8 Best Museums In Staffordshire

Potteries Museum & Art Gallery, because a mixed civic collection gives a child somewhere else to go when the ceramics stop working, and they will stop working. A museum built around one firm asks for an interest you cannot manufacture in a child on the day. World of Wedgwood does carry an outdoor flag alongside the indoor one, which softens that a little if the weather is kind. Dudson Museum is the specialist's choice and a short visit at any age.

Our records file it under parks and playgrounds and mark outdoor space rather than indoor, so it behaves like grounds rather than galleries. It is quiet and deliberate, and the visit works to the extent that a child is old enough to be told what they are looking at and why it is there. Younger ones will read it as a large lawn, which is not a disaster but is not the point either. No other entry in the eight scores higher, and none is worse suited to rain.

Attention to machinery, mostly. A pumping station kept as a museum is a building full of engineering at a scale you stand next to, and the appeal is size and noise rather than the labels beside it. That lands hard with some children and not at all with others, and you probably already know which yours is. Whether anything is running on the day you go changes the visit considerably, so it is worth finding out first.

It is filed under sightseeing rather than museums and our record marks outdoor space for it, so the sensible way to use it is as part of a day spent walking round the city rather than as the plan for a wet afternoon. Heritage centres tend to be short, focused and tied to the streets outside the door, which makes them a good half-hour when you are already there and a thin reason to drive anywhere on their own.