Museums & science Stockport
Hands-on museums and science centres. Several of the best ones are free.
Children get in free at every one of the museums, which makes Stockport an unusually cheap museum town. Staircase House is the pick for a wet afternoon, a hands-on walk through the oldest town house in the Market Place at £6 an adult with under-16s free, and the Air Raid Shelters under the town centre suit sevens and over who can cope with a dark tunnel. Hat Works is free to walk into and you can try the hats on, though the Victorian factory floor is an £8.50 guided tour on selected dates. The Anson Engine Museum is ten minutes south and listed under Poynton.
The Plaza on Mersey Square is the exception, a restored 1932 cinema and variety theatre where the building, Mighty Compton organ included, is half the show. Families mostly go for the Christmas panto and the one-day Easter panto, and most of the rest of the calendar is for adults, so read the listing first.
The UK's only museum of hats and hatting, back open after a four-year refurbishment. The galleries are free and you can try hats on; the Victorian factory floor is an £8.50 guided tour on selected dates. An hour well spent, not a full day.
Aviation museum on the old Woodford aerodrome, home to the only all-white Vulcan bomber, with cockpit tours and a free flight simulator. Under-11s go free, and it opens Friday to Sunday only.
Stockport's oldest town house, done out as a hands-on walk from the 15th century to the 20th and named after a rare Jacobean cage newel staircase. An hour does it.
A labyrinth of tunnels carved under the town centre that sheltered thousands in the Blitz, explored with a self-guided audio tour. Atmospheric in the best way for 7-and-ups.
A restored 1932 Art Deco cinema and variety theatre with its own cinema organ and Art Deco tea rooms. Families come for two pantos a year and the Christmas extras rather than a regular programme.
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.
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, indoors and close, with one gallery shut for a rebuild until early 2027.
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 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.
One email a week: what is on this weekend within a sensible drive, and the places worth booking before they go.