9 Best Museums In Northamptonshire

Silverstone Museum is the obvious one and the only entry here big enough to swallow most of a day. After it the aviation pair take over, and Irchester Narrow Gauge Railway Museum covers the third kind of machine. These are the entries where a child who cares about how things move stays occupied without a parent having to do any of the work, which a general town collection rarely manages on the same subject.

Only if the town is already on your route. Towcester Museum and Wellingborough Museum are half-hour places, and half an hour is plenty when it slots between lunch and the drive home. Build a whole outing round one and somebody will ask what happens next before you have left the first room. The advantage of that scale is that a dull one takes almost nothing out of the day. Arrive with modest hopes, talk to whoever is on the desk, and these land better than their size suggests.

Honestly, not much that is designed for them. This is a list of collections rather than activity centres, and a four-year-old in a room of cases is a countdown. The aviation entries are the best of a thin field, because a child that age responds to something big enough to stand under whether or not they know what it is. Keep the visit to half an hour, take the buggy, and pair it with a park rather than another museum.

It varies, and it is worth checking rather than assuming. Four of the nine record outdoor space, including Sywell Aviation Museum and Irchester Narrow Gauge Railway Museum, and for that sort of collection it usually means larger exhibits parked outside rather than a garden to sit in. That matters for a wet day, because part of the visit may be standing in it. The venue's own page will tell you what is under cover.