The five best Lake District museums – recommended by a historian

Most people come to the Lake District seeking the great outdoors. Boating, camping and hiking are a big part of the national park’s appeal. But indoor attractions matter here, too. This is one of the wettest parts of Britain, after all, and when the rain stops play, the region’s museums offer plenty to explore.

Museums have existed in the Lake District almost as long as tourism itself. In 1781, an enterprising local guide named Peter Crosthwaite opened one in Keswick. His collection included fossils, minerals and other curiosities gathered from the surrounding fells and farther afield. The place proved a hit with visitors. More than 1,500 people called in 1783 alone.

Other museums soon followed. Another local guide, Thomas Hutton, opened a rival establishment in Keswick in 1786. Ten years later, William Todhunter started a similar attraction in Kendal. So, by the end of the 1700s, something like a small museum network had begun to bud.

Today, the Lake District boasts dozens of museums, and they’re much more than just tourist attractions. Many exist as much for their local communities. Together, they wonderful places to explore the patchwork of ideas, events and people who’ve shaped this remarkable corner of northern England.

The following five Lake District museums offer especially rewarding shelter on damp days.

1. Keswick Museum and Art Gallery

Not far from the site where Crosthwaite set up shop, you’ll find Keswick Museum and Art Gallery. Established in 1873, it reflects the Victorian belief that museums should inform, educate and entertain. Around the galleries you’ll spy everything from prehistoric tools to taxidermied animals to paintings inspired by the local landscape.

Many of the displays explore the area’s industrial history, including the Keswick School for the Industrial Arts. There’s also plenty about the local pencil industry, which once supplied artists around the world. Collectively, the 15,000 objects the museum holds reflect life in the Keswick area, from prehistory to the present.

2. Armitt Museum and Library

Further south, in Ambleside, the Armitt Museum and Library combines museum, gallery and research library under one roof. Opened in 1912, its collections attest to the region’s long tradition of local scholarship, ranging from geology and archaeology to art and literature. It also holds items connected with Lake District luminaries like authors Alfred Wainwright and Beatrix Potter.

Potter’s botanical and mycological drawings form one of the collection’s highlights. Precise and closely observed, they reveal her artistic skill as well as her deep interest in local plants and fungi. The Armitt’s library also holds hundreds of rare books and manuscripts relating to the region’s history.

3. Ruskin Museum

Further west, in Coniston, you’ll find the Ruskin Museum, which also reveals the links between art, industry and landscape. The museum was founded in 1901 in memory of John Ruskin, the influential art critic, social thinker and eccentric who spent his final years nearby.

The museum’s most striking exhibit is the restored hydroplane, Bluebird K7. Pilot Donald Campbell attempted a world water-speed record on Coniston Water in the craft in 1967 and lost his life. Other local-interest histories figure in displays as well, revealing how the surrounding landscape was shaped by upland farming and heavy industry.

4. Wordsworth Museum

Over in Grasmere, the Wordsworth Museum explores the life and work of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, two of the region’s more notable literary residents. The museum is a stone’s throw from Dove Cottage, the handsome house where the couple lived from 1799 to 1808. During those years they wrote many of their most famous works.

The museum displays the Wordsworths’ manuscripts, letters and personal possessions. There’s also items related to the other Lake poets, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge. But it’s much more than a long read. Along with Dove Cottage, the museum brings to life the world that shaped English romanticism and some of the greatest literary works in the language.

5. Windermere Jetty Museum

The Lake District wouldn’t be what it is without its lakes, of course. Nowhere is that better documented than at the Windermere Jetty Museum, which sits on the shores of England’s largest lake. Its collection includes historic steam launches, sailing boats and motorboats that once travelled the region’s lakes and tarns.

The place showcases much more than just old boats, though. It also highlights the skills needed to maintain them and the traditions of which they’re part. In the museum’s conservation workshop, historic boat-building techniques are still practised today and afford a unique attraction of their own.

Collectively, these museums reveal another side of the Lake District. The region is famous for its scenery, but it has also been shaped by art, literature, industry and local communities.

When the rain falls, as it so often does, stepping inside one of the Lake District’s museums affords much more than just a break from the weather. It offers another way of exploring and understanding the region’s landscape.

Christopher Donaldson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.