Museums & Attractions

It is very hard to imagine a world without iPods, let alone one with no CDs, Walkmans, ghetto blasters, jukeboxes or stereos. Today, music can accompany you wherever you go and is accessible at the touch of a button.

But less than 100 years ago the only way to enjoy recordings of music was through an automatic musical machine, such as a wind-up musical box or a self-playing piano. If you can’t imagine any further back than a record player, a trip to the Musical Museum, a little-known treasure tucked away in Brentford, is an enlightening experience.

One of the world’s biggest collections of automatic musical instruments, the museum shows the inventive lengths people went to to reproduce a good old tune.
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The idea of a museum that is essentially made up of vintage musical instruments might dredge up memories of being dragged on family trips to fusty old institutions, but this new museum is bringing these creaky machines back to life.

Brentford's Musical Museum

To get the most out of the three large rooms overflowing with intriguing ornate wooden contraptions, join a tour led by one of the dedicated and passionate voluntary staff, who will provide a whirlwind history of these melodic gadgets and also demonstrate them. See the tiny Swiss music boxes complete with brightly coloured hornets striking bells. Listen as the ghostly self-playing pianos, baffling violin players, mind-boggling orchestrions and cranky barrel organs belt out their classic tunes.

Exploring the museum, you are struck by the wealth of craftsmanship and ingenuity. And the stories behind the instruments – collected from private homes, yachts, cinemas and pubs (complete with cigarette burns) around America and the UK – are as interesting as the machines themselves. For example, most street instruments were accompanied by a dancing monkey, dog or even a bear with which to attract passers-by. Often you might have found that the sly trained monkey had picked your pocket while you were enjoying the music.

The collection is the work of Frank Holland, an electrical engineer. Holland had a passion for self-playing instruments, and realising in the 1950s that with the widespread use of electricity and the birth of new-fangled aural technology many of these beautiful old musical machines were being chucked out, he decided to save them.

By 1960, Holland’s collecting was in full swing and soon his Acton flat (and all his friends’ houses) were overflowing with music boxes, player-pianos and other musical memorabilia. Then, in 1963, he found the disused St George’s church on Brentford High Street, made a deal with the vicar and moved everything in.

The collection continued to grow, even after Holland’s death in 1989, but despite its founder’s aim to share the instruments with the world, it remained essentially a private collection crammed into a dilapidated church, only open to the public for a few hours a week.

After an extensive search for new premises, Hounslow Council agreed four years ago to build the museum a new home on the same road. Three times larger and with the aid of a lottery grant, and a great deal of voluntary labour, it opened to the public in November 2007.

This museum truly represents a labour of love. Owen Cooper, one of the trustees, says that to get everything finished in the final months it was all hands on deck. Two of the volunteers even moved into caravans in the car park (one complete with wife and budgie) so that they could work round the clock, and Cooper himself moved into a hotel down the road.

Now fully up and running, the museum is busy rebuilding its pride and joy, the majestic ‘Mighty Wurlitzer’ organ in the grand hall, ready for concerts scheduled to begin in July. The room has a sprung floor for ballroom dancing and you can almost taste the excitement as the rare ‘one-man orchestra’ gets ready to perform once again.

All extraordinary works of art, the museum’s instruments are once again being played and enjoyed as they were intended. Although they might have been superseded by more modern technology, and you certainly can’t fit them in your pocket, listening to them is like stepping through a time warp. So now you know: to be musically transported to the beginning of the last century, you need only make the journey to Brentford.

The Musical Museum, 399 High Street, Brentford (020 8560 8108/www.musicalmuseum.co.uk) Kew Bridge rail.