Bell Pettigrew Museum

Museum

Explorer Tom

The Bell Pettigrew Museum is a room where a prehistoric beast can share attention with creatures small enough for a jar. In the University of St Andrews' Bute building, natural history specimens bring the animal kingdom nearby. Go in curious; if you leave insisting that every skeleton looked back at you, I shall ask which one blinked. The university describes rare specimens, fossils and extinct species from around the world. The displays belong to a teaching collection as well as a public museum, so their arrangement has a purpose beyond making visitors gasp. A natural history room invites careful comparison: teeth, shells, wings and bones show how varied living things have been. Let one object stop you for a minute instead of racing to name them all. The setting itself is part of the pleasure. This is not a national museum with a day of corridors; it is a compact university collection in St Andrews. Sir David Attenborough has praised its ability to show the value of museums to natural science. You need not borrow his voice to enjoy it. Try finding an animal you know and then a stranger beside it; the gap between familiar and unknown is where the questions begin. Public entry is free but limited to weekday afternoons during Fife school holidays in April, July, August and October. Staff and students have wider weekday hours; that does not mean the door is normally open to every visitor. The museum entrance is Door C of the Bute building, reached through St Mary's Quadrangle or Queen's Terrace. Check the university's calendar before travelling. A room full of creatures deserves better than a locked door.

What is recorded here

Map note: The recorded spot for Bell Pettigrew Museum is near St Andrews, Fife, Scotland; it is a museum. The name caught our eye; the map shows what else is nearby.

From OpenStreetMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors) n12551328465

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