Portable lighter. It comes from a 15-drawer cabinet found in the Herschel family home in the 1950s. The contents of this and a similar cabinet seem to suggest that they were used by successive generations of the family to store specimens, material and apparatus for carrying out experiments.

This lighter belonged to a much later member of the family who was involved in the packing up of artifacts ready for auction as Observatory House was cleared in the late 1950s.