A Festive Break near York #3 :: The Castle Museum

Hi there everyone 😀

Finally … I am on the last post from our break to Yorkshire back in November. We certainly packed plenty in. 

We spent our last day back in the city, this time by car, making a visit to the York Castle Museum. 

I had visited once before … many years ago … on a primary school trip. We lived in Peterborough at the time … so it must have been one heck of a coach trip and, for someone, who didn’t do coach travel that well at the time, that probably wasn’t the best experience. 

From what we’d seen on line it looked like we could be in for some more festive scenes and we were all looking forward to seeing what we would find. 

The museum itself is very much a museum of two halves and ended up having much more to see than any of us were expecting. We started off on the left hand side with period rooms and a fascinating vintage clothing exhibition before ending up in Kirkgate … which is what I’d most been looking forward to …

This is what I’d remembered from my school trip and there were plenty of Victorian streets and buildings to explore …

It was looking pretty festive, there was even snow on the ground …

From chatting with a guide, after a few parlour games, we heard all about how all of the shop fronts had been saved or salvaged from the city so were all genuine and not just mock ups. 

There are a fair few that you can actually go inside and see them as they would have been … back in the day …

You could even shop in the sweet shop …

It was really strange wandering the back alleys, where things were not quite so sparkly … but there was still plenty going on …

We spent a good while exploring, making sure we hadn’t missed anything before moving on to the second half of the museum. 

I didn’t really take any photos on the right hand side but there was lots of really interesting and immersive stuff to explore. 

There was the old Castle Prison, where we could explore the cells and meet some of the people who had been imprisoned there. 

We then got to explore the swinging Sixties where there was plenty of nostalgia to be had …

… before travelling back to 1914 for the chance to find out all about WW1 from the perspective of a number of people from different walks of life that were actually living at the time. 

We had then been looking forward to seeing how the famous Terry’s chocolate orange was made … but sadly that part of the exhibition was not working during our visit. 

Lastly, we had a browse of the gift shop before deciding to give the cafe a miss but to head to Beningbrough, another NT property, on our way back … where we would avail ourselves of the tea room. 

This having been a last minute decision, without planning ahead, did not come to fruition … as we arrived to find the property very much closed for the day 🙈

Instead we headed to Easingwold where we found a very nice cafe on the square and also got to have a wander round the Christmas market, which was just getting going. 

We’d had another lovely full and festive day but were all more than ready for our last chilled out evening at Anthology Cottage before packing up and heading for home. 

It seems like a long time ago now but the week really had been the loveliest way to get in the Christmas spirit and just have a bit of time out before things got really busy. 

We need to find somewhere that will be just as nice for 2026 … I don’t think it will be easy 💜

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