Whitby Museum — Attraction in Whitby

Set in Pannett Park, a pretty little park close to Whitby's harbour and train station this is a great museum. It has a lot packed into its attractive interior. The entrance leads initially to a free art gallery and then the art gallery's gift shop. After the gallery gift shop is the museum ticket entrance and gift shop and museum. Tickets are annual passes and very reasonably priced for a museum with such a wide variety of exhibits. Stairs/lift lead to toilets and a tea room and a temporary exhibition section which currently exhibits 20th century wedding dresses. Rather like a sailor of old would bring all manner of objects home with him, this museum houses and an extraordinary variety of artefacts from far-flung places. There are gorgeous pieces of Japanese arms/armour, whilst carved wooden pieces from India/Africa rub shoulders with coral exhibits, models of all sorts and various silver/pewter or pottery objects from the Far East/Middle East or Russia etc.

There are fossils, geological displays, beautiful or curious jet pieces. And ornate industrial era hair ornaments and personal items rub shoulders with scary looking medical instruments and a barometer based on the electro magnetic response of leeches.

Displays of ancient bronze/iron age and Roman finds are found close by curious looking toys and horse gear or industrial machinery models. Darker themed displays touch upon superstition, burglary, smuggling, piracy and greed. Some stories are told by the displays, e.g. a local tale of 19th century community discord pertaining to public rights of way, or exhibits of local craftsmanship and industry. Well...

Great collection, but curation could be improved. Amazing collection of fossils but display cases could have been more clearly organised by either region or period.

Rest of collection impressive but rather eclectic, with a few steps taking you from Anglo saxon pins to model boats. Signage for many items was either unclear or could have provided further background information. One crowning interest The Hand of Glory was surprisingly difficult to locate and reading about it required some serious squatting.

Clearer signposting of various sections would also help visitors to understand what they're looking at in each area. As the collection is mostly housed in a singular hall it makes it difficult without clear signage to know where each section begins and ends.

Anniversary video in exhibition room was interesting but expressed some antiquated views. Suggestions that there was 'nothing they could do' about repatriating items and that they contacted other museums abroad but only to check their interpretation of artifacts showed a jaw dropping arrogance in my opinion. One curator saying they think the museum should focus on Whitby was thrown out in a further clip when discussing Canadian totem poles and Japanese...

One of the best small museums in the UK. It has an excellent collection of pacific artefacts and weapons from Australia, Tonga, New Zeland, Fiji, and the Solomon islands just to name a few. The best collection of model boats i have ever seen from square rigged tall dhips made from bone and walrus tusk circa 1790s to more modern fishing vessels. An amazing display of fossils and Whitby jet. I would give it 5 stars but it did have a few issues. There were some entirely redundant displays like a collection of average cameras, toys and just irrelevant junk. I can see that they are trying to be two things at once. A museum that educates the locals about the past and a museum that displays the history of Whitby to the world. They should concentrate on the latter. Quite a lots of the items like displays of clubs on the walls were not described and did not have providence. This is very important as the collection is of a high quality and some of the items are rare and unique. The narwhal items were amazing including a full skeleton and several tusks over 2 meters long. The whaling displays were...