Clitheroe Castle Museum

We have been to Clitheroe many times. We’ve visited for the day and we’ve camped nearby. We love its market, the eateries and the milkshake shop, but we hadn’t ever been to Clitheroe Castle until last week.

We arrived around 20 minutes before the museum opened so before we went in we explored the keep. The keep itself is free to take a look around. It isn’t accessible for strollers or wheelchairs due to the steps, but the rest of the museum is fine.

One thing I would recommend is that you prepare for how windy it is up there! Certainly don’t wear a loose fitting hat or you’ll be watching it fly away before you know it.

 

Robot and I talked about the materials used to build the castle, and discussed how old we thought it might be. We wondered what life was like for the people who lived there, and who they actually were!

Entry to the museum is a very reasonable £4.30 per adult, £3.20 for concessions and children under 18 go free when with an adult. Clitheroe Museum is open Monday to Sunday, 12 noon until 4pm. check their website for more information on those details.

The views from the Keep are lovely – we spotted Pendle Hill and we looked around for houses, signs of industry and the church.

I suppose it’s actually quite high when you’re up there! You need to walk up a hill to get to the castle anyway, and then there are the steps to the Keep too.

At the foot of the Keep is a kind of sensory garden. It looked to me as though it could do with a little bit of TLC, but that may be something that’s planned ready for the tourist season of 2018. Here there were some sound pipes, which Robot enjoyed, and some other equipment such as a periscope/telescope/microscope combo but we couldn’t get it to work properly. This area could potentially be a really fun place and I hope they are able to fix the broken equipment sometime.

We’d already had a really interesting time before we went into the museum so I was really looking forward to finding out more on the local heritage and the castle’s history.

The staff on the reception desk were really lovely and helpful. They gave Robot some paper and a pencil to mark off the bunnies he needed to spot on the way around the museum. It was Easter, so they were running a competition for children.

Inside the museum there was so much more than I’d expected. Robot and I had just done some work on the Mesozoic Era so this was a great opportunity to test our knowledge. (There’s a brilliant free and interactive dinosaur timeline here)

Without sharing too much and spoiling anyone’s potential visit to Clitheroe Museum, I’ll just say that it was incredibly informative. Fantastic for learning about local history if you’re from the area, but brilliantly engaging no matter where you’re from.

There are display cabinets full of interesting displays, and every wall is filled with information or something great to look at. There are also interactive displays such as the one above. This one looked at wildlife habitat – we had been looking through binoculars at Lapwings that very morning so Robot was very proud of his newfound knowledge!

The screen above played a video which talked about Clitheroe Castle, its history, inhabitants and how they lived. It was really very interesting and I would definitely suggest taking the time to watch it as you make your way through the exhibitions.

We also did some craft activities as we walked through the museum (nominal additional charge) and there was a restored kitchen complete with dolly tub and dolly.

We had a brilliant afternoon at Clitheroe Castle and I recommend it to anyone. There was a school group there on the day we visited – Clitheroe Castle offer educational sessions, details of which can be found on their website. Also, The Atrium Cafe within the castle grounds was set up for a wedding as we walked through and it looked lovely – certainly a memorable setting!