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Manchester Museum displays works of archaeology, anthropology and natural history. It is owned by the University of Manchester is sited on Oxford Road at the heart of the university's group of neo-Gothic buildings.

The Manchester Museum started life with the purchase of the collection of the Manchester manufacturer John Leigh Philips and the creation of the Manchester Natural History Society in 1821. They displayed the collection in their Peter Street premises and in 1850 they added the collection of the Manchester Geological Society. Owens College (now the University of Manchester) accepted responsibility for the collections in 1867.

The college commissioned Alfred Waterhouse, the architect of the Town Hall and London's magnificent Natural History Museum, to design a museum to house the collections for the benefit of students and the public on a site in Oxford Road (then Oxford Street). The Manchester Museum was opened to the public in 1888. The 1912 extension, The Jesse Haworth pavilion, is Grade II-listed (English Heritage Building ID: 454842 Link British Listed Buildings).

By the twentieth century, the collection was split into archaeology, botany, Egyptology, entomology, ethnography, mineralogy, palaeontology, numismatics and zoology, as well as live specimens in the aquarium and vivarium. Providing access to about 6 million items from every continent, it is now 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 (Link The History of The Manchester Museum). The Gothic Revival street frontage which continues to the Whitworth Hall has been ingeniously integrated by three generations of the Waterhouse family.

In 1997 the Museum was awarded a £12.5 million grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund and this, together with money from the European Regional Development Fund, the University of Manchester, the Wellcome Trust, The Wolfson Foundation and other sponsors enabled the Museum to refurbish and expand including the addition of a museum café in the former Dental School. The renewed museum opened in 2003 (Link Manchester History Net).