Collections

Visit a Museum

Search the Museums Database

Research, teaching and collaboration

Make a research appointment

• Anatomy and Pathology

  More than 5000 objects, including wet and dry specimens along with surgical instruments, wax and plastinated models, and teaching charts. Highlights of the collection include 19th-century anatomical models made by companies including Tramond of Paris, and a set of watercolour drawings produced for the standard anatomical text book, Anatomy in the Living Model (London, 1931). Please note: due to the nature of this collection, access to some parts of it is subject to legal restrictions.

• Chemistry

  Around 1,100 objects, mainly chemical apparatus and specimens, illustrating the development of teaching and research at St Andrews. The comprehensive collection of about 900 sugar samples produced by Professors Thomas Purdie and James Irvine in the early part of the 20th century is of international importance, and the collection also contains 10 items of early chemical glassware, purchased when teaching of chemistry at St Andrews began in 1811. Other items of interest include a rare mid-18th-century chemical balance made by George Adams of London, prints by Gilray and Rowlandson, and engravings of chemical scenes after artists such as David Teniers.

• Ethnography

  More than 200 objects, some acquired in the 18th and 19th centuries for the then-newly-founded University Museum, and others collected  through more recent fieldwork and research. Strengths of this collection include South American archaeological and ethnographic material, among which are an important group of Inca and early Peruvian objects donated by F J Bremner in 1908. Strong connections between St Andrews and South and South East Asia in the 19th century are represented by objects including an 11th-century stone stela from Bengal that depicts Shiva and Parvati and is thought to have be one of the earliest objects of this type to come to Britain, 9 Indian paintings on glass created in Southern India in the 19th century, and a Thai silver zodiac bowl in the collection that is among the earliest of its type anywhere, and was excavated from an archaeological site in India and owned by Professor Hugh Cleghorn in the 1790s. From the Pacific there are objects including clubs from New Zealand and Australia, and a scraper and two bone harpoon heads acquired in the 1830s from Inuit peoples. The collection also includes African material acquired by Professor Ladislav Holy during his fieldwork in Zambia, and bequeathed to the University in 1997.

• Geology

  The largest by number and by weight, this collection includes more than 80,000 geological specimens (69,000 rocks, 6,000 fossils, and 5,000 minerals) from around the world, among them 13 type specimens. Established in the 19th century, the collection includes material collected by significant Scottish scientists including minerals from Matthew Forster Heddle (Professor of chemistry 1862-83) who single-handedly completed a geological map of Sutherland, fossils from 19th-century excavations at nearby Dura Den, and dredgings from the Challenger expeditions studying the world’s oceans (1872-1876). The collection also includes a thin section of limestone from 40 feet below the summit of Mount Everest, collected by Edmund Hillary in 1953, and samples collected through contemporary geological fieldwork.

• Heritage

  These are largely collections connected to the University’s history, and include fine art, silverware, furniture, costume and textiles, coins and medals, and archaeological objects.

  Art

  The collection of portraits was established in 1765 and has grown steadily since that time, and includes portraits, mainly in oils, of University Chancellors, Principals, Professors, Rectors, alumni and benefactors. The University also holds the Pilgrim Trust Recording Scotland Collection of over 100 works, designed both to produce employment for artists during the Second World War and to create a pictorial record of a Scotland thought to be at risk from war damage and from industrialisation. Since 1995, the Harry and Margery Boswell Art Collection has enabled the University to make annual purchases of Scottish art, building a notable collection of largely 20th and 21st century works.  .

  Silver, furniture, coins and medals

  Highlights of the silver collection include the University’s three medieval maces, two sixteenth-century mazers (communal drinking vessels), college silver spoons from the 18th century, and 70 medals from the University’s Silver Arrow archery competition (from 1618 to c. 1754). The furniture collection includes a number of important objects, including the Parliament Hall Chair (1640s-1660s) which is thought to have been used as the Speaker’s chair when the Scottish Parliament met in St Andrews in 1645-6, and the St Andrews cupboard, made in c. 1500. The numismatic collection includes a comprehensive collection of communion tokens, among the largest and most important in the UK, and with unique examples of several types.

  Costume and textiles

  This collection of around 120 objects relates mainly to the academic dress of the University, and includes costumes worn by staff and students. It also includes material from around the world, including a Sudanese costume thought to date from the 1920s, and the Norwegian flag taken by Arctic explorer and Nobel Laureate Fridtjof Nansen on the ‘Farthest North’ expedition in 1895.

  Archaeology

  The majority of the university’s archaeological collections were transferred to other museums during the course of the twentieth century, although two important groups remain. The Bridges Collection of more than 180 ancient Cypriot objects was donated by Mrs Margaret Bridges in 1994 and 2003. The prehistoric material, totalling more than 800 artefacts, includes donations by A D Lacaille, H W Seton-Karr, and D Waterson. Highlights include a series of flints found in the 1880s at Happisburgh, Norfolk, as well as Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic material from Europe and Africa.

• Psychology

  A small collection of around 100 objects, mainly 19th and 20th century equipment and apparatus used in Psychology teaching and research at the University. The Department at St Andrews was one of the first to be established in Britain, and the collection provides evidence for the history and development of the subject.

• Scientific Instruments

  This collection of national and international importance includes more than 500 objects relating to research and teaching in natural philosophy, physics and astronomy, over a period of five centuries. It provides important evidence of the history and development of science and instrument making in Scotland and beyond. Several objects in the collection were acquired by James Gregory, Professor of Mathematics, when he sought to equip a planned University observatory, and these include two of the finest surviving sixteenth-century instruments, the Great Astrolabe and the Universal Instrument made by Humphrey Cole. There are also instruments by significant Scottish instrument makers, including a telescope produced by James Short of Edinburgh in 1736 and an orrery by Benjamin Cole of London. More recently, the museums’ first digital acquisition was added to this collection – the MacTutor history of mathematics software developed at St Andrews.

• Zoology and Natural History

  Natural history specimens were actively collected by the St Andrews Literary and Philosophical Society in the 19th century, and displayed from 1911 in the Bell Pettigrew Museum. Today, the collection includes around 13,500 specimens and a number of related scientific instruments. The collection includes several rare or extinct species, birds from the collection of naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, dodo bones collected in Mauritius in the 1850s, fossil fish from Dura Den, and marine specimens from the Challenger deep see expedition of the 1870s. A specimen of the St Kilda house mouse, which became extinct only a few years after the last remaining human inhabitants of the island were moved to the mainland in 1930, is a reminder of the close connections between humans and animals.