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12 Best Museums In Lancashire
What you should be ready for at a Lancashire museum varies more than the category heading suggests. Queen Street Mill Textile Museum is a working mill, and working machinery is loud in a way that genuinely upsets some small children and delights others. The Amazing Novelty-Orium and Mechanical Museum is hands-on and filed under indoor play for good reason. Lancaster Maritime Museum and Fleetwood Museum are quieter, case-and-label places where a child who can read gets more out of it than one who cannot. All twelve are flagged as indoor.
Top museums in Lancashire
Showing 1–12 of 12
Indoor PlayThe Amazing Novelty-Orium and Mechanical Museum
MuseumsQueen Street Mill Textile Museum
MuseumsFleetwood Museum
MuseumsLancashire Infantry Museum
SightseeingTowneley Hall Museum
MuseumsHarris Museum, Art Gallery and Library
MuseumsLancaster Maritime Museum
MuseumsThe Whitaker
MuseumsClitheroe Castle Museum
MuseumsLancaster City Museum
MuseumsShowtown Blackpool
SightseeingRipley's Believe It Or Not! Blackpool
Sound, not subject, is the thing to check before you go with an under-five. A pair of ear defenders turns a hard visit at a mill or an engine house into an exciting one. For the quieter museums the equivalent preparation is a trail sheet, which most sites will hand you if you ask at the desk.
Museums in Lancashire: FAQs
Which of the twelve lets children handle things?
The Amazing Novelty-Orium and Mechanical Museum carries an indoor-play category alongside its museum listing, which tells you how it behaves: machines to work, buttons to press and no expectation of silence. That suits roughly three to ten. Traditional collections vary enormously on this point, so if handling matters to your child, ask at the desk whether there is a family trail or a handling table.
Do the mill and industrial sites suit young children?
They suit confident ones very well and nervous ones badly, and the difference is noise. A running loom floor is loud, hot and vibrating, which is thrilling at seven and overwhelming at two. Demonstrations usually run to a timetable, so you can arrange to be somewhere else during them if that is safer. Ear defenders in the bag do more good than anything else you could pack.
What works for a mixed group of ages?
The release valve is a site with grounds, and five of the twelve are marked with outdoor space as well as in. At Towneley Hall Museum and at The Whitaker a park or garden sits beside the collection, so one adult can walk a restless four-year-old out of the door while the older children finish. That option is worth more on the day than any amount of exhibit quality.
Is a regimental or local history museum too dry for children?
Not inevitably, but it needs framing. Give a child one thing to hunt for — an object, a name, a question with an answer somewhere in the room — and Lancashire Infantry Museum or Harris Museum, Art Gallery and Library repays it. Turned loose with no purpose, most children under ten will walk the rooms in six minutes. Ten minutes of preparation in the car changes the visit completely.