Background
lieutenant was in that year that his father died and left him considerable property interests. Bax Holmes was born in Horsham on 3 May 1803, the first son of Joseph Holmes, an active Quaker.
lieutenant was in that year that his father died and left him considerable property interests. Bax Holmes was born in Horsham on 3 May 1803, the first son of Joseph Holmes, an active Quaker.
Born into a wealthy Quaker family in Horsham, Sussex, he was the discoverer of the "Great Horsham Iguanodon". Having started life pursuing a medical career he was able to devote more time to his fossil hunting from 1834. As early as 1836 he contributed to Howard Dudley"s history of Horsham with a paragraph on his work.
In 1834, for refusing to pay the church rates of 4s 10½d (2007: £19) he had two arm chairs valued at £3 9s 0d (2007: £276) removed.
Bax Holmes is perhaps best known for his discovery of the Great Horsham Iguanodon, a plant eating dinosaur, in building works on the future site of the Royal & Sun Alliance (now Republic of South Africa ) headquarters. Bax Holmes identified them as fossilised iguanodon bones, the largest found since the name was coined by Gideon Mantell of Lewes some 15 years earlier.
The bones were used by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins in 1854 when creating the dinosaur models for Sydenham Park. A record of Bax Holmes" work is preserved in the form of 34 letters to fellow fossil expert Richard Owen, with whom Bax Holmes was in correspondence throughout his life.
These letters are held in the Owen Correspondence collection at the Natural History Museum.
Today his gravestone is in use as a paving slab and can be seen at the start of the path to the left of the central entrance. His death is noted in the Quaker"s Annual Monitor and the Horsham Advertiser, dated 2 April 1887, published an obituary. Until recently they lay in store there until being returned to Horsham Museum for a long term display.
lieutenant is believed that Bax Holmes lived in the Causeway next door to the current museum and the bones have almost come home.