Pitt Rivers Museum
A dim, towering Victorian hall packed floor to ceiling with masks, amulets, weapons and shrunken heads.
A dim, towering Victorian hall packed floor to ceiling with masks, amulets, weapons and shrunken heads.
The Pitt Rivers is one of those rare places that makes everyone, regardless of age, fall completely quiet for a moment before erupting into questions. The collection is arranged not by culture or era but by type: all the masks grouped together, all the musical instruments together, all the tools for making fire in one long case. The effect is extraordinary. You find yourself seeing connections across centuries and continents that a conventional museum would never draw out. Children are transfixed by the sliding drawers you can pull open, each one hiding further treasures, and the grown-ups tend to lose an hour without noticing it.
We treat it as the centrepiece of a proper Oxford day rather than a quick stop. The drive in from the cottage takes around thirty-five to forty minutes, and because parking in the centre is a genuine headache, we always leave the car at one of the park and ride sites on the ring road and let the bus drop us near the colleges. From there the walk up to Parks Road takes you past some of the finest architecture in England, so the journey to the museum is already part of the fun.
This is the detail that catches first-timers out, so it is worth knowing before you go. There is no grand front door of its own. You enter through the Oxford University Museum of Natural History on Parks Road, walk the length of that soaring Victorian hall, past the dinosaur skeletons and the dodo, and take a left at the statue of Darwin. Behind an unassuming arched doorway the light drops and the Pitt Rivers opens up in front of you. The two museums share a building and a spirit, so plan to see both while you are there rather than choosing between them.
It is deliberately dim and densely packed, and that is the whole appeal. Cases are crammed floor to ceiling in the old Victorian manner, and the hand-written labels are part of the charm. Some of the objects are famous, the shrunken heads and the towering totem pole among them, but the real pleasure is in the smaller things you stumble across when you slow down. Give yourself a couple of hours if you can, and do open the drawers, because that is where half the collection hides. There is a lift and step-free access if you need it, and the shop by the exit is genuinely good for unusual gifts and postcards. If the weather turns kind, the University Parks are a short stroll away and make a fine place to sit afterwards, and the covered market in the centre is worth a detour on the way back to the bus for coffee and something to eat.
“I've taken every guest here and not one has been disappointed. The kids open every drawer they can find; the grown-ups pretend they're not doing exactly the same thing.”
Make a full day of it and pair the museum with lunch in the city. The Turf Tavern is tucked down an alley barely a few minutes' walk away, and the Ashmolean is an easy addition if you have the appetite for more. For everything else the city holds, our guide to Oxford is a good place to start.
All of this on the doorstep, and your own thatched cottage to come home to. Sleeps seven, less than a mile from Soho Farmhouse.