Bate Collection of Musical Instruments

About

The Bate Collection of Historical Musical Instruments is a museum of musical instruments from the Middle Ages onwards. It was housed in Oxford University's Faculty of Music near Christ Church on St. Aldate's before moving to the newly constructed Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities in 2026. The Bate Collection is an accredited museum under the Arts Council England Museum Accreditation Scheme UK and the International Council of Museums (ICOM), International Committee of Museums and Collections of Instruments and Music (CIMCIM). The collection is open to the public and there are research, teaching and performances in the exhibition space, and permanent and temporary exhibitions. More than a thousand instruments by important English, French and German makers, are on display, showing the musical and mechanical development of wind and percussion instruments from the Renaissance to the current day.

The Bate Collection is the home of the Reginald Morley-Pegge Memorial Collection of Horns and other Brass and Woodwind Instruments; the Anthony Baines Collection; the Edgar Hunt Collection of Recorders and other instruments; the Jean Henry Collection, the Taphouse Keyboard Loans; the Roger Warner...