Category × County
14 Best Museums In Dorset
What Dorset is made of decides what its museums are about. The coast is fossil country and quarry country, so Lyme Regis Museum and Portland Museum deal in stone and what is found in it. The heaths inland were handed to the army, which is why The Tank Museum stands where it does and why The Keep Military Museum sits at Dorchester. The harbour at Weymouth was worth defending, hence Nothe Fort on the headland above it and Weymouth Museum in the town below. Fourteen museums, thirteen of them flagged indoor, and hardly one of them arbitrary.
Top museums in Dorset
Showing 1–12 of 14
MuseumsThe Tank Museum
MuseumsThe Keep Military Museum
SightseeingNothe Fort
MuseumsPortland Museum
MuseumsWeymouth Museum
MuseumsBournemouth Aviation Museum
MuseumsLyme Regis Museum
MuseumsGold Hill Museum and Garden
MuseumsPoole Museum and Scaplens Court museum
MuseumsDorset Museum & Art Gallery
MuseumsModel Town at Wimborne Minster
MuseumsDorset Teddy Bear Museum
The spread is geographic as much as thematic, and this county is long from end to end, so choose a part of it rather than trying to link two. West along the coast means fossils and harbours; the middle means the army and the county town; the east brings you to Bournemouth Aviation Museum. Outdoor space is recorded at six sites, Nothe Fort and Gold Hill Museum and Garden among them, which means bright weather need not rule this category out.
Museums in Dorset: FAQs
If we can only do one, which is it?
The Tank Museum is the biggest draw on this list and the one built to hold a family for a long stretch rather than an hour, which makes it the safe answer for a full day out. It suits children who like machinery on a scale they can stand next to. If that leaves anyone cold, the coastal museums are the better bet, though they work best slotted into a day rather than carrying one.
Do the fossil museums connect with the beach?
Directly, and that pairing is the best thing this county's museums offer. Lyme Regis Museum deals with the geology of the shore right outside it, so an hour inside gives a child the vocabulary and the expectations for what they then pick up on the beach. Done in that order the museum stops being a wet-weather substitute and becomes the useful half of a day that everyone remembers for the finding rather than the reading.
Is Nothe Fort a museum or a fort?
Filed under sightseeing rather than museums, it is a fort above the harbour with both indoor and outdoor space flagged, so the visit involves walls, positions and views as much as displays. That mix works well with children who go quiet in a gallery, because there is somewhere to walk and something to look out at between the exhibits. Weather therefore shapes part of the visit, which is not true of the plainer indoor entries on this list.
What about a child who dislikes museums on principle?
Pick the ones where the objects are large or the site is interesting in itself, and keep the visit short. Big machinery, a fort you can walk round, or a garden attached to the building all give a reluctant child somewhere to be that is not a display case. Gold Hill Museum and Garden carries an outdoor flag on that basis. Agree a finish time on arrival, stick to it, and they will be far more willing next time.