Kendal Museum — Attraction in Kendal

We had an interesting visit at the museum today. The gentleman who greeted us was wonderful, very kind, insightful and polite. The directions for the museums Covid process was clearly given and easy to follow. The museum itself however was a bit of a disappointment.

The building is lovely, looks prestigious and we were expecting the same from inside. We were however met with a messy unclear and mismatched exhibition that made little to no sense. Most of the information sheets have been removed (because of Covid) and we were directed to the website to get the information for each exhibit.

The website address was very long and took time to find, then the list of information for each exhibit was difficult to locate and not properly set out for mobile devices. Generally this whole process was difficult and we couldn't imagine anyone of an older generation being able to do this. The process could have been made much easier with the Use of QR codes, that you could just scan with your camera... there was still some displays with the information sheets and on many of these there were spelling and grammatical errors, we just expected better from a museum.

We were originally directed to the museum after a visit from the kendal Castle audio tour. We were expecting there to be more information about the local history and the castle, all that we found was one cabinet and one or two other small displays, which is a shame. With such a wealth of local history we were expecting far more about this and less of a random assortment.

There are some wonderfully interesting items in the building which are definitely worth a look. So please do give it a go to support them so they can look at improving the place,

We would however stay away from the wildlife section off the museum, this was more of a horror scene rather than informative. This exhibit is filled with taxidermy, and frankly is disturbing. There is too much of it in such a small area and it feels like you are being watched by dead eyes in all directions. We spent less that 5 minutes in this room before leaving.

In short its worth a visit however the museum could do with improvements in the following areas in my opinion.

Make your interactive website access easier, Give the museum more of a structure with clearer labels and information. Get rid of your hand written tags in favor of typed tags, Check your spelling on the information. Get more interesting...

A gem of a place. Unassuming as any other museum in a wee town. Yet it has received collections from around the area and has a wealth of display items.

A little of everything you'd want. Roman; Egyptian; stone age; bronze age; viking; Victorian. Items from the local castle, or dug from other parts of the locality. And examples from across the world, mostly donated by local collectors (or their decenrants who didn't know what to do with his sailing ship model that's 6 feet long).

Great collection of Geology samples. Local fossils and rock samples from all over the world.

Amazing menagerie of taxidermy. A great lesson in the diversity of animal life. It's not every day you glance up to see a giraffe looking directly down at you. A few extinct oddities e.g. Thylacine and Dodo sitting calmly amongst the crowd.

Definitely...

They should rename this museum to the taxidermist museum as there is a heck of a lot of stuffed animals, insects shown on the lower ground floor. Two of the three floors are accessible to wheelchairs users. The entrance fees are reasonable at £5 per adult and can be used as a year pass should you wish to torment your vegetarian friends on return visits. There is a small cafe and gifts shop plus an accessible WC. Parking is paid and displayed at £2 for 3 hours. The room with all the different rock samples was my highlight but quite a tight squeeze for wheelchair users. Also, if I remember correctly, the Kendal Museum is one of the oldest...