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13 Best Museums In West Sussex
Thirteen records, and two of them are called Wings. Wings Aviation Museum and Wings Museum read like one place entered twice, so twelve distinct museums is the safer figure to plan around. Aircraft dominate what remains: add Tangmere Military Aviation Museum and three of the thirteen records deal with flying. Two entries work nothing like a gallery. Weald and Downland Living Museum and Amberley Museum and Heritage Centre are site museums, marked for outdoor space alongside indoor, and at both you walk from one building to the next. Horsham Museum and Art Gallery, Bognor Museum and Bignor Roman Villa are the smaller, quicker stops.
Top museums in West Sussex
Showing 1–12 of 13
MuseumsTangmere Military Aviation Museum
MuseumsWings Aviation Museum
MuseumsWeald and Downland Living Museum
MuseumsWings Museum
MuseumsAmberley Museum and Heritage Centre
MuseumsHorsham Museum and Art Gallery
MuseumsBignor Roman Villa
MuseumsBognor Museum
MuseumsFishbourne Roman Palace
MuseumsHigh Salvington Windmill
MuseumsThe Novium
MuseumsLittlehampton Museum
Nothing on this list sits beside anything else, so pick one and build the day on it; the others will keep. The aviation museums blur if you take them in succession, and each of the two site museums will absorb everything you give it. Admission is unrecorded against ten of the thirteen in our data, which records an absence of information and nothing more, so let each museum tell you itself what it asks at the door.
Museums in West Sussex: FAQs
Why do two entries have almost the same name?
Because the data has almost certainly listed one museum twice under slightly different names. That matters for planning, since a list of thirteen sounds like a fortnight of outings and twelve distinct places is nearer the truth. It also means you should look up whichever of the two you intend to visit and confirm the address before travelling; treating them as two separate outings is how a Saturday gets wasted.
Which of these are any good when the sun finally appears?
Six entries in thirteen show outdoor space, and the pair that matter most are Weald and Downland Living Museum and Amberley Museum and Heritage Centre. Both spread over open ground, so the visit becomes a walk with buildings to duck into along it. Bignor Roman Villa and Tangmere Military Aviation Museum also carry the outdoor flag. On a bright day those four give children somewhere to move; the town collections do not.
Our child has no interest in aeroplanes. What is left?
Rather more than the aviation weighting suggests. Bignor Roman Villa puts mosaics under cover and asks nothing of a child except to look down. Weald and Downland Living Museum is buildings you walk into, not objects behind glass. Horsham Museum and Art Gallery and Bognor Museum are town collections, short by nature, and short is the correct ambition with a child who has already decided museums are dull.
Is it sensible to line up two of these on one trip?
Only the smaller pair. Two town museums in an afternoon is comfortable, because each is a room-by-room visit and not a day out. Adding either site museum to anything else does not work; they expand to fill whatever time you hand them. Bear in mind too that these thirteen are spread right across the county with no two sharing a town, so a second stop usually costs more travelling than it is worth.