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9 Best Museums In Leicestershire
Once the clocks go back, the question stops being which Leicestershire museum is best and becomes which one still works at four in the afternoon with the light gone. Nine are recorded. Only National Space Centre is large enough to swallow most of a day, which is why it fills the moment bad weather removes every other option. Van Gogh Immersive Experience Leicester works on a different scale, a room to sit in rather than a building to explore. Smaller by design are Melton Carnegie Museum, Charnwood Museum, Ashby de la Zouch Museum and Harborough Museum. Their size is the point in winter: two short stops fit into what light you have, where one long march does not.
Top museums in Leicestershire
Showing 1–9 of 9
MuseumsMelton Carnegie Museum
MuseumsVan Gogh Immersive Experience Leicester
Children's FarmsStonehurst Family Farm and Museum
MuseumsHarborough Museum
MuseumsCharnwood Museum
MuseumsAshby de la Zouch Museum
SightseeingFoxton Canal Museum
MuseumsNational Space Centre
MuseumsJewry Wall Museum
Read the listing properly before committing a dark, wet Saturday to it. Two entries are only half museum: Stonehurst Family Farm and Museum sits in our data as a farm, Foxton Canal Museum as sightseeing, and with both the good part happens outdoors. Wonderful in June. A very different proposition in a cold January.
Museums in Leicestershire: FAQs
Two hours of light left. What fits?
One of the town museums. They are sized for a short visit and nobody feels short-changed leaving after an hour, which is exactly the wrong feeling to have at a large site you went to some trouble to reach. Save the bigger day out for a morning start, when you have the whole of the light ahead of you rather than the last of it.
Which one keeps an older child interested?
National Space Centre carries the strongest pull for children who have started to find local history slow going, because scale and hardware do work that display cases cannot. Van Gogh Immersive Experience Leicester is worth considering for a different sort of child, the one who will sit and look, though it asks for a settled mood rather than a restless one.
Are the smaller museums a wasted trip in winter?
Not at all, as long as you match the visit to the length of the place. A small local museum gives a child a manageable amount to take in and somebody behind the desk with time to talk, and that combination beats a huge hall on an afternoon when everybody is already tired. Plan a second stop nearby rather than stretching one out.
How much of a difference does half term make?
A large one, in both directions. Family activity programmes cluster in school holidays, which is when the smaller places are at their liveliest and the bigger ones at their busiest. Outside those weeks a town museum can be almost empty, which suits a shy child and suits a parent who wants to read a caption without being nudged along.