He made his name on a voyage around the world alongside Captain James Cook, before becoming a friend of King George III and one of the most influential men in Britain. But the pioneering naturalist and botanist Sir Joseph Banks, who transformed European knowledge of the wider natural world, never forgot his roots in Lincolnshire.
Born in 1743, Banks grew up on his father's estate, Revesby Abbey, near Horncastle, where he became fascinated with nature, as the Secret Lincolnshire podcast has been hearing.
"He would have seen all of the Lincolnshire Fens before they were drained and there would be ponds and lakes and lagoons and birds. It was described as the aviary of England," says Paul Scott, who works at the Sir Joseph Banks Society in Horncastle.
Banks developed his interest in botany while studying at Eton.
"He noticed old ladies picking plants," Paul adds. "They told him that they were collecting [them] for apothecaries and quacks for medicines."
