Manchester Museum is owned by the university and is the UK's largest university museum and serves both as a major visitor attraction and as a resource for academic research and teaching. It has around 360,000 visitors each year.
The university too k responsibility for it in 1867, it having existed independently sice its formation in 1821.
I remember going there as a child two very strong memories stand out. The first is the structure of the main Victorian exhibit hall complete with whale skeleton suspended from the ceiling.
On the first and second floors, the railings you can see were lined with display cases with wooden lids, underneath was a huge collection of bug, butterflies and moths. Although the display cases remain, many of the insect collection has moved on.
The ground floor was the location for my second strong memory of visiting there. In one case, they had a huge Japanese Spider Crab. It was mounted on the wall so you could easily see that it was longer than you were tall. This is no longer in this exhibit hall, and is in a case behind the tea/coffee stall in the main entrance. It has also been display horizontally and isn't nearly as impressive as a result.
There are still plenty of stuffed animals to marvel at. And if they are displayed in numbers according to their popularity, then I can report that foxes and duck-billed platypusses are top of the charts with the public.
Including Gel
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Where's Wally? - hidden in the next two images are myself and Gel. See if you can spot us.
After a sit down, we turned right out of the museum and headed south towards the recently reopened Whitworth Art Gallery. Before we got there we bobbed in to the MU Students Union building. A location for nights out for both us over the years. Joe Jackson, The Slits, The Damned being bands I'd seen there. And how it had changed. Soft chairs and lattes now. Not the formica tables and plastic pint pots I remembered.
Moving on we arrived at the gallery and had a very nice chat with Emma who was helping out in the newly opened "Art Textile". It is a really nice place to go now, with some beautiful spaces.
Gel then had a wizard idea that since we were on the doorstep of the curry capital of the world, we could pick one up and take it home for tea. So last night we had a VERY nice meal courtesy of The Sanam which, again, we have both frequented many times over the years.
All in all, a really pleasant Saturday, finished, for me with the "billy bonus" of free car parking all day. Yesterday, it turned out, was Manchester University open day so Oxford Rd was awash with Year 13s checking what university life would be like for them. A lot more luxurious than in our day, was our conclusion.
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