In the first of our new features on Oxfordshire’s museums LIZ NICHOLLS sinks her teeth into the wonders of Oxford’s Natural History Museum.
Bad day? Bad week? Hang in there because I’ve got just the cure for you: perspective.
Yeah, so you’re running late; you feel old, cold, broke and knackered; your Hoover’s broken and your home is a crumby hovel; your child’s incessant demands make you feel like a slave... Sorry, where was I? Oh yes, perspective.
Wander into the Natural History Museum and that’s what you get. Slap-bang in your face, pulverising your puny problems. All of natural life is enshrined here, from the first beating hearts of our froggy ancestors through to the most revolutionary scientific breakthroughs about how we came into being. You think that annoying bit of gossip you found by Facebook-stalking your ex registers on the scale of human discovery? You’re less than a speck. Feeling better yet? I did!
As a newcomer to Oxford, let me say this: you’re spoilt.
I moved from the cultural wastelands of Hatfield to a city where you can’t swing a cat without bumping into a scene of monumental historical importance. Tourists flock from all over the world to stand on the spot where Charles Lutwidge Dodgson fell down the rabbithole. Great minds of our time marvel at Huxley and Wilberforce’s legendary debate on evolution within these hallowed halls. This is where the magic happens.
The word ‘museum’ might not beckon to you in a sexy come-hither way. But cast aside visions of dusty old relics because there is so much that’s shiny and new to enjoy on every visit.
Testament to this is a corner of the museum’s fantastic website (oum.ox.ac.uk) in which staff have picked out their own personal highs, from mineralogy miracles to drop-dead-gorgeous door handles.
So whether you’re die-hard rock geek or interior design aficionado, you’re catered for.
Kids are much better at this discovery lark. Before they stack up the years, accumulating bitterness and cynicism like so much choles-terol, they are natural explorers.
And they are in their element in the Natural History Museum. Next month it hosts a Young Entomologists’ Day to recruit youngsters on the creepy-crawly path to knowledge. Did you know that only 1.7m of the five to 12 million insects on the planet today have been described?
It might seem like a bleak future for the next generation on the jobs market, but it’s cheering to think that science marches on regardless, recruiting curious bug-mad boys and girls.
And if you’re a bit allergic to pointless authority you’ll be thrilled to find there are no stern tellings-off for adults or children at the Natural History Museum.
Almost every exhibit, from fossilised dinosaur eggs to a mystery bone box stands free from barriers, begging for clammy hands to cop a feel.
I did a double-take at signs on a Shetland pony and cheetah which implored ‘Please Touch’.
I saw one toddler clambering on a piece of orbicular granite (2,700,000,000 years old) while his mother fondled it, pondering how it would make a great kitchen worktop.
You probably know that this museum is home to dinosaurs but if Jurassic Park left you cold (apart from Jeff Goldblum, obviously) even this pull might not have lured you in. Forget the film: reality bites. Standing underneath the monstrous jaws and gimlet eye-sockets of the 65-million-year-old T-Rex, you realise you’re just small fry. It’s a liberating feeling. Astonishingly, many of the museum’s dino-stars were dug up in this very county. The cartoonish three-toed footprints gracing the front lawn were discovered just up the road in Ardley.
There’s a Cumnor dinosaur – the Camptosaurus discovered in 1879 by some builders and a Megalosaurus – the first dinosaur from anywhere in the world found in Stonesfield and an Eustreptospondylus found in Summertown! Discovering such epic beasts roamed so close to home, squashed and caressed in the clay (and you can see how the Cotswolds were formed by the exhibits upstairs) is a revelation. It adds a whole new dimension to the journey home past the patisseries and prams.
The neo-gothic cathedral itself, built in the 1850s to house all of the university’s scientific studies, is breathtaking and can be hired for corporate functions and wedding receptions.
Now, I’m not the marrying kind, but even I’m tempted – surely it would be worth booking just for the mother-in-law jokes? And no bride could feel fat alongside a woolly mammoth. See what I mean – perspective!
There is so much to love about the Natural History Museum, from the mind-bogglingly academic to the frivolous and fun. In one fell swoop you can cram an otherwise low-achieving Sunday afternoon full with creativity. And it’s free!
* The Natural History Museum is in Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3PW. Young Entomologists’ Day is on Saturday, February 11. Email education@oum.ox.ac.uk to book. Explorers and Adventurers is on February 14-16, 1-4pm, on a drop-in basis. Visit oum.ox.ac.uk to find out more.
