← All articles · United Kingdom · 29 November 2015

Oxford, November 2015

Oxford in November 2015, mostly indoors: skulls and skeletons under the glass roof of the Natural History Museum, then the packed cases of the Pitt Rivers.

Oxford in late November 2015 was cold enough to make the decision for us: this would be an indoors day. Which in Oxford isn't a punishment at all, because the University Museum of Natural History and the Pitt Rivers Museum share one building, cost nothing, and can eat an entire afternoon between them.

The Museum of Natural History

The main court of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, dinosaur skeletons among display cases under a Victorian glass roof held up by slender iron columns — The great court: dinosaurs down the middle, cast iron columns like a Gothic greenhouse, and daylight pouring through the glass roof.

Inga leaning in to look closely at a huge animal skull on open display in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History — Inga going nose to nose with a skull roughly the size of an armchair. Much of the museum is out in the open like this, no glass in the way.

Inga crouching to study the lower shelves of a specimen case in the museum court, skeletons displayed all around — The bottom shelves are where the museum hides its weirdest residents. Worth the crouch.

Through the door into the Pitt Rivers

Through a doorway at the back of the court, the light drops and you walk into the Pitt Rivers, one of the strangest and best museums in Britain: half a million objects stacked case upon case, with a totem pole standing over the lot.

The dim interior of the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, dense glass cases on two levels with a tall carved totem pole rising through the gallery — The Pitt Rivers, lit like a cabinet of secrets. The totem pole gets two storeys to itself.

File Oxford under cities that reward bad weather. Our first visit went the other way entirely, all rooftops and college gates on a dry October afternoon: that one's at Oxford, October 2011. And for the other end of the day-trip spectrum, there's always the seaside at Brighton.