For 150 years, Oxford’s Museum of Natural History has housed an eclectic collection of fossils, skeletons, birds, bugs... and buckets.

But the buckets are about to go as the building’s roof – which has leaked for its entire 150-year history – will be repaired.

Eight thousand glass panes will have to be removed and cleaned when a massive roof restoration project gets under way.

After five years of tests to find a lasting solution to the museum’s leaking roof, the university is ready to finally tackle the problem.

Work will begin next month and the roof restoration is expected to take three years to complete.

The project will involve stripping the roof, cleaning each of the 8,565 diamond-shaped glass panes, and then putting them all back in, complete with safety film and compressible gaskets.

At the same time, the ornate metal work will be carefully cleaned to reveal the original colour scheme, hidden under 150 years of dirt.

Museum administrator Wendy Shepherd said the innovative design had brought problems.

She said: “Ever since its completion, the three huge glass roofs over the main court have leaked. When the building was completed money had to be set aside for ongoing repair work to the roof. We always have buckets at the ready.”

When work begins on the middle section of the roof, above the famous dinosaurs, the museum may have to close.

But the Pitt Rivers Museum, which is entered through the Natural History Museum in Parks Road, will remain open throughout.

The glass roof is supported by slender columns of iron and a railway station-like vaulting, with the ironwork decorated with delicately wrought foliage and fruits.

The iron columns, arches and spandrels of the museum were designed like the skeleton of some great beast, mirroring the skeletons of the whales, elephants and dinosaurs below.

The museum was built to provide Oxford with a permanent home for the sciences in the middle of the 19th century.

With more than half a million visitors and tens of thousands of school pupils coming through our doors each year, the museum is one of the most visited places in Oxford.

It was the first major building in the Gothic style since the Houses of Parliament built 20 years earlier and, in the view of many, remains the most stunning Victorian Gothic building in the UK.