The grim atmosphere of the Workhouse Museum has been carefully maintained in order to give visitors a sense of what life in a Victorian workhouse could have been. The contrast between the Master and Matron’s living quarters and the vagrant’s cells is striking. The museum is also home to a Victorian schoolroom, where children took their lessons.

In the Prison & Police Museum, visitors will find whitewashed cells and barred windows. On the ground floor is a history of policing in Yorkshire from the Anglo-Saxons to the formation of professional policing. Upstairs, crime and punishment is the theme, with many hands-on activities to help imagine the horror of the Victorian prison regime.

Explore the Courthouse Museum and learn about what happened in a courtroom in the 1800s. You can even experience standing in the dock and waiting for your sentence.