The Bate Collection

On Woodstock Road, Oxford

One for the music lovers

The Bate is one of Oxford's best-kept secrets, a museum of historic musical instruments now housed in the University's new Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities, in the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter just off Woodstock Road. It is small, free, and quietly wonderful, and if there is a musician or a music lover in your party it is well worth timing a trip around. Gathered here is one of the finest collections of instruments in the world, laid out not as untouchable treasures but as the working tools of centuries of music-making.

Cases run the whole family of the orchestra and beyond: European woodwind from delicate Baroque recorders to the coiled black serpent, brass from natural horns to a clear acrylic Grafton saxophone, historic harpsichords and clavichords, violins and the tools of the great bow-makers, and a complete Javanese gamelan. There are famous single pieces to seek out, a Bressan recorder, the Beale trumpet, an early Rayman violin, but the real pleasure is the sweep of it, seeing how instruments were dreamed up, refined and reinvented across four hundred years. It is the sort of place you leave itching to hear the things played.

Before you go: check the days

This is the one thing to get right. Now settled into the University's new Schwarzman Centre, the Bate still keeps very limited hours: it currently opens only on Monday and Thursday afternoons, 2pm to 5pm, and is closed the rest of the week. Turn up on the wrong day and the door will be shut, so plan your visit around one of those two afternoons, and it is always worth a last check of the current times on the museum's own site before you travel. Entry is free, and because it is a focused collection you can see it properly in well under an hour.

What to look out for

• The woodwindCenturies of flutes, oboes, clarinets and recorders, including a celebrated Bressan recorder and the wonderfully strange coiled serpent.
• Historic keyboardsHarpsichords, clavichords and early pianos, some of which are kept playable and used for teaching and the occasional recital.
• The Javanese gamelanA complete bronze gamelan orchestra, a sudden shift of continent among the European instruments and a favourite with children.
• The bow-makers' toolsThe workbench and tools of the Chanot-Chardon family of makers, a rare look at how the instruments themselves were built.

Making a day of it

The Bate sits in the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, just off Woodstock Road at the northern edge of the city centre, a few minutes' walk from the colleges and the other museums. The University Museum of Natural History and the Pitt Rivers are close by on Parks Road, and the Ashmolean and History of Science Museum are both an easy stroll south and free to enter. Our full guide to things to do gathers the rest.

“A tiny free museum most people never find, and a treat if you love music. Just check the current opening days before you go, and plan the trip around them.”

Visit the official site →

Also nearby

• Museum of Natural History · Museum · Parks Road
• History of Science Museum · Museum · Broad Street
• The Ashmolean Museum · Museum · Oxford
• Oxford Botanic Garden · Garden · High Street