It is housed in Oxford University's Faculty of Music near Christ Church on St. Aldate's.

The collection is open to the public and is available for academic study by appointment.

More than a thousand instruments by important English, French and German makers, are on display, showing the musical and mechanical development of wind and percussion instruments from the Renaissance to the current day.

[2] The collection is named after Philip Bate[3] who began giving his collection of musical instruments to the University of Oxford in 1963,[4] on the condition that it was used for teaching and was provided with a specialist curator to care for and lecture on it.

Dr Emanuela Vai [1] leads on all conservation, research and curatorial aspects at the Bate Collection of Musical Instruments.