Oxford University Museum of Natural History (Oxford)

The Oxford University Museum of Natural History, displaying many natural history specimens.

Summary Free admission Gift shop Information provided Learning facilities

Introduction

The Oxford University Museum of Natural History, sometimes known simply as the Oxford University Museum, is a museum displaying many of the University of Oxford's natural history specimens, located on Parks Road in Oxford, England. It also contains a lecture theatre which is used by the University's Chemistry, Zoology and Mathematics departments. The University Museum provides the only access into the adjoining Pitt Rivers Museum.

The neo-Gothic building was designed by the Irish architects Thomas Newenham Deane and Benjamin Woodward, consisting of a large square court with a large glass roof, supported by cast iron pillars, which divide the court into three aisles. Cloistered arcades run around the ground and first floor of the building, with stone columns each made from a different British stone, selected by geologist John Phillips (the Keeper of the Museum). The ornamentation of the stonework and iron pillars incorporates natural forms such as leaves and branches, combining the Pre-Raphaelite style with the scientific role of the building. Statues of eminent men of science stand around the ground floor of the court — from Aristotle and Bacon through to Darwin and Linnaeus.

Open daily from 10am to 5pm.

History to the present day

The University's Honour School of Natural Science started in 1850, but the facilities for teaching were scattered around the city of Oxford in the various colleges. The University's collection of anatomical and natural history specimens were similarly spread around the city.

Interior of the Museum — The Mammal GalleryRegius Professor of Medicine, Sir Henry Acland instigated the construction of the building of the museum between 1855 and 1860, to bring together all the aspects of science around a central display area. In 1858, Acland gave a lecture on the museum, setting forth the reason for the building's construction. He viewed that the University had been one-sided in the forms of study it offered – chiefly theology, philosophy, the classics and history — and that the opportunity to obtain the "knowledge of the great material design of which the Supreme Master-Worker has made us a constituent part", i.e. the natural world, should be offered.

Several departments moved within the building — Astronomy, Geometry, Experimental physics, Mineralogy, Chemistry, Geology, Zoology. Anatomy, Physiology and Medicine. As the departments grew in size over the years, they moved to new locations along South Parks Road, which remains the home of the University's science departments.

The last department to leave the building was the Entomology department, which moved into the Zoology building in 1978. However, there is still a working entomology laboratory on the first floor of the museum building.

In 1884, a new building to the east of the museum was constructed to house the ethnological collections of General Pitt Rivers — the Pitt Rivers Museum.

The largest portion of the museum's collections consist of the natural history specimens from the Ashmolean Museum, including the specimens collected by John Tradescant the elder and his son of the same name, William Burchell and geologist William Buckland. The Christ Church Museum donated its osteological and physiological specimens, many of which were collected by Acland.

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by Lawrence OP