Yorkshire Museum

What to see at the Yorkshire Museum

The Yorkshire Museum has displays giving you an insight into the history and culture of Yorkshire including a number of important artefacts.

The museum’s highlights include:

• the Cawood sword, which is believed to date from the early 12th century;
• the Coppergate Helmet, the best preserved of only six surviving Anglo-Saxon helmets, which was discovered in 1982 during excavations for the Jorvik Viking Centre;
• the Ormside Bowl, an intricately decorated silver and bronze Anglo-Saxon bowl dating from the mid-8th century;
• the Middleham Jewel, a late 15th-century pendant discovered by a detectorist in Middleham, North Yorkshire in 1992;
• the Bedale Hoard, a hoard of 48 silver and gold items dating from the late 9th- and early 10th-centuries which were found by metal detectorists near Bedale, North Yorkshire in 2012;
• and the Vale of York Hoard, also known as the Harrogate Hoard, consisting of 617 silver coins and 65 other Viking artefacts.

Temporary exhibitions at the Yorkshire Museum

In addition to its permanent collection, the Yorkshire Museum also hosts a programme of temporary exhibitions. Current and planned exhibitions include:

Star Carr: Life After the Ice
The Star Carr: Life After the Ice exhibition shows you what life would have been like in the Star Carr settlement in North Yorkshire 11,000 years ago during the Mesolithic era. The exhibition includes interactive recreations of the Mesolithic landscape plus artefacts such as antler headdresses and stone pendants and displays where you can discover the Stone Age craftsmanship including Europe’s earliest evidence of carpentry. The exhibition even features a display showing a dog’s perspective of life during this period, offering a unique glimpse into our distant past.

Visiting the Yorkshire Museum

The Yorkshire Museum is in the Museum Gardens at the northern end of the city centre. Most points of interest in York are no more than a 20-minute walk from here.

For the most part, the museum is wheelchair accessible. Both the lower and ground floors are fully accessible but wheelchair users don’t have access to the reading room and historic library on the first floor and only one wheelchair users is allowed on the first floor at a time due to fire regulations.

Allow 1–2 hours for your visit to the Yorkshire Museum.