The Oxford Museum of Natural History

This morning I took a break from the monotony that is thesis writing to pop along to the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, which is reopening today after a fourteen month closure, in which they did something to the roof. To celebrate, the museum put on a special 'dawn till dusk' day of events, with performers, activities and real life creepy crawlies to handle. The museum is a whole two minutes walk from where I live, so there really was no excuse not to check it out! Despite this, I still managed to sleep in and miss being able to grab breakfast in their newly opened cafe, however I'm sure it won't be long before I manage to make it over for a cup of tea and some cake.

Shamelessly went over to ask for a sticker. No regrets.

The building that houses of museum is really cool. People often get confused, because attached to the back is another museum, the Pitt Rivers, displaying ethnographic collections (see future post on this!), however the museum of natural history is housed in its own separate part, and really is quite distinctive. A nice picture of the building from the outside can be found here (not my picture) - it's possible that some of you might recognise it from the detective show Lewis, where someone once tried to jump off the top. Or not…

You might also have heard of the museum because it was the site of the Oxford evolution debate, which took place in 1860 and involved Huxley and Wilberforce arguing over the validity of Darwin's recently published On the Origin of the Species, in which Wilberforce made the famous comment asking whether he was descended from a money on 'his mother or his father's side'. The museum also houses a dodo that has links to Lewis Carroll and the story of Alice in Wonderland. I'll stop there with the history, as the internet will probably be able to tell you more in a considerably more eloquent manner.

Anyway onto the building itself. Here are some snaps I took this morning:

The skeletons suspended from the ceiling are a nice touch. 

As you can see, it's quite snazzy. The building was built in the early 1860s, and has a fancy wrought iron and glass roof -  I particularly like the combination of the stone and wrought iron. Also f you look closely, you can see that the iron is almost all decorated with iron plant decoration, which is a nice touch and in keeping with the general content of the museum as a natural history collection.. According to wikipedia, this is 'combining the Pre-Raphaelite style with the scientific role of the building'. A similar thing is suggested by the inclusion of lots of statues of eminent scientists around the outside of the ground floor court. Wikipedia also tells me that 'Although the University paid for the construction of the building, the ornamentation was funded by public subscription — and much of it remains incomplete. The Irish stone carvers O'Shea and Whelan had been employed to create lively freehand carvings in the Gothic manner. When funding dried up they offered to work unpaid, but were accused by members of the University Congregation of "defacing" the building by adding unauthorised work. According to Acland, they responded by caricaturing the Congregation as parrots and owls in the carving over the building's entrance. Acland insists that he forced them to remove the heads.'

So it appears the building has quite a lot of relatively amusing and contentious history surrounding it too, which is nice!

Anyway, that's that. I'm the first to admit that natural history museums really aren't my specialist subject, but I do love the building at the Natural History Museum, and I think that alone (okay so maybe also combined with its proximity and the fact it's free…) will be enough for me to make the effort to pay it a few more visits while I'm still in Oxford.