I’ll be honest, our main reason for visiting was that it’s in King’s Cross, and was therefore close to where we needed to be for our train home that afternoon. But as someone who identifies as a member of the LGBTQ+ community, I decided it would be good to visit.
Queer Britain is a small museum – we were in and out within the hour – and despite having ‘national’ in its name, it’s very London-focussed. There’s not a lot about LGBTQ+ history in other parts of the UK; there was a bit about Justin Fashanu, a footballer who played for Norwich City and was Britain’s first openly gay professional player. But there was nothing about Manchester’s Gay Village, for example. Perhaps if the museum is able to expand in future, it will have more things to show that are from outside the capital.
There is also an events space, and if we hadn’t needed to catch a train, we would have stuck around for a panel discussion platforming LGBTQ+ migrants. We did, however, manage a quick selfie with the panel moderator, Tia Kofi, who you may know from Season 2 of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK. They’re very tall.
Accessibility
The museum is all on one floor, with a ramp to the main door; however, extra wide wheelchairs may present an issue. An accessible gender neutral toilet is available; Changing Places toilets are available a short walk away at Pancras Leisure and King’s Cross station.
Entry is a recommended fee of £10, or pay what you feel. As it stands, I broadly agree with Ian that £10 is a big ask for a relatively small museum. The gift shop is good though.
Queer Britain is in Granary Square, on the other side of the Regents Canal from King’s Cross and St Pancras stations (which are all step-free). If it still existed, York Road tube station on the Piccadilly Line would be closest, but it closed 94 years ago.
This is one of those blog posts where I’m glad I don’t take advertising on this blog anymore, as I imagine this post would get demonetised. This is the fifth of my blog posts about last month’s trip to London; I’m aware that we’ve been back for a month now, and there’s still a sixth and final post to go live this week. Today’s post is all about The Vagina Museum.
A Vagina Museum‽
Yes, a museum all about vaginas. Well, and the wider reproductive organs of women and others with vaginas – the museum tries very hard to be inclusive of trans and non-binary people as well.
It’s not a very big museum, and occupies two railway arches under the Weaver Line of the London Overground. It’s made up of three small named exhibitions spaces, called Betsey, Lucy and Anarcha, named after three enslaved Black American women who were all experimented on, and from whom our modern understanding of gynaecology is derived. Betsey’s gallery, upstairs, is home to the permanent exhibition, where you can see a complete preserved uterus (Christine commented that it was smaller than expected, considering how much it hurts when she’s on her period) and many photos of different types of vulvas.
Also upstairs is Anarcha’s gallery, which has written pieces from migrant women about their first period, and the challenges that their status as refugees has caused.
Downstairs, as well as the excellent gift shop, is Lucy’s gallery, and the current temporary exhibition about menopause, including its history and how our understanding of it has changed over time.
In all, we spent about an hour in the museum. It’s quite text heavy, and I don’t think our ten-year-old would have got much out of it, but we both found it enlightening. I’d definitely recommend visiting if you have a vagina, or live with someone who does.
Accessibility
Accessibility is good – there is a lift to the upstairs galleries, and no steps. There’s a single, gender-neutral, accessible toilet available. If you need a Changing Places toilet, then there is one nearby at the Young V&A (which we visited in 2024).
Entry to the museum is free, but a £5 donation is strongly encouraged. And did I mention that the gift shop is excellent? Note that museum is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.
The museum is very close to Cambridge Heath station on the London Overground, and a little further from Bethnal Green tube station on the Central Line. We got there on the 254 bus from outside Aldgate tube station, which is probably your best option for step-free transport; the nearest step-free station is Hoxton on the Windrush Line, which is a 20-25 minute walk.
I haven’t been noting about car parking or electric car charging in these London reviews, as we didn’t drive and I think you would be mad to drive in London, but there is a rapid Shell Recharge station around the corner.
As I mentioned in my write-up of Banksy: Limitless, I’m not massively in to art, and so most of what the V&A offers isn’t of interest to me. Christine likes it though, and she has visited the V&A more often than I have. This time, she insisted on taking me to the Cast Courts on the ground floor.
Cast Courts
These three rooms are huge, extending to the full 25 metre height of the building. Their size is by necessity, as they contain some of the largest objects in the V&A’s collection.
As the name ‘cast’ suggests, these are plaster casts of various famous artefacts that exist elsewhere. There’s a cast of Michaelangelo’s David, for example, complete with a plaster fig leaf that was put over his manly bits when Queen Victoria visited. By far the biggest is a cast of Trajan’s Column, which is so big that it appears in two pieces. The cast courts were built as part of the original museum in the 1870s, and are now rather tightly packed with various pieces.
They’re impressive spaces, and it would be hard not to be wowed when walking in to them for the first time.
Design 1900-now
Whilst art may not be my thing, design and architecture are. So we went upstairs to the Design 1900-now gallery, which features 250 objects that show how design has changed over the past 126 years.
As well as furniture (including a standing lamp designed by Salvador Dali), there’s also technology here. There were two Apple computers on show; an Apple II, and a much newer MacBook that had been deliberately disassembled as it contained documents from Edward Snowden. There are also examples of objects that have been recently acquired, such as a Lababu.
The information included with each object is concise but thorough, but by virtue of being in central London, the limited space means that many objects are not on show here. Indeed, V&A has over a million objects in its collection, and has recently opened the V&A East Storehouse in Hackney Wick to allow visitors access to more of its objects. There’s also the Young V&A in Bethnal Green, which we visited in 2024.
Accessibility
Entry to the museum is free, but like most free museums, some special exhibitions require paid-for tickets. The main entrances are step-free, but not the entrance from the Museum tunnel that links to South Kensington tube station which is the nearest. Knightsbridge is the nearest step free tube station.
There is step-free access to all parts of the museum, but as it’s an old building that has been added to over time, step-free routes may take longer than some more direct ones. Disabled toilets are available, but for a Changing Places toilet, you’ll need to go across the road to the Science Museum.
The exhibition displays the top 100 entries for the competition. The gallery is dimly lit, with all of the photographs displayed in lightboxes to make them really stand out. They’re split by category, and show the winning entry in each category alongside those highly commended by the judges. Each photograph also has a bit of blurb about where it was taken, and the lengths that the photographer took to get the shot. In some cases, these photographs took weeks or even months of planning. You also get to see which model of camera was used, the lenses and camera settings used to take the photograph.
The two winners of Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2025 were announced in October, a couple of days before the exhibition opened. There’s an overall winner, and a separate winner for under-18s. Both winning photographs are then displayed on bigger lightboxes at the end, and there are video interviews with the winners and the judging panel.
Whilst the Natural History Museum offers free entry, this exhibition is a paid add-on. Tickets start at £15.50 each for adults at off-peak times – we went on a Friday so paid this lower rate. Full-price tickets are £18 for adults, payable at weekends and weekdays during school holidays. You have until mid-July to see this year’s photos.
Evolution Garden
This was the first time we’d been to the Natural History Museum since 2022, and so it was the first time we’ve seen the new Evolution Garden. The museum used to be surrounded by grass lawns at the front, but one of these has been replaced with something rather more biodiverse. As you walk through the garden, you can see various fossils, showing (briefly) how life evolved over millions of years. The planting fits the theme, with ferns playing the role of ancient plants that would have been common the time of the dinosaurs.
It’s a good improvement to an under-utilised area. As well as being better for biodiversity, it supports the museum’s role in education, and is easily accessible even if you don’t want to go into the museum itself.
Pokemon Pop-up Shop
If you can make it to the museum before the 19th April, there’s a Pokemon Pop-up Shop. You need to book a timed ticket to go in, and these aren’t normally available to book online. We didn’t manage to get a ticket when we went, unfortunately.
Accessibility
All of the museum’s entrances are accessible, and wheelchair access to all parts of the museum should be achievable. Disabled toilets are available, but you’ll need to go next door to the Science Museum for a Changing Places toilet.
South Kensington is the nearest tube station, and there’s a tunnel link to the Evolution Garden from the ticket hall. Knightsbridge, on the Piccadilly Line, is the nearest step-free tube station.
I didn’t do one of these in December, although I think anything that I would have written about went into the 2025 review. Instead, here’s what I got up to in January that didn’t merit a full blog post.
The Wolf Moon
That photo of the moon at the top isn’t a stock photo – I took it myself! A full moon in January is known as a ‘wolf moon‘, and the moon happened to be closer to the earth than average so it appeared much larger in the sky.
The photo was taken on my Canon EOS 90D DSLR camera, but I admit there was some luck involved. I used the pop-out screen to set the correct exposure automatically, rather than experiment with various settings. I didn’t even need to use a tripod, and that photo was the first and only one I took. It’s been minimally cropped and edited.
As for where I took the photo? Well, after visiting Hardwick Hall, we took a detour and went to the Chatsworth Farm Shop. That photo was taken in the car park – being out in the countryside meant there was less light pollution. It also meant that, as well as getting a fabulous moon photo, we also picked up some of Chatsworth’s excellent maple-cured bacon. Seriously, it is probably the best bacon we’ve ever tasted.
A return visit to NESM
Last April, we went to the National Emergency Services Museum in Sheffield. As the tickets automatically become an annual pass, earlier this month I went back there with our ten-year-old. On our previous visit, there had been a Steampunk event on (it looks like it’s returning this April) and so we never got to visit the top floor, or the police cells.
This visit was an opportunity to rectify that, and so we got to learn about HM Coastguard, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) and the Yorkshire Air Ambulance. There’s also a recreation of a multi-agency response, where different emergency services have to work together – in this instance, a car crash which requires the police, ambulance and fire & rescue services. The museum is fundraising for a much-needed extension and I hope it’s successful – it’s a fantastic little museum and clearly needs more space.
We took part in the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch on Sunday morning, which happened to be really wet and dreary. Despite this, we managed to see around 14 birds – mostly sparrows, but also a couple of blackbirds and bluetits. We fleetingly saw a wagtail too, which wasn’t on the core list.
(not) Changing Mobile Network
My mobile phone contract came to an end this month, and so I used a Martin Lewis trick to request a Port Authority Code (PAC) to port my number to another provider. This resulted in my current provider giving me a better offer than their standard upgrade deals, so now I have almost three times more data each month for less money than I was paying before. And, I don’t have to switch to a different network. All the haggling was done via Live Chat too, so I didn’t even need to call someone.
The Calder Valley Brick Show
We popped into this year’s Calder Valley Brick Show in Mytholmroyd last weekend. It’s an annual show for amateur Lego builders to show off their creations. Some are based on standard sets – often the older sets from the 1980s and 1990s – whereas others are custom builds. There were quite a few Star Wars dioramas there, but there was a good mix. Next month, there’s Bricktastic at Manchester Central (what used to be G-Mex) which is a much bigger event, although it looks like a number of the sets we saw will be there too.
A couple of weeks ago, we went to the Thackray Museum of Medicine in Leeds. It’s next to St James Hospital, and tells the history of medical care in the UK from the 18th century until the present day.
History of the Thackray Museum
The Thackray Museum first opened in 1997, so it’s just shy of its 30th anniversary. It gets its name from the pharmacist Charles Thackray, who opened a chemist shop in Leeds in 1902; over time, the company branched out into manufacturing medical devices such as replacement hips. The company’s archive, in the care of Charles Thackray’s grandson Paul, became the basis of the museum’s collection.
The building housing the museum pre-dates the hospital next door, and opened in 1861 as a workhouse. However, a medical wing was established, and it was requisitioned as a hospital during the first world war. It then remained in use as part of St James Hospital until 1990, when it was deemed no longer fit for modern medical use. However, by this time it had become Grade II listed, and so rather than demolish it, the building was converted for use as a museum.
This wasn’t our first trip to the Thackray Museum. I visited with my parents when I was still living in York, within a few years of it opening, and Christine and I visited some time in the early 2010s when we were living together. We also visited in 2022, as a family of three; this was our first visit following a major refurbishment that started just before the Covid-19 pandemic. So our visit this month was our fourth visit.
Inside the Thackray Museum
Whilst you can pick and choose the order in which you view each of the museum galleries, the recommended route is to start off with Disease Street. This is a recreation of a street in Leeds in the early nineteenth century, towards the start of the Industrial Revolution when large numbers of people moved into the cities to work. You can choose to follow the fate of a person who would have lived during that time, and would find out why diseases thrived in the filthy conditions that working people had to live in. The person we chose ended up dying of consumption (tuberculosis) aged just 27.
Opposite Disease Street is a recreation of an old operating theatre, from a time before anaesthesia. You can watch a recreation of an operation on a young girl having an amputation, following a factory accident. Or not; the room rightly comes with significant trigger warnings and certainly our ten-year-old wasn’t keen to watch. But, you can see why we still refer to such rooms in hospitals as ‘theatres’ as they were designed to accommodate lots of spectators.
Also downstairs is Disease Detectives, about microorganisms and their impact on our health. There’s quite a bit about our microbiome and how this is an emerging area of science that is updating our understanding of the role of bacteria.
Upstairs
Christine’s favourite bit of the Thackray Museum is the apothecary shop, which has (probably) the world’s largest collection of ceramic apothecary jars. It explains the role of an apothecary, and how this evolved over time into the modern day Pharmacist. Outside, there used to be a jar of live leeches, but it wasn’t there when we visited this time.
The largest room upstairs is home to Cutting Edge, which shows some of the museum’s collection of medical equipment, and how this has changed over time. Something that the museum has always had is an ’empathy belly’, which is a wearable harness that simulates what it’s like to be pregnant. You can try it on yourself; it’s not the original one from 1997 but a newer one of a type used in current medical training.
Opposite is another large gallery called Normal and Me. This focusses on the stories of people who live with various disabilities or health problems, as well as ‘normal’ life stages such as puberty. It includes plenty of artwork by local artist Bobbie Rae, who we’ve met at Thought Bubble these past two times. To the side of this is an exhibition about medical car in war zones, and a section about sexual health.
Inclusivity
As you would expect from a museum that underwent a major renovation this decade, some effort has been put in to ensuring that the exhibits are inclusive. A description of a pregnancy test refers to ‘people with a uterus’, to include trans men and non-binary people who may want to see if they are pregnant, for example. And there are contributions from LGBTQ+ people, including those unfortunate enough to have experience conversion therapy.
Leeds is a diverse city, and its healthcare workforce especially so, and again, this is represented in the museum. It’s also very up-to-date, with several exhibits related to the Covid-19 pandemic, and recent medical advances.
Accessibility
Accessibility at the Thackray Museum is pretty good; despite it being an older building, there are wide doorways, a changing places toilet and sensory spaces. However, when we visited, the lift was broken.
The Thackray Museum is run by a charity, and there is some flexibility with the admissions prices depending on your circumstances and how generous you feel. You can therefore pay £9 per person, or more – there’s a £16 per person ticket which subsidises the £9 tickets for others. Under 7s get in free, as do holders of the National Art Pass and Max Cards.
As it’s next to St James Hospital, the museum is served by regular direct buses from Leeds Bus Station. If you arrive in Leeds by train, then the number 16 bus leaves from City Square, near the station, and drops you pretty much outside the museum. Otherwise, it’s a 45 minute walk from Leeds station.
York, my city of birth, is known for a lot of historical things – the Romans, the Vikings, the medieval city walls and others. But it’s also known for chocolate, and was once home to three large confectionary companies: Rowntree’s, Terry’s and Cravens. And the story of York’s chocolate industry is the focus of one of its newer museums: York’s Chocolate Story.
Christine and I visited shortly after it opened, back before we got married, in 2012. Then, it was known as Chocolate: York’s Sweet Story, but its name has changed since. I hadn’t been back since – Christine had her hen do there – but last weekend I took our nine-year-old along.
Having visited Cadbury World earlier in the summer, it was good to compare the two. Cadbury World is a Merlin attraction, and so it’s more of an indoor theme park with some history. Meanwhile, York’s Chocolate Story, is primarily a museum, although both offer you chocolate samples to eat on your way around.
Inside York’s Chocolate Story
Guests follow a guided tour around the museum, although there are videos to watch as well. Whilst we waited for the rest of the group to come up in the lift, our knowledgeable guide asked everyone what their favourite chocolate bar was, and he was able to quickly look up when they first went on sale. It turns out that many chocolate bars have been around longer than we might expect.
The first room is about the ancient history of chocolate, and how Spanish colonialists ‘discovered’ it when they reached Mexico. At this point, you get to try a sample of the bitter chocolate drink that people would have drunk back then.
We then head downstairs, to find out more about how chocolate bars are made. This included a chance to make our own white chocolate lollipop, with a choice of flavours. They use white chocolate as it sets more quickly. We could also watch a demonstration where filled chocolate truffles were made, and of course we got samples to taste. The same room has a history of KitKats, and you can watch various classic KitKat TV adverts too.
All in all, it takes about an hour to get around. Of course, there’s a shop at the end which also does a range of hot chocolate.
Accessibility
Being a newer museum, accessibility is good – there’s a lift taking you to all floors. It’s in York city centre, around the corner from The Shambles, so within walking distance of the station. Whilst you can try to park your car in York city centre, please don’t – we saw loads of people queueing to get into car parks and blocking the roads whilst doing so, and besides, you’ll pay a small fortune. Instead, take one of the six Park and Ride services.
It’s best to book in advance – if you turn up on the day, all the tour slots may have gone or you may have to hang around for a while. Plus, there’s a 20% discount for booking in advance, and York residents get a 30% discount for visits on Sundays.
If I had to guess where the Kelham Island Museum was, I’d probably suggest it was somewhere off the coast of northern England. It’s not – it’s in Sheffield city centre, and it’s a museum of Sheffield’s industrial history.
The Kelham Island Museum has been on my to-do list for several years. I seem to remember that, in the past, it was only open on weekdays, which made visiting difficult. Thankfully, it is now open at weekends, and so we went along last weekend for our first visit.
I like a good industrial museum, and the north of England is full of them. I’ve been to the ones in Manchester, Leeds, Halifax, Bradford, and I suppose the World of Glass in St Helens counts too. And whilst St Helens is known for its glass, Sheffield is know for its steel. So, you’ll find a lot of steel at the Kelham Island Museum – it’s home to the Hawley Tool Collection, which is the world’s largest collection of tools. What’s nice about the tool collection is that, whilst many items are on display, there are also pull-out drawers with plenty more to see if you’re so inclined.
The River Don Engine
If you visit at the right time on Thursdays through to Saturdays, you’ll get to see the River Don Engine powered up – it’s the photo you can see at the top. This is an absolute beast of a steam engine, and is currently the most powerful working steam engine in Europe. During its working life, it was, as you would expect, used for making steel. Its maximum output is around 12,000 horsepower, which is around 9 megawatts or the equivalent of 3 wind turbines at full speed.
Whilst it now lives in the Kelham Island Museum, the River Don Engine used to be elsewhere in Sheffield. Indeed, despite its massive size, it’s been moved twice in its lifetime. It last underwent restoration in 2007, when the museum was flooded, ironically, by the namesake River Don.
Kelham Island
The Kelham Island Museum gets its name from Kelham Island, an artificial island in the River Don dating back to the 12th Century. Back then, a mill race was constructed to power water mills. The museum itself is in what was originally an iron foundry, and later a power station for Sheffield’s first generation electric trams. The museum isn’t the only building on the island – there’s also student accommodation to serve Sheffield’s two large universities, and the Kelham Island Brewery.
We visited in an afternoon, which wasn’t quite enough time to get around the whole museum, so it’s probably almost a full day out.
Accessibility
As mentioned above, Kelham Island Museum is in Sheffield city centre. There is limited on-site parking, which you need to pay for at a machine or on the RingGo app. Alternatively, it’s a five minute walk from Shalesmoor tram stop, or a 25 minute walk from Sheffield’s main railway station (so you may wish to consider the aforementioned tram).
Entrance is free, but donations are welcome. The museum shop is also great – especially if you or people you know like the local delicacy, Henderson’s Relish.
If you’re in a wheelchair or can’t handle stairs, then you should still be able to see most of the museum. Not all of the floors are flat. A lift is provided to the upper floors. The River Don Engine, when it’s in steam, is particularly noisy.
Until a few weeks ago, I wasn’t aware that there was a museum dedicated to glass in St Helens. But Diamond Geezer recently visited on one of his non-London gadabouts, and so I took our nine-year-old along to The World of Glass last month.
The World of Glass opened in 2000, and fulfils several roles as a museum. Obviously, the focus is on glass, and so there’s a history of glassmaking starting with the ancient Egyptians through to the present day. In particular, it focusses on glassmaking in St Helens – the location of the museum is no accident. If your house has windows made by Pilkington Glass, then St Helens is where the company was founded. And, as the town’s main museum, it also covers the history of the town, especially during the Industrial Revolution. It’s also home to the St Helens central library.
Entry to the museum is through an original brick cone, used for glass making and designed to draw cool air in from the bottom. This features an art installation by Johnny Vegas – yes, that Johnny Vegas – who is local to the area.
Inside the museum
Though this is its 25th year, it’s clearly had some updates to its exhibits since then. I think it manages to strike a good balance between things in glass cabinets, and interactive exhibits to keep kids entertained. Certainly, our nine-year-old enjoyed learning about fibre-optic communications, and the various light and colour mixing activities. Its star attraction is a chandelier that was salvaged from Manchester Airport during a refurbishment, made of hundreds of hand-blown Venetian glass tubes.
As well as the main exhibition, there’s an art gallery in the main building. Then, there’s a bridge over the Sankey Canal to the Tank House, which is the proper old bit. This is the remains of an original glassmaking furnace, used by Pilkingtons. Much of it had been filled in with rubble, and had to be dug out by archaeologists. You get to go down into the tunnels (hard hats available) to see inside the furnace. Incidentally, the bit of the canal next to the Tank House was known as ‘The Hotties’ because the water used to cool the furnace would be pumped out here, warming the canal water. There are photos of it being used for bathing.
We visited on a Sunday, which meant that we didn’t get to see a glass-blowing demonstration. These take place on other days of the week, usually at 12pm and 2pm. Whereas the museum itself has free entry, this is a paid-for addon.
As mentioned, entrance is free, though donations are welcome. As befits a museum of its age, accessibility is pretty good, although the Tank House tunnels are a confined space. It’s on two floors with a lift available.
There’s a small pay and display car park on site, which is free on Sundays and Bank Holidays. It’s also a very short walk from St Helens Central station, which has direct trains from Liverpool, Wigan, Preston and Blackpool. St Helens bus station is a little further, but still within walking distance.
Last weekend, we made a return visit to the Science & Industry Museum in Manchester, to see the Operation Ouch: Brains, Bogies and You exhibition. This is the second consecutive Operation Ouch exhibition at the museum; last year, they had ‘Food, Poo and You’ which we visited in January. Twice in fact, as the first time I went with our (then) eight-year-old, and so we visited again a few weeks later as a family of three.
For those without kids (or grandchildren) in the 7-14 years old age range, Operation Ouch is a CBBC TV show hosted by twin doctors Dr Xand and Dr Chris, and in later series, joined by Dr Ronx who is probably one of the most visible non-binary people in UK children’s’ TV. Dr Chris is also the author of the book ‘Ultra-processed People’, which I reviewed back in 2023. As you would expect from a BBC series, Operation Ouch aims to inform, educate and entertain (the three principles on which the BBC was founded), so as well as teaching kids about science, it’s designed to be entertaining and disgusting too.
Inside Dr Xand’s head
The exhibition therefore follows a similar style. The idea is that you are shrunk down at the start, and enter a reluctant Dr Chris’ ear, where you can then enter different parts of his head to see how they work. There’s the brain, eyes, nose, ears, mouth, and a section on touch to cover all five senses. Unlike the previous exhibition, which was a linear journey through the digestive system, the layout is more free-form, with links between the sections and back to the core brain section.
Because it’s aimed at kids, the exhibition has lots of interactive elements. We particularly liked the screen which monitors your movement and displays an image of you as a skeleton. In the eyes section, there’s some optical illusions to try out, and, as someone with hearing loss, I appreciated the ears section too. Here, you could see how cochlear implants work; I don’t have one yet, but might need one in future. There’s also a demonstration of how your hearing changes over time, as you lose your ability to hear certain frequencies. Our nine-year-old could hear everything, Christine could hear two of them and I could only hear one, even when using the telecoil through my hearing aids.
In all, we spent about an hour in the exhibition, but could have spent longer.
Elsewhere in the museum
Having only visited last year, we mainly just came to see the exhibition. In recent years, there hasn’t been much of the museum available to see; of the five buildings that used to make up the museum, only one (the New Warehouse) has been open. The Air and Space Hall permanently closed in 2021; this was across the road from the rest of the museum and is now in use as a co-working space. The 1830s buildings, consisting of a warehouse and the original Manchester Liverpool Road railway station, are also closed for refurbishment, and due to re-open in 2030 for their 200th anniversary.
The good news is that The Power Hall has re-opened, as of Friday last week. We’ll plan to visit next year, when the next exhibition is on.
Accessibility
The Science and Industry Museum as a whole is pretty good for accessibility, and this extends to the Operation Ouch exhibition. All video content has subtitles and BSL interpretation, and any audio content that you can listen to includes a telecoil system for hearing aid users. The exhibition is all on one level.
Whilst the museum as a whole is free to enter (donations welcome), the Operation Ouch exhibition is a paid-for addon. Essential carers can get a free ticket when purchased with a regular-priced ticket.
The only on-site parking is for Blue Badge holders. There are various smaller pay-and-display car parks nearby, if you don’t mind parking under an unlit railway arch. Alternatively, there’s a multi-storey NCP car park at the Great Northern Warehouse, which is expensive but probably safer and more secure. This is a short walk away. There is a rapid electric car charger on the Be.EV network with on-street parking nearby.
The nearest railway station and tram stop is Deansgate-Castlefield, which is reachable from literally every other Metrolink stop. There’s a lift down to street level at the tram stop, and then it’s only a short walk to the museum.
