell dating to 1746

Family scandal Family scandal in the courts made the newspapers in 1850s. Emily Bland's father, Rev Henry Cherry She wanted to leave the marriage and applied to the court of Queen's bench to protect her, while Cherry applied in 1858 a suit for restitution of conjugal rights. of Liverpool to design a new red and blue brick gabled house with a slate roof on his land at Burghfield Common called Hillfields.

In 1874 Bland built a new museum in Burghfield for his growing museum collection, replacing the smaller museum building at Hillfields. The eclectic collection and museum was described by Dr Joseph Stevens, the first curator of Reading Museum. It contained a stuffed lion, kangaroo and platypus, marine shells from Australia, Papua and Philippines, pottery from ancient Egypt, Greece and Peru, and weapons and implements from Africa and the Pacific. and was buried at St Mary's churchyard, Burghfield. and the residue of his estate to his son Horatio Bland Guerra. Bland Garland offered the Bland Collection to Reading Corporation in 1877. and the collection was permanently transferred to Reading Museum in September 1882.