Museums in Yorkshire

Yorkshire is home to some fantastic museums. There are six National museums in Yorkshire and host of other highly rated, informative and fun museums to visit.

Free To Visit Museums in Yorkshire

Great days out at fabulous free to visit museums across Yorkshire, including many of Yorkshire's National Museums.

Royal Armouries

The Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds is home to the national collection of arms and armour. Visitors can explore arms and armour from across the world and throughout time in six themed galleries.

Eureka Museum

Eureka! The National Children's Museum is an interactive educational museum for children in Halifax, West Yorkshire, England, with a focus on learning through play.

Hull Maritime Museum

Discover the whaler’s craft of Scrimshaw and see a full sized whale skeleton, alongside superb ship models and stunning artefacts from Hull's whaling, fishing and merchant trade.

Experience Barnsley Musuem & Discovery Centre

Experience Barnsley Museum and Discovery Centre is dedicated to the history and people of Barnsley. Unique, hands-on and interactive exhibits encourage visitors to explore the people and places of Barnsley, ultimately leading them to discover a town with amazing stories and a rich and diverse heritage.

National Science & Media Museum

Explore the science and culture of sound and light technology on our lives over eight floors of exhibits, including the wonderfully fun WonderLab and three cinemas.

Jorvik Viking Centre

The Jorvik Centre is a must-see attraction in York created on the actual site of an archaeological dig revealed York's past history.

Warley Museum

The Warley Museum is located in Warely Village, near Halifax, and is possibly the smallest museum in the world - it's located in a decommissionedred telephone box.

Eden Camp

Experience the sights, sounds and smells of life on the Home Front and the Front Line, all set in the buildings and grounds of an original World War 2 Prisoner of War Camp.

Kelham Island Museum

Located in one of the city’s oldest industrial districts, the museum stands on a man-made island over 900 years old. Kelham Island Museum was opened in 1982 to house the objects, pictures and archive material representing Sheffield’s industrial story.

Ripon Workhouse Museum

The grim atmosphere of the Workhouse Museum has been carefully maintained in order to give visitors a sense of what life in a Victorian Workhouse could have been.

Prison and Police Museum

Enter the grim prison with whitewashed cells and barred windows. On the ground floor is a history of policing in Yorkshire from the Anglo-Saxons to the formation of professional policing.

Courthouse Museum

Discover what being the Liberty of Ripon meant at the Courthouse Museum and learn about what happened in a courtroom in the 1800s. Experience standing in the dock and waiting for your sentence!

Ryedale Folk Museum

Ryedale Folk Museum in the North York Moors is an open-air museum with collections in historic buildings on rural local life from Iron Age to 1950s.

Craven Museum

Craven Museum & Gallery is curently closed while a complete renovation is taking place. The museum depicts life in Craven from the prehistoric times to the modern day.

Cliffe Castle Museum

Visitors, to Cliffe Castle Museum, can see sparkling Victorian rooms and furniture, paintings, and decorative art. Special galleries deal with natural history, archaeology and social history, all of which can be seen on your visit along with the internationally important display of stained glass by Morris and Co. The Castle also hosts changing exhibitions from our collections and the community.

Bradford Industrial Museum

Bradford's Industrial Museum has permanent displays of textile machinery, steam power, engineering, printing machinery and motor vehicles, along with an exciting exhibitions programme.

Bolling Hall

With parts of the building dating from the Medieval, Bolling Hall is a rambling mixture of styles with every nook and cranny packed with history. Rooms are furnished and decorated to give an accurate taste of life at different periods of the house's history, and the fascinating furniture on display includes a superb bed made for Harewood House by Thomas Chippendale.

World of Herriot

you’ve probably read his books or watched All Creatures Great and Small, or maybe you’ve heard of James Herriot on the TV series The Yorkshire Vet. Well why not come and see where James Herriot, the world’s most famous vet, lived, worked and wrote his incredibly successful series of books based on his experiences as a young North Yorkshire vet.

York Chocolate Story

Discover York's fascinating history with chocolate, learn why we love chocolate so much, have a go at making your own and watch the experts.

Bronte Parsonage Museum

The Bronte Parsonage was the family home of the Bronte sisters, the building has been restored and is home to the largest collection of Bronte sisters writings, manuscripts and letters.

Abbey House Museum

A family-friendly museum exploring social history and childhood in Victorian era Leeds. Be transported back to the 19th century and stroll the Victorian streets with the authentically recreated shops, pub and houses.

Leeds Industrial Museum

Explore the spaces around the mill and find out what there is to see on your visit to Leeds Industrial Museum. Leeds Industrial Museum has changing exhibitions which are inspired by a theme from the museum’s collection, along with exciting events running throughout the year.

Thwaite Watermill

Discover the charm of Thwaite Watermill, set on an island of its very own, hidden away in the south of Leeds. Sandwiched in between the Leeds and Liverpool Canal and the River Aire, this beautiful heritage site has much to explore.

Yorkshire Air Museum

Experience more than a century of aviation, all in one historic location. Yorkshire’s leading aviation history destination. Indoor and Outoor Exhibitions.

Yorkshire Museum of Farming at Murton Park

The Yorkshire Museum of Farming is dedicated to the preservation of the history of farming in Yorkshire and further afield. Our museum is located at Murton Park, near the village of Murton which lies just outside York. Murton Park is also home to the Danelaw Centre for Living History and The Derwent Valley Light Railway.

Yorkshire Museum

The Yorkshire Museum was one of the earliest purpose-built museums in the country. Today the museum houses galleries showcasing some of Britain’s finest archaeological treasures from the city’s Roman, Viking and medieval past as well as a nationally significant natural science collection, some of which is on show in Yorkshire’s Jurassic World.

York Castle Museum

Welcome to the award-winning York Castle Museum - come and immerse yourself in over 400 years of York's past. Come and see hundreds of years of York’s history in one place – from recreated Jacobean dining rooms to infamous Victorian criminals and all the way to the Space Age and the swinging Sixties.

Thackray Museum of Medicine

Follow the story of medicine, wander through the grimy streets of Victorian Leeds, watch gruesome operations taking place in our 19th-century operating theatre, visit a seventies-style sexual health clinic, chart how well the world responds to crisis, and discover the medical innovations that changed the world.

National Coal Mining Museum For England

The National Coal Mining Musuem for England preserves the heritage of the coal mining industry through informative and fun interactive exhibits. The museum offers indoor, outdoor and underground areas to explore.

Dinostar - Dinosaur Experience

Visit Dinostar - Hull's Dinosaur Experience - the exciting, interactive dinosaur museum. A children's museum with dinosaurs! Highlights include a Tyrannosaurus rex skull, Triceratops bones you can touch and our interactive Sand Box where you can build a volcano!

Tolson Museum

A vivid and intriguing picture of the area and its people, from pre-history to present day, revealed through unique collections. From Roman finds to textiles, birds to transport, Tolson is a treasure house of the fascinating, the curious and the amazing.

Swaledale Museum

The Museum specialises in collecting objects and archives from Swaledale and Arkengarthdale. The main focus is on lead mining and the culture and community this industry created, from geological specimens, prehistoric finds, and tools connected with lead mining, to local farming and crafts.

Bagshaw Museum

Explore the world at Bagshaw Museum! A Victorian former mill owner's house set in 36 acres of parkland and ancient woodland, the museum displays a wide range of unusual and exciting collections from around the globe.

Rotunda Museum

Eureka! Opened in 1829, the Rotunda Museum is one of the world’s first purpose-built museums and was built to a design suggested by William ‘Strata’ Smith, known as the father of English Geology. The interior, with its fascinating Georgian gallery, features a frieze showing the geology of the local coastline designed by Smith’s nephew, John Phillips

Cannon Museum Hall and Gardens

The rooms at the Museum include both historic room settings and gallery displays of artworks spanning the centuries. We are also delighted to host ‘A Family of Artists’ exhibition with the De Morgan Foundation, featuring paintings by Evelyn De Morgan and ceramics by her husband William De Morgan.

Bankfield Museum

A Museum since 1887, Bankfield tells the story of Halifax and Calderdale, using its rich and diverse collections. Bankfield Museum's displays cover local history, costume, art, toys, military history, jewellery and textiles from around the world. We also host temporary exhibitions including costume, embroidery, quilting, textile art, paintings and photography.

Captain Cook Museum

The Museum is in an historic building on the harbourside, Walker's House. In 1746 James Cook, then aged seventeen, came here to be apprenticed to Captain John Walker. A beautiful 17th century house, this is the sole surviving building which can with certainty be connected to Cook.

York Dungeon

2000 years of history are brought to horrible life at the York Dungeon; an essential part of the complete York experience. Immersive sets, incredible actors and unique stories allow you to see, hear, smell and feel York's darkest history.

Hands on Museum Hull

The Hands on History Museum, in the old Grammar School where William Wilberforce studied, houses the story of Hull and its people. Entry to the museum is free.

Horse and Carriage at hulls strretlife museum

Streetlife Museum

Climb aboard at the Streetlife Museum of Transport and enjoy all the sights, sounds and smells of the past. Experience 200 years of transport history as you walk down a 1940’s high street, board a tram or enjoy the pleasures of our carriage ride.

Wilberforce Museum

Wilberforce House is the birthplace of William Wilberforce, famous campaigner against the slave trade. Admission to Wilberforce House is free. The museum tells the story of the transatlantic slave trade and its abolition, as well as dealing with contemporary slavery

Hull and East Riding Museum

Walk through an Iron Age village, enter a Roman bath house and look at the stunning mosaics. Discover a mysterious crew of wooden warriors and see our medieval treasures!

Peace Museum

The Peace Museum explores the history and the often untold stories of peace, peacemakers, social reform and peace movements. It is unique in that it is the only accredited museum of its kind in the UK.

Cleveland Ironstone Mining Museum

On August 7th, 1848, the first mine in Cleveland opened in Skinningrove. It was the first of 83 ironstone mines in the region. Cleveland Ironstone Mining Museum is an independent museum celebrating the heritage of the ironstone mining industry.

Malton Museum

Malton Museum’s collection also features objects relating to the area’s prehistoric past, most especially a display of Roman artefacts, as well as items belonging to more recent periods in history, including artifacts connected with horse racing, brewing and other aspects of local life.

National Emergency Services Museum

The National Emergency Services Museum is housed in a unique Victorian combined Police, Fire and Ambulance station in Sheffield City Centre. With over a million items in the collection and over 60 vehicles on-site we tell the stories of the Emergency Services and society through dynamic, interactive and hands-on displays, exhibitions and events.

York Army Museum

York Army Museum is home to the collections of the Royal Dragoon Guards and the Prince of Wales’s Own Regiment of Yorkshire. Through these we tell the story of the British Army and its importance for Yorkshire in the last 300 years. Following a recent refurbishment, York Army Museum is now open as an exciting and engaging visitor attraction, with something to offer for all ages.

Beck Isle Museum

Beck Isle Museum of Rural Life is a social history museum in Pickering. The museum features period business displays including the shops of a barber, blacksmith, chemist, cobbler, cooper, printer, gentleman's draper, dairy and hardware store

Historic police car and man in historis police uniform

Bradford Police Museum

The museum situated on the site of the original 19th century police station in City Hall and which was operational between 1874 and 1974 brings together exhibits, documents and memorabilia relating to the history of policing from the inception of the Bradford Borough Police force in the mid-19th century to the present day.

Danum Gallery, Library and Museum

The Danum Gallery, Library and Museum is packed with fascinating collections. It is home to the Art Gallery full of impressive works some loaned from the likes of the British Museum. The King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry Museum and the Rail Heritage Centre showcasing memorabilia from the Doncaster Grammar School Railway Collection and two locomotive engines - No.251 and Green Arrow

Bedale Museum

Bedale Museum was founded in 1959 and is situated in Bedale Hall, a magnificent 18th century Georgian building standing proud in its own parkland at the top of the High Street. The collection consists of exhibits depicting the social history of Bedale and the surrounding villages

Clifton Museum

The Museum highlights the history of the borough in a way that appeals to all ages and helps to bring both our lives, and those of our ancestors into sharp focus. Encounter the weird and wonderful as you discover the remarkable collections and exhibits.

Whitby Museum

An independent Victorian museum full of amazing treasures. Explore stunning collections of local fossils, natural history, model ships, carved jet, toys, costumes and social history. There are artefacts of the famous whaling family, the Scoresbys and also the explorer Captain Cook.

Shepherds Wheel

Set in the picturesque valley of the Porter Brook, Shepherd Wheel is a unique working example of Sheffield's knife grinding industry. It was one of many small water-powered grinding workshops along Sheffield's rivers and is the earliest complete example of this industry with evidence dating it back to the 1500s.

Calderdale Industrial Museum

The museum houses a special collection representing the wide variety of industries that developed in Calderdale in the last 250 years. The working exhibits can’t fail to evoke the spirit of the Industrial Revolution. Suitable for all, both young and old !

National Videogame Museum

The UK’s national cultural centre for videogames. Here, you can explore how they are made, who makes them, and even why they are made. You can play them and make them. You can attend workshops to learn how they are made. You can discover careers within the UK’s fastest growing creative industry.