Treasure trove

Oxfordshire is blessed with a wonderful variety of museums — approaching 30 altogether — covering a huge, and often surprising, range of subjects, from the awe-inspiring archaeological and artistic treasures of the Ashmolean in Oxford itself to the many fascinating explorations of local history and specialist interests scattered around the county’s towns and villages.

The development of most of the city’s main museums has been closely associated with the history of the university. The present Ashmolean was formed in 1908 from a coming together of the University Art Collection — once housed in the Bodleian and then transferred to a new Beaumont Street building in 1845 — with a collection presented to the university by Elias Ashmole, founded on the ‘curiosities’ of the John Tradescants, father and son. This was originally kept, and added to, in the elegant building in Broad Street which now houses the Museum of the History of Science.

Rick Mather Architects’ £61m transformation of the Beaumont Street building, completed in November 2009, was linked to a new display concept, focusing on the connections and comparisons between cultures at different periods of world history. All the old favourites, such as Uccello’s 1460s painting The Hunt in the Forest, the Pre-Raphaelite Prioress’s Tale cabinet, Guy Fawkes’s Lantern, the Alfred Jewel and the lovely pre-historic Egyptian hippopotamus, are still there to delight the visitor.

The Ashmolean has an extensive programme of talks, study days and family activities, and a new rooftop restaurant, the first in Oxford, providing an alternative to the popular basement café (www.ashmolean.org 01865 278000).

Clustered together in the Broad Street/Parks Road area of the city are the three big University museums and the Bodleian Library, which hosts several themed exhibitions a year featuring works from its own collections and elsewhere (www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/bodley 01865 277162).

The previously mentioned Museum of the History of Science, (www.mhs.ox.ac.uk 01865 277280), does a lot more than merely present a historical record. In addition to its collections of often beautiful mathematical, optical and other scientific instruments, dating from antiquity through to the 20th century and including the largest collection of astrolabes in the world, it is gaining a reputation for highly imaginative activity days and special exhibitions.

The University Natural History Museum is housed in a Victorian neo-Gothic building of stone, iron and glass, worth seeing for its architectural interest alone. It opened to the public in 1860, bringing together geological and natural history specimens previously dispersed among various university departments.

Notable exhibits include the first dinosaurs to be scientifically described, which were found in Oxfordshire; the dodo, with its Alice in Wonderland connections; an extensive collection of zoological and insect specimens; a glass-sided beehive, and a webcam enabling visitors to watch the activities of swifts which breed regularly in the museum tower (www.oum.ox.ac.uk 01865 272950). At the far side of this building’s main court is the entrance to the University’s ethnographic collection, the Pitt Rivers Museum (www.prm.ox.ac.uk 01865 270927), named after the general on whose gift of 18,000 objects it was founded in 1884.

It now houses more than 300,000 examples of material culture from all over the world. These are organised by type of object rather than by geographical area, which enables the visitor to see how richly varied are the solutions which have been found to broadly similar problems of daily life.

Its unique and much-loved atmosphere, produced by low lighting and the effect of so many exotic objects crowded together in the ancient display cases, has not been disturbed by recent improvements to the access and educational facilities, and to the firearms collection in the upper gallery.

Oxford University also has a small museum, the Bate Collection — near Christ Church in St Aldate’s — devoted to musical instruments, particularly from the European orchestral woodwind tradition (www.bate.ox.ac.uk 01865 276139). Right in the centre of Oxford, next to the Town Hall, is the Museum of Oxford, devoted to the history of the city and supported by the City Council (www.museumofoxford.org.uk 01865 252761).

It charts Oxford’s development from prehistory, through the Roman, Saxon and medieval periods, to Victorian and then modern times, including a look at the town’s car industry. There is also a display featuring Oxford’s many literary connections.

Outside the city, The Oxfordshire Museum at Woodstock, in Fletcher’s House (once the home of a 16th-century merchant), does a similar job for the county as a whole, with 11 galleries featuring Oxfordshire’s history, popular culture and contemporary arts and crafts. There is a café and attractive garden (www.oxfordshire.gov.uk 01993 811456).

Elsewhere in the county, town museums, often staffed by enthusiastic and knowledgeable volunteers, chart the history of their own local area.

At Banbury (www.cherwell.gov.uk 01295 753752) you can learn about life on the Oxford Canal.

At Witney (www.witney.net 01993 775915) the focus is on the wool trade and blanket manufacturing.

Lively and nicely laid out displays at the Vale and Downland Museum in Wantage explore the history of the Vale of White Horse, including its connections with King Alfred. (www.wantage.com/museum).

In the Tolsey Museum at Burford (01993 822178), a Tudor building where market traders used to pay their tolls, visitors can see the town’s medieval charter, 16th-century chests for the safeguarding of official valuables, and a fantastically detailed dolls’ house, modelled on a 17th-century building nearby.

Abingdon (www.abingdonmuseum.org.uk 01235 523703), Thame (www.thamehistory.net 01844 212801), Chipping Norton (www.chippingnorton.net 01608 641712) and Wallingford also have their own museums — the latter is currently raising funds to build a timber-framed annexe, hoping to involve local people in its construction and enable them to learn some traditional carpentry skills (www.wallingfordmuseum.org.uk 01491 835065). Of the Oxfordshire museums devoted to a single topic, the largest and most spectacular architecturally is the River and Rowing Museum, beside the Thames at Henley.

It is the only museum of its kind in the world. Its airy galleries tell the stories of rowing as a sport, of the Thames from its source at Kemble to the sea, and of the town of Henley, where the world-famous Royal Regatta takes place each year.

There is also a Wind in the Willows exhibition that nostalgic adults seem to enjoy as much as the children it is aimed at (www.rrm.co.uk 01491 415600).

Transport buffs are well catered for in the county, with the Oxford Bus Museum, incorporating the Morris Motors collection, at Long Hanborough (www.oxfordbusmuseum.org.uk 01296 337622), and the Pendon Museum of Miniature Landscape and Transport at Long Wittenham, near Abingdon.

This houses displays of English countryside scenes between the two world wars, created through endlessly patient craftsmanship and meticulous attention to detail, with the odd humorous touch thrown in for eagle-eyed visitors to chuckle at (www.pendonmuseum.com 01865 407365).

Connoisseurs of real ale will find much of interest at Hook Norton Brewery Museum and on the associated tours of the brewery, with its working steam engine (www.hooknortonbrewery.co.uk 01608 730384 to book tours).

Other aspects of agricultural and horticultural history are catered for by the small but absorbing Museum of Rural Life at Waterperry Gardens and its friendly and very informative curator. Finally, watch out for the opening, in the next couple of years, of a new museum devoted to the Soldiers of Oxfordshire (www.sofo.org.uk 01993 813832), incorporating the collections formerly housed at Slade Park, Headington — and, with luck, the reopening of Cogges Manor farm museum near Witney, a really valuable educational resource whose new trust will need all the public support it can get (www.cogges.org.uk)