Museums & science Salford
Hands-on museums and science centres. Several of the best ones are free.
All four are free to walk into, which makes Salford the cheapest museum day in Greater Manchester and almost nobody realises it. The Lowry holds the world's largest collection of its namesake's work in free galleries, with a free immersive room, and only the shows cost. Imperial War Museum North tells the war through people rather than hardware, in a building deliberately shaped like a shattered globe, and it lands hardest with sevens and up.
The two smaller ones are the surprise. Salford Museum's Lark Hill Place is a full Victorian street rebuilt indoors, gas lamps and shopfronts, and small children treat it as a film set. Ordsall Hall is a Grade I Tudor manor marooned among new-builds, free, with a Tudor kitchen and a ghost story the staff will tell you if you ask.
War told through people's stories in a building designed to feel like a shattered globe. The hourly Big Picture Show projections fill the whole gallery and stop everyone mid-step. Heavy themes, handled well - better for the top end of primary.
A Grade I listed Tudor manor house marooned among Salford's new-builds, free to walk round, with a proper Great Hall, gardens and school-holiday craft sessions. Closed Fridays and Saturdays, which catches people out.
Free, small and genuinely good: Lark Hill Place, a full Victorian street rebuilt indoors, is the bit the kids will remember. Peel Park is right outside for the run-around afterwards.
Free galleries holding the world's largest LS Lowry collection, a free immersive 360 room, and theatres with a steady run of family shows. One of the easiest rainy-day wins on the Quays.
Free, indoors and better than it sounds: interactive science aimed at younger children, glassblowing demos, a picnic area and a small playground outside.
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.
Hands-on science galleries and a glass rooftop observatory over the Mersey. Small, cheap, indoors and close.
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.
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.
Shirts, trophies and match footage across six floors, with 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.
One email a week: what is on this weekend within a sensible drive, and the places worth booking before they go.