Musical Museum

In 1963, the Museum was founded by the late Frank Holland MBE who had a faible for self-playing musical instruments and thought that they should be preserved for future generations.
The Musical Museum offers one of the world’s foremost collections of automatic instruments; you’ll find reproducing pianos, orchestrions, orchestrelles, residence organs and violin players, basically everything you could imagine, from tiny clockwork musical boxes to the self-playing ‘Mighty Wurlitzer’.

After moving to a new purpose built home in 2006, the museum re-opened in 2007. The Museum’s collections include all sorts of instruments and instrument related things– from instruments of the past that could be found in the houses of the wealthy to a street setting with shop windows full of music, musical toys and street instruments. You can find out how music used to be captured and how instruments were powered and the museum also offers the world's largest collection of historic musical rolls as well as an extensive archive of related material.

There are changing exhibitions and upstairs there is a concert hall with a stage and an orchestra pit from which a Wurlitzer console rises to entertain the audience, very much like it would in the cinemas of the 1930’s.

The museum is open from Tuesday to Sunday from 11am until 5.30pm and the facilities can be used for private hire.