Derwent Pencil Museum
Keswick made the world's first pencils and the museum sits on the works. About an hour indoors: secret wartime pencils with maps hidden inside, and a coloured pencil close to eight metres long.
Museums & science Keswick
Museums & science in Keswick
Hands-on museums and science centres. Several of the best ones are free.
5 in Keswick4 indoor4 suit under-5s
Keswick is well stocked for a wet day. The Puzzling Place is the quick one, an anti-gravity room where water appears to run uphill and a hologram gallery. The Derwent Pencil Museum sits on the works that made the world's first pencils, with wartime pencils hiding maps and a coloured pencil close to eight metres long.
Keswick Museum in Fitz Park is the town's own, with a digital gallery where children play the Lake District as a video game, and every ticket lets you back in free for a year, which pays off on a week's holiday. Threlkeld Quarry, three miles east, is the outdoor one: a narrow gauge train into the quarry is included in the £5.50 child ticket, with mineral panning and a yard of old diggers. Its season ends at October half term.
Theatre by the Lake is the fifth, a proper theatre on the lakeside that puts short family shows on in the school holidays, mostly at 11am and 2pm. Its cafe opens at 9.30am, which makes it the coffee stop between wet walks as well.
Museums & science in Keswick
Keswick Museum
Keswick's own museum in Fitz Park: galleries on the rocks, history and people of the area, plus a hands-on digital gallery where children play a video game version of the Lake District. Under 5s are free and every ticket covers a year of return visits.
The Puzzling Place
An anti-gravity room where water appears to run uphill, a hologram gallery and a room that shrinks the grown-ups. Cheap, indoor, and exactly the right length for the age group.
Threlkeld Quarry and Mining Museum
A long-running quarry museum three miles from Keswick, with a narrow gauge railway ride into the quarry included in the ticket, mineral panning and a yard full of old diggers. Excellent for any child who stops for roadworks.
Theatre by the Lake
Keswick's theatre sits by the lake and runs short family shows in the school holidays, with a lakeside cafe open from 9.30am. The rainy-day answer in the northern Lakes.
Museums & science elsewhere in the North West
World of Glass
Free to get in and better than it sounds: hands-on stations on glass, lenses and fibre optics, a Victorian street and the old Tank House, with live glassblowing around midday and 2pm for a small extra charge. Closed Mondays and Tuesdays.
World Museum, Liverpool
Five floors, free, and it covers three things small children reliably love: giant dinosaurs, an aquarium and a space gallery. The best wet-weather day within half an hour.
Catalyst Science Centre
Hands-on science galleries and a glass rooftop observatory over the Mersey. Small, indoors and close, with one gallery shut for a rebuild until early 2027.
Science and Industry Museum
Working steam engines, the story of Cottonopolis, and hands-on galleries in the world's oldest surviving passenger railway station. Free, and the live demonstrations are the bit kids actually remember.
Manchester Museum
A T. rex skeleton cast, live frogs in the vivarium, Egyptian mummies and a genuinely good natural history floor. Free, university-run, and less overwhelming than the big London equivalents.
National Football Museum
Shirts, trophies and match footage across four gallery floors, with a penalty shootout and skills games that football-mad kids refuse to leave. If yours do not care about football, skip it: it is exactly what it says.
What’s on near you, every Friday
One email a week: what is on this weekend within a sensible drive, and the places worth booking before they go.