Museums

Musical Museum

Self-playing pianos, orchestrions and a Wurlitzer cinema organ that rises from the floor, demonstrated rather than displayed, in Brentford.

Frank Holland began collecting self-playing instruments when the rest of the world was throwing them away, and opened his museum in a disused church in Brentford in 1963; in 2007 it moved into a purpose-built home on the High Street, with a concert hall for 250. The collection is the machinery of music before recording made it unnecessary: barrel organs and music boxes, player pianos worked by pedals, orchestrions that stand in for a whole band, a violin that plays itself, and the reproducing pianos of the 1910s and 1920s that replay rolls cut by Rachmaninoff, Gershwin and Paderewski with every hesitation of the original hand, from a library of more than twenty thousand rolls. The Mighty Wurlitzer, built for the Regal cinema in Kingston to accompany silent films, rises out of the floor of the hall. None of it means much silent, which is why the volunteers demonstrate as they go, and why the concerts and silent-film nights are the best way in.

Where

399 Brentford High Street, TW8 0DU

Nearest station

Kew Bridge · 6 min walk

Hours

NearbyMuseums

• London Museum of Water & Steam3 min walk
• Kew Palace6 min walk
• The National Archives15 min walk

NearbyOther Categories

• The Original Maids of HonourBreakfast & Brunch11 min walk
• Strand-on-the-GreenBeautiful Streets12 min walk
• Royal Botanic Gardens, KewWhat’s On13 min walk

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